sity of California hern Regional rary Facility I r^-i J J* 5 J /. "^' C THE CHURCH AM> THE CHURCHES. THE CHURCH AND THE CHURCHES; OR, THE PAPACY AND THE TEMPORAL POWER. Jttt Historical and f oliiiat S^ro. BY MI; DOLLINGER TRANSLATED, WITH THE AUTHOR'S PERMISSION, BY WILLIAM BERNARD MAC CABE. IN ONE VOLUME. LONDON: HURST AJND BLACKETT, P.UBLISHERb, SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN, 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1862. The right of Translation is reserved. LONDON : PRINTED BY R. BORN, GLOUCESTER STREET, REGENT'S PARK. I StacK Annex 5 070 BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. BY THE TRANSLATOR. As it is possible this book may fall into the hands of many but little acquainted with the claim which the Author has upon the attention of the learned in every country, it has been deemed advisable to collect some materials respecting his antecedent biography. The life of an author is to be found in his works ; and it will be seen by the subjoined narrative that the years of Dr. Dollinger have been crowded with events ; and that each of these reflects honour upon him as a theologian, a scholar, and an historian, as a man of deep research and of original thought. Dr. Dollinger was born at Bamberg, on the 28th February, 1 799, and educated at Wiirzburg. After several years passed, first at a curacy in Franconia, and as Professor at the Eccle- siastical Seminary of Aschaffenberg, he was, in 1826, appointed one of theFaculty of Theology in the new University of Munich. The results of the French Revolution were felt in the youth and early manhood of Dr. Dollinger. nationalism was every- where predominant. There was no master-mind amongst the Roman Catholics of Germany; and the young and ardent student was thrown upon his own resources, and compelled vi PREFACE. to rely on his own independent research for the acquisition of knowledge and the formation of his judgment. The results of such a course are apparent in the writings of Dr. Dollinger ; for all exhibit profound and extensive learning, a judgment free from personal and partial influences, the habit of penetrating directly to original sources, and a critical method to which the works of the patristic, the scholastic, and modern writers are indifferently subjected. Dr. Dollinger's earliest work was on " The Doctrine of O the Eucharist in the three first Centuries," 1826. Two years later appeared a " History of the Reformation," form- ing the third volume of " The Ecclesiastical History" of Hortig. He then undertook to re-write the whole work, and published in 1833 the first, and in 1835 the second volume of that " Church History " by which his name first became widely known for his learned and able defence of the Catholic idea, and for the confidence with which many views, so often repeated as to be believed unquestionable and essential, were abandoned as untenable. Four more volumes which had been announced were never written ; but an elaborate treatise on " The History, Character, and Influence of Islamism," appeared in 1838 ; and a Com- pendium of the History of the Church down to the Reformation, was published in the years 1836-1843. The history of the six first centuries is given with extreme brevity ; but the history of the Middle Ages, though much compressed, displays even more copious erudition than the account of the earlier period in the larger work. In the English translation, these two histories have been unskil- fully combined. Between the years 1846 and 1848, Dr. Dollinger published three large volumes on the history of German Lutheranism, " The Reformation, its Internal De- velopment and its Effects." The original design was too extensive to be completed; the work remains a fragment, and the innumerable extracts from the writings of the period, many of them rare, and some unpublished, whilst they confer on these volumes a value they will never lose, yet render them difficult to be read with pleasure. But the immense PREFACE. Vll research with which the ideas of the Reformers and their contemporaries, on the doctrine and the condition of their Church, are exposed, make this by far the most instructive account of the German Reformation. During this period Dr. Dollinger delivered courses of lec- tures on several other branches of Divinity besides that which specially belonged to his chair ; " on the Philosophy of Religion," " on Canon Law," " on Symbolism," and on "the Literature of the Patristic Age." Having ceded, for some years, his professorship of ecclesiastical history to Mohler, whose lesser writings he afterwards collected, he took that of dogmatic theology, which in his hands was trans- formed into a history of revelation and of the development of doctrine. None of these lectures have been printed, but the author has published from time to time a large number of occasional writings. Among the earliest were " An Es- say on the Religion of Shakespeare," and a lecture " on the Introduction of Christianity among the Germans." A "Com- mentary on the Paradise of Dante," accompanied by the de- signs of Cornelius in 1830; "Mixed Marriages a Voice for Peace," came out in 1838, during the conflict between the Prussian Government and the Archbishop of Cologne. In the following years articles on " The Tractarian Movement," "John Huss and the Council of Constance," "The Albi- genses," appeared in the "Historisch-politische Blatter," over which, though very rarely a contributor, he presided for many years. A dissertation on " The Position of the Church towards those who die out of Her Communion," was written in 1842, on the occasion of the death of the Dowager Queen of Bavaria; a lecture on "Error, Doubt, and Truth," was originally delivered by Dr. Dollinger before the students, as Rector of the University ; a speech on " The Freedom of the Church," one of his most excellent publications, at Ra- tisbon, in 1849. "Martin Luther, a Sketch," was reprinted in the year 1852, from a theological Encyclopaedia to which he also contributed articles on " Bossuet," and on " Duns Scotus." A pamphlet on lf Coronation by the Pope," was produced in 1853, when it was feared that Pius IX. would viii PREFACE. be induced to crown the Emperor of the French ; and de- scribed the different instances in which it had been done, and the error committed on the last occasion. From 1845 to 1847 Dr. Dollinger represented the Univer- sity of Munich in the Bavarian Chamber, where he was re- garded as one of the leaders of the Ultramontanes. Several of his speeches have been published. In the latter year he was deprived of his professorship, and consequently of his seat in the Chamber, where the ministers who had been raised to power by Lola Montez dreaded the influence of his eloquence and character. Having been elected a deputy to the National Parliament in 1848, he spoke and wrote with great effect in favour of religious liberty, and the definition of "the relations between Church and State," which was carried at Frankfort, and was afterwards nominally adopted both at Vienna and Berlin, is said to have been his work. The same spirit and the same principles which made him in religion the keenest of controversial writers, and the most earnest advocate of reforms, guided him in political life, and made him the exponent of the highest Catholic views, and the champion of ecclesiastical freedom. He regarded the oppression of the Church as the safeguard of absolutism in the State, and the faults and errors of Catholics as a fruitful source of the divisions and disputes among Christians. In his desire to reconcile religion with society, and Protestantism with Rome, Dr. Dollinger admitted no compromise, but, ac- knowledging the just claims and real progress of the modern world, and the evils that afflict the Church, he sought to dis- ' O tinguish that which is essential and true from those things with which, from ignorance or superstition, interest or unbe- lief, it had been surrounded. In the spring of 1849, he returned to Munich and was restored to his professorship, and also to his seat in the Chamber, which he, however, resigned two years later, in order to devote himself to the completion of his literary plans. Three principal works have since appeared, each complete in itselfj and superior, both in style and matter, to those by which they had been preceded. The publication of the " Philoso- PREFACE. IX phumena," by Miller, in 1851, gave rise to a prolonged dis- cussion, in which many Catholics sought to 'weaken the testi- mony of the author, whilst Protestant writers endeavoured to use his authority for the purpose of throwing discredit on the Church of Rome. In answer to both parties especially to Gieseler, Baur, Bunsen, Wordsworth, and Lenormant Dr. Dollinger published, in 1853, "Hippolytus and Callistus The Roman Church in the Third Century," perhaps, of all his writings, the one in which his ingenuity of combination, his skill as a logician, and his lofty tone in handling the interests of his Church, are most conspicuous. The classical learning shown in this work was more abundantly displayed in the introduction to the history of Christianity, which appeared in 1857, under the title of "Paganism and Judaism." In 1860 appeared a volume entitled "Christianity and the Church in the period of their Foundation," which is the author's masterpiece. It is understood to be Dr. Dollinger' s intention to continue this work down to the present time. The newspapers have also announced a volume on the thirteenth century, and a rumour has long circulated that a work on the Mediaeval Heresies, founded on very extensive researches in Rome, Florence, Paris, and Bologna, was in preparation. These labours were inter- rupted by the course of events which called forth the present volume. Of the value to be attached to this work, it would not be becoming in the Translator to express an opinion ; but a few words he cannot refrain from adding with reference to the spirit in which the translation has been executed. In our Courts of Justice, when a witness speaking a foreign language is called upon to give his evidence, there is at the same time sworn an interpreter, to whom an oath to the following effect is administered : " You shall well and truly interpret to the Court and Jury, and to the best of your skill and knowledge, the evi- dence of the Witness in this Cause." When undertaking to convey to English readers the opinions and statements of the most distinguished of living X PREFACE. German scholars and writers, upon topics of paramount interest, the translator felt himself under an obligation some- what similar to that which binds the sworn interpreter. He has, " to the best of his skill and knowledge," given as close an English representation of Dr. Dollinger's German words as the genius of the two languages would permit. In accordance with such a desire, he has adopted, verbatim, or, with only a few alterations, passages of Dr. Dollinger's work, which he found translated in " The Eambler," vol. vi., part 16. The Author has, in the second part of this book " The P>apacy and the Papal States " made frequent reference to the favoured bureaucratic class in Rome, the "Prelatura." A literal translation of the word " Pralaten " into English, as " Prelates," might lead to a gross misapprehension. In England, Ireland, and Scotland, the universal signification given to the word " prelate," corresponds precisely with Johnson's definition of it "an Ecclesiastic of the highest order and dignity." Our "Prelates" are either archbishops or bishops ; but it will be seen by the annexed account given of the Roman " Prelates," that they are far different, in every respect, from members of the Episcopal order. " The ' Prelatura,' " (observes Mr. Lyons, in his letter to the Marquis of Normanby, No. xxxi.,) "is essentially an Ecclesiastical Body : its members, whether they actually take orders or not, are looked upon as belonging to the clergy. They wear the ecclesiastical habit ; they are ex- pected to act, think, and speak as Churchmen. They form a body apart from the rest of the community. They have ecclesiastical privileges. It is true that they have not all of them irrevocably taken a vow of celibacy ; nay, I believe there are even some rare instances of prelates actually married. But if a prelate marry, his career is almost inevitably closed his hopes of high office and of the cardinalates are at an end."* To prevent misunderstanding, whenever this class of * Despatches from Mr. Lyons, respecting the condition and adminis- tration of the Papal States. London, 1860, p. 50. PREFACE. xi officials is referred to in the following pages, they will be found designated with the name by which they are known in Rome, that is, as " Prelati" W. B. M. MILL HILL LODGE, HASTINGS. April, 1862. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION 1 PART I. THE CHURCH AND THE NATIONS 20 THE PAPACY .37 THE CHURCH AND CIVIL FREEDOM .... 82 THE CHURCHES WITHOUT THE PAPACY A PANO- RAMIC SURVEY 122 THE CHURCH OF THE PATRIARCHATE OF CONSTAN- TINOPLE 122 THE RUSSIAN CHURCH 130 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND AND THE DISSENTERS . 143 THE ENGLISH DISSENTING SECTS 173 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 186 THE CHURCHES IN HOLLAND 197 PROTESTANT CHURCHES IN FRANCE .... 204 THE PROTESTANT CHURCHES IN SWITZERLAND . . 212 PROTESTANT DENOMINATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA . 219 XIV CONTENTS. THE LUTHERAN CHURCH IN SCANDINAVIAN COUNTRIES . 250 THE PROTESTANT CHURCHES IN GERMANY . . 267 PAET II. THE POPE AND THE STATES OF THE CHURCH TO THE TIME OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION . .336 INTERNAL, CONDITION OF THE PAPAL STATES PREVIOUS TO 1789 . . . 360 THE PAPAL STATES FROM 1814 TO 1846 . . .374 Pius IX. 1846-1861 . . . ... .408 APPENDIX. THE AUTHOR'S Two LECTURES ON THE PAPACY AND THE PAPAL STATES . . . 456 THE CHURCH AND THE CHURCHES. INTRODUCTION. THIS work has arisen out of two lectures which were delivered in the month of April of the present year. I feel myself bound to explain how I came to speak, before a very mixed auditory, upon the most difficult and complicated question of our time ; and that, too, in a manner decidedly different from what is usually adopted. I had at first determined, when the request to deliver some lectures reached me, simply to speak of the present state of religion in general, with a com- prehensive view extending over all mankind. It happened, however, that by those very circles (from which the impulse to the delivery of the lectures had come) the question was frequently put to me " How was the position of the Papal See the partly consummated, partly threatened loss of its temporal sovereignty to be explained 1 ?" "What" I was repeatedly asked " what was one to say in reply to those non-churchmen who pointed, with triumphant scorn, to the numerous episcopal manifestoes in which the States of the Church are declared essential and necessary to her existence, even though the events of the last thirty years appear with unerring distinctness to announce their downfall?" I had, too, in newspapers, periodicals, and books, fre- B Z INTRODUCTION. quently found the hope expressed, that with the downfall of the temporal sovereignty of the Pope, the Church itself would not escape the doom of dissolution. At the same time, I was struck by finding, in the Memoirs of Chateaubriand, this expression of Cardinal Bernetti, Secretary of State to Leo XII.: "That if he lived a long time, there was the prospect before him of yet beholding the fall of the temporal power of the Papacy." 1 I had also read in the commu- nication of a Paris correspondent, whose name has been mentioned to me as that of a well-informed and trustworthy person, " that the Archbishop of Rheims, on his return from Rome, had recounted what Pope Pius had said to him : ' I yield to no illusions ; the temporal power must fall. Goyon will abandon me ; I shall then disband my remaining troops. I shall, as the King enters, excommunicate him, and calmly await my death.' " 2 I already believed, in April, I could perceive that which is still more plainly exhibited in October, that the enemies of the temporal Papal-Sovereignty are resolute, united, predo- minant, and that nowhere is there to be found a protecting power which possesses at the same time the will and the ability of averting the catastrophe. I considered it, there- fore, probable that an interruption of the temporal dominion would ensue an interruption which, like to others that had preceded it, would again cease, and be followed by a restora- tion. I resolved, therefore, to avail myself of the opportunity which the lectures afforded me to prepare the public for those coming events the shadows of which had been cast into the present time, and thus to prevent the scandals, the doubts, and the oftence which must inevitably arise if the States of the Church should pass into other hands, although episcopal pastorals had hitherto energetically asserted that they be- longed to the integrity of the Church. I meant, therefore, to say : That the Church can exist by and for herself, and that she did exist for seven centuries without the territorial 1 " Memoires d'Outretombe," viii. 136. Ed. de Berlin. 2 Such is the statement in the London Catholic weekly journal, the Weekly Register, March 2, 1861, p. 4. INTRODUCTION. 3 possessions of the Popes ; but that at a later period this pro- perty, through the condition of the world, became necessary, and, in spite of great changes and vicissitude?, has discharged in most cases its function of serving as a foundation for the independence and freedom of the Popes. As long as the present state and arrangement of Europe endures, we can discover no other means to secure to the Papal See its free- dom, and, through it, general confidence. But God's know- ledge and power reach further than ours, and we must not presume to set bounds to the Divine Wisdom and Omnipo- tence, and cry out to it " This way, and not otherwise." Should, however, the event which now threatens to occur actually take place, and the Pope be despoiled of his landed possessions, one of three eventualities will assuredly come to pass : Either the loss of the Papal States is only temporary, and the territory will revert, after some intervening casualties, in its entirety or in part, to its rightful sovereign ; or Provi- dence will bring about, by ways unknown to us, and com- binations which we cannot divine, a state of things in which the object namely, the independence and free action of the Papal See, without those means which have hitherto sufficed for it ; or, lastly, we are approaching great catastrophes in Europe a collapse of the whole edifice of existing social order events of which the downfall of the Papal States is only the precursor, or, as it may be said, "the Job's- messenger." I have developed, in this book, the grounds upon which I think of these three possibilities, the first the most probable. As to the second possibility, there is nothing" to be said but this that it is an unknown, and consequently indescribable =x it is only good for this much : we must retain it against certain over-confident assertions, which profess to know the secret things to come, and trespassing on the Divine Domain, wish to subject the Future absolutely to the laws of the immediate Past. That the third possibility must also be ad- mitted, few of those who studiously observe the signs of the times will dispute. One of the shrewdest historians and statesmen, Niebuhr, had, so long ago as the 5th October, B2 4 INTRODUCTION. 1830, written these words: "If God does not marvellously help, there is impending over us a destruction such as occurred to the Roman world in the middle of the third century the annihilation of prosperity, freedom, civilization, and literature." And we have proceeded much further on the inclined plane since then. The Powers of Europe have overturned, or permitted to be overturned, the two main pillars of their edifice the principles of Legitimacy and public international Law. Those monarchs who have made themselves, like to slaves, the tools of revolution, are now active performers in the world's historical drama the others conduct themselves as quiet spectators, and are, in their hopes, smiling heirs, like Prussia and Russia; or they are bestowing applause and giving help, like England ; or they are as passive invalids, like Austria, or the hectic-fever- stricken Turkey. But the Revolution is a permanent chronic disease, breaking out now in one place, now in another, and then attacking several members at the same time. The Pentarchy is dissolved ; the Holy Alliance, even though a defective and misused form of European political order, is buried. The right of the strongest alone now prevails in Europe. Is it a process of renovation, or a process of dissolution, in which European society is plunged ? I still believe it to be the former; but I must, as I have said, admit the possibility of the other alternative. If it occurs then, when the powers of destruction have done their work, it will be the business of the Church at once to co-operate actively in the reconstruction of social order out of the ruins, both as a connecting civilizing power and as the preserver and dispenser of moral and religious tradition. And for this, too, the Papacy has, with or without territory, its own function and its own mission. Such, then, were the ideas from which I started ; and it may be supposed that my language concerning the immediate fate of the temporal power of the Pope necessarily sounded ambiguous that I could not, with the confidence that is given to others, perhaps more keen-sighted men come before rny auditors, and say : " Rely upon this the States INTRODUCTION. 5 of the Church the land from Radicofani to Caperano, from Ravenna to Civita Vecchia, shall and must and will remain with the Popes heaven and earth shall pass away, before the States of the Church pass away ! " I could not do this, because I had not then any such conviction, nor do I now, in the slightest degree, entertain it ; but of this I am alone confident, that the Papal See will not be permanently deprived of the conditions necessary for the fulfilment of its mission. Hence, the substance of my words was this, " Let no one lose faith in the Church, if the temporal principality of the Papacy should disappear, whether it be for a season, or for ever. It is not essence, but accident ; not end, but means ; it began late ; it was formerly something quite different from what it is now. It now justly appears to us to be indispensable ; and so long as the existing order lasts in Europe, it must, at all cost, be maintained ; or, if it is violently interrupted, it must be restored. But it is possible to suppose a political condition of Europe in which it would be superfluous, and then it would be only a clogging burden." At the same time, I wished to defend Pope Pius IX., and his government, against numerous accusations, and to show that the inward infirmities and deficiences which undeniably exist in the country, and through which the State has been reduced to such an astounding condition of weakness and helplessness, are not attributable to him ; that, on the con- trary, he has, both before and since 1848, shewn the best will to reform; and that, actually by him, and under him, many things are now much better than they had been. The reports in the newspapers, written out at home from memory, gave but an inaccurate representation of a discourse which did not attempt to cut the knot in the usual way, but which, with buts and ifs, and referring to certain elements to critical and decisive events, for the most part left out of the calculation alluded to an uncertain future and manifold contingencies. This was unavoidable. Every report, not absolutely verbal, must, despite of the best intentions of the reporter, give rise to a distorted apprehension. When, therefore, one of the most widely circulated journals reported 6 INTRODUCTION. the first lecture, without any intentional falsification, but with omissions, which altered the sense and tendency of my words, 1 immediately proposed to the editor to print my manuscript ; but this was declined. In other reports of the daily organs I was often unable to recognize my own ideas ; whilst expressions were put into my mouth to which I was altogether a stranger. And here I will admit that, when I gave the lectures, I did not think that they would be discussed by the press ; but I expected that, like others of the same kind, they would at most be mentioned in a couple of words, in futuram ollivionem. Of the controversy which sprang up at once in separate works, and in newspaper articles in Germany, France, England, Italy, and even in America I shall not speak. Much of it I have not read the writers often did not even ask themselves whether the report which accident put into their hands, and which they carelessly adopted, was at all accurate. But I must refer to an account in one of the most widely read of English periodicals, because I am there brought into a society to which I do not belong. In the July number of the Edinburgh Review, there is an article, written, as it is reported, by Mr. H. Cartwright, and entitled " Church Reformation in Italy." The author first analyses Rosmini's treatise, " Le cinque piaghe della chiesa ;" he then speaks of what is congenial to it, of the existing change of circumstances in Italy favourable to the views of Rosmini, of the Dominican of St. Mark in Florence, of the Capuchins, of a writing by the Oratorian Capecelatro of Naples, which takes an unfavourable view of the Temporal Sovereignty of the Pope and then, misapprehending the tendency of my expressions, and under the erroneous notion that I had already published an apology of my ortho- doxy, he appeals to me and then comes a detailed descrip- tion of the sentiments and sufferings of Passaglia and Tosti. A sharp attack upon me in the Dublin Review I know only from extracts in the English papers, but I can see, from the vehemence with which the writer pronounces himself against "liberal" institutions, that, even after the appear- INTRODUCTION. 7 ance of this book, I cannot reckon on coming to an under- standing with him. Upon this matter every one now can judge for himself. To fulfil a promise that I had given, I have had both lectures printed as an appendix, just as they were origi- nally composed, merely omitting the introduction, it not touching upon the general Church and State question, and being nothing more than casual reflections. As a matter of course, in revision, many things that were introduced extem- pore are left out, although not in the slightest degree at variance with the sense of what is here published. The excitement which was caused by my lectures, or rather by the reports of them in the daily press, had this advantage, that it brought to light, in a way which to many was unexpected, in what wide circles, how deeply and how firmly rooted is the attachment of the people to the See of St. Peter. For the sake of this, I was glad to accept all the attacks and animosity which fell on me in consequence. But wherefore it will be asked, and I have been asked innumer- able times wherefore not cut short misunderstandings by the immediate publication of the lectures, which must, as a whole, have been written previous to delivery? Why wait for five months ? For this I had two reasons. First, it was not merely a question of misunderstanding. Much of what I had actually said had made an unpleasant impression in many quarters, especially among our optimists. 1 should, therefore, with my bare statements, have become involved in an agitating newspaper and pamphlet squabble, and that was not an attractive prospect. My second reason was I expected that the further development of circumstances in Italy, the irresistible logic of facts, would dispose many minds to receive certain truths. I hoped that people would learn by degrees, in the school of events, that it is not enough always to be reckoning with the figures " Revolution," " Secret Societies," " Mazziniism," " Atheism," or to esti- mate things only by the standard supplied in " The Jew of Verona," but that other factors must be admitted into the calculation ; for instance the condition of the Italian clergy, 8 INTRODUCTION. and their position towards the laity. I wished, therefore, to let a few months pass away, previous to my appearing before the public. Whether I calculated rightly, the recep- tion of this book will show. I thoroughly understand those who think it censurable that I should have spoken in detail of circumstances and facts that are willingly ignored, or that are skipped over with a light and fleeting foot, and that, too, especially at the present crisis. I myself was restrained for two years by these considerations, in spite of the feeling that urged me to speak on the question of the Papal States ; and it required the circumstances I have described, I may almost say, to compel me to speak publicly on the subject. I beg, then, of those persons to reflect on the following points. First, when an author openly exposes a state of things already abun- dantly discussed in the press ; if he draws away the necessarily very transparent covering from the gaping wounds which are not in the Church herself, but on an Institution nearly connected with her, and whose infirmities she is made to feel it may fairly be supposed that he does it, in accordance with the example of earlier friends, and great men of the Church, only to show the possibility and necessity of the cure, in order, so far as in him lies, to weaken the reproach that the defenders of the Church see only " the mote " in the eyes of others, not " the beam " in their own ; and, with narrow-hearted prejudice, endeavour to soften, or to dissimulate, or to deny every fact which is, or which appears to be, un- favourable to their cause. He does it in order that it may be understood that where the impotency of man to effect a cure becomes manifest, God interposes, in order to sift on His threshing-floor the chaff from the wheat, and to consume it with the fire-glow of catastrophes which are only His judgments and His remedies. Secondly, I could not, as an historian, present results without going back to their causes ; and it was, therefore, my duty, as it is that of every religious inquirer and observer, to try and contribute some- thing to the Theodicea. He that undertakes to write on such lofty interests, which nearly affect the weal and woe INTRODUCTION. 9 of the Church, cannot avoid examining and displaying the wisdom and justice of God in the conduct of terrestrial events. The fate which has overtaken the States of the Church must, before all things, be considered in the light of a Divine Ordinance for the advantage of the Church. So considered, it presents itself as a trial which will endure until the object is attained, and the welfare of the Church, so far, secured. It seemed evident to me that, as a new order of things in Europe lies in the design of Providence, so the disease through which, for the last half century, the States of the Church unquestionably have passed, might be the transition to a new form. To describe this malady, without overlooking or concealing any of the symptoms, was, therefore, an undertaking I could not avoid. The disease has its source in the inward contradiction and discord of institutions and of circumstances ; for the modern French institutions stand there in close and constant contact with a mediaeval hierarchy; and neither of these two elements is strong enough to expel the other; and either of them would, if it were the sole predominant power, be in itself a form of disease. Yet, in the history of the last few years, I recognise symptoms of convalescence, however feeble, obscure, and equivocal its traces may appear. What we behold is not death or hopeless decay; it is a purifying process painful, consuming, and penetrating bone and marrow such as God is wont to inflict uponvHis chosen persons and institutions. There is no lack of dross, and time is required before the gold can come pure out of the furnace. In the course of this process, it may happen that the territorial dominion will be interrupted that the State may be broken up, or pass into other hands ; but it will revive, though, perhaps, in another form, and with a different kind of government. In a word, sanabilibus laboramus mails ; that is what I wished to show, and that, 1 believe, I have shown. Now, and for the last forty years, the condition of the States of the Churth is the heel of Achilles to the Catholic Church ; the standing reproach with opponents in every part 10 INTRODUCTION. of the world in America as in Europe ; and a stumbling- block for numbers. Not as though the objections which are founded on the fact of this transitory disturbance and discord in the social sphere possessed any weight in a theological point of view. But still it is not to be denied that they are of incalculable influence on the disposition of the whole world external to the Church. Whenever a state of disease has appeared in the Church, there has been but one method of cure that of an awakened, renovated, healthy consciousness ; and of an enlightened public opinion in the Church. The very best will on the part of ecclesiastical rulers and heads has not been able to effect a cure, unless sustained by the general sense and conviction of the clergy and of the laity. The healing of the great malady of the sixteenth century, the true internal reformation of the Church, only became possible when people ceased to disguise or to deny the evil, and to pass it by in silence and with concealment ; and when so powerful and irresistible a public opinion had formed itself in the Church, that its commanding influence could no longer be evaded. At the present day, what we want, before all things, is the truth the whole truth not merely the acknowledgment that the Temporal Power of the Pope is required by the Church for that is obvious to everybody, at least out of Italy ; and everything has been said about it that can be said but what there must be also is an acknowledgment upon what condi- tions this power is possible for the future. The history of the Popes is full of examples, shewing how their best intentions remained unaccomplished, and how their most firm resolutions had been baffled, because persons in inferior circles were adverse to them, and because the interests of a firmly -com- pacted class, like an impenetrable hedge of thorns, resisted them. Adrian VI. was fully resolved to set about a reformation in earnest; and yet he achieved virtually nothing; and felt himself, though in possession of supreme power, utterly impotent when he came into contact with the passive resistance of all those who should have served as instruments in the work. Only when public opinion even in Italy, and in INTRODUCTION. 1 1 Rome itself had been awakened, purified, and strengthened; and when the cry for reform resounded imperatively on every side, then only was it possible for the Popes to overcome resistance in the inferior spheres, and gradually, and step by step, to open the way for a more healthy state. May, therefore, a powerful, salubrious, unanimous public opinion in Catholic Europe come to the aid of Pius IX.! Here I must justify myself upon one point. Fault has been found with me that I have appealed to the " Reports" of Mr. Lyons, which had been printed by order of the English Parliament. English "Reports," it is said, are undisguisedly partial and unreliable. I have referred to them in proof that the Pope, with the best-intended reforms, was not in a position to content his dissatisfied subjects ; and that every concession made by him was instantly perverted into an instrument for undermining his government. Now, the Count de Montalembert made use of the same " Reports " in his celebrated second Letter to Count Cavour ; and he did so with this remark : " M. Lyons le seul diplomate lionnete que FAngleterre ait envoyd en Italie" 1 subscribe to this eulogy ; but, remembering Lord Normanby and Mr. Sheil, of whom my friend did not think in writing, I would strike out the word " seul." Concerning another part of this book, I have still a few words to say. I have given a survey of all the churches and ecclesiastical communities now existing. The necessity of attempting this task presented itself to me, because I had to make clear both the universal importance of the Papacy as a world-power, and the things that it actually performs. This could not be done fully without exhibiting the internal condition of the churches which have rejected it, and with- drawn from its influence. It is true that the plan increased under my hands, and I endeavoured to give as clear a picture as possible of the development which has accomplished itself in the separated churches since the Reformation; and, through it, in consequence of the views and principles which then had been once for all adopted. I have, therefore, admitted into my description no feature which is not, according to my 12 INTRODUCTION. conviction, an effect, a result, however remote, of those principles and doctrines. There is doubtless room for discussion in detail upon this point, and there will unavoidably be a decided opposition to this book, if it should be noticed beyond the limits of the Church to which I belong. I hope that there also the justice will be done me of believing that I was far from having any intention of offending ; that 1 have only said what must be said, if we would go to the bottom of these questions ; that I had to do with institutions which, because of the dogmas and principles from which they spring, must, like a tree that is nailed to a wall, remain in one position, however unnatural it may be. I am quite ready to admit that, on the opposite side, men are often better than the system to which they are, or deem themselves, attached; and that, on the contrary, in the Church, individuals are, on the average, inferior in theory and in practice to the system under which they live. And here is the proper place for me briefly to explain myself with reference to the Erfurt Conference, and the hopes connected with it, and especially as regards the relative positions of the Confessions (different creeds or religions) in Germany. I believe I am the more bound to do this, because some expressions of mine addressed in a letter to a friend, and bearing upon this subject, have been printed, although my name was not published. The following points may, perhaps, contribute in throwing some light upon the state of affairs: 1. The re-union of the Catholic and Protestant Confessions in Germany would, if it were now, or a short time hence, effected, be, in a religious, political, and social sense, a most salutary circumstance, both for Germany and Europe. 2. There is not the smallest probability that this union can be immediately carried into effect. 3. It is not possible at present, first, because the greater, more active, and more influential portion of German Pro- testants do not desire it, for political or religious reasons, in any form, or under any practicable conditions. 4. It is impossible, secondly, because negotiations con- INTRODUCTION. . 13 cerning the mode and the conditions of Union can no longer be carried on. For this purpose plenipotentiaries on both sides are required ; and these only the Catholic Church is able to appoint, by virtue of her ecclesiastical organization not so the Protestants. Upon that side there is now no common basis, no one single starting-point (not even the Augsburg Confession), and every decree, and every dog- matic canon is underlaid with principles evoking the veto of individuals, as well as of entire Schools and Parties. 5. The Catholic Church could, without the slightest difficulty, enter into a negotiation with the separated Greek and Russian Churches in reference to a re-union ; and this negotiation, if not opposed by foreign interests, and the stolid ignorance of the clergy and people of those churches, might hold out a hope of the most favourable results. There, both parties stand on the same ground, in so far as they have both taken the same views as to the Church, its authority, and its uninterrupted continuity. This view is wanting on the Protestant side, and with it fails a common basis, without which, negotiations and attempts at coining to a common understanding are not possible. Isolated points are not here to be taken into consideration. 6. To take the Holy Scriptures as a common basis, upon which Catholics and Protestants should make the attempt to come to an understanding would be purely illusory ; for, Primarily, so long as there have been Christians they never by such means came to be unanimous. A striking example of this is the dispute upon the Eucharistal conse- cration between the Lutherans and Reformers (Calvinists), which after countless colloquies, and thousands of books published for three hundred years has never progressed a single step. Secondly, the great advances that have undoubtedly been made, within the last thirty years, in expositions of the Bible, have in no way produced, on the Protestant side, a larger amount of faith or unity in doctrine so far from that, the very contrary is perceivable. 14 INTRODUCTION. 7. Nevertheless, Protestants and Catholics have, theo- logically, come nearer to each other ; for that main doctrine those " articles with which the Church was to stand or fall," and for the sake of which the Reformers declared separation from the Catholic Church to be necessary, are now confuted and given up by Protestant theology, or are retained only nominally, whilst other notions are connected with the words. 8. The Augsburg Confession is not only "the fundamental creed of the Reformation," but it is also the only one which the great majority of Christ-believing Protestants now ac- knowledge. Were this acknowledgment based upon a perfectly serious, clear recognition and right understanding of what it contains, then would the union of the separated Churches be proportionably attainable. " But," as Heinrich Leo 1 has lately observed, " everyone has this Confession in his mouth, but there is scarcely one who knows what it is, and no one seeks to embrace it in its original meaning. It is declared to be the corner-stone of Protestantism, and great festivals have been celebrated in its honour; it is yearly lauded in every Protestant School, and scarcely one individual knows what is contained in it." 9. The Augsburg Confession, in its seventh article, declares, "that there is, and must continue to be at all times, one holy Catholic Church, which is an assembly of all the faithful, and by which the pure Gospel is preached, and the holy sacraments, in accordance with the Gospel, ad- ministered." If language has not been invented for the purpose of concealing men's thoughts, then this is affirming that, before the birth of the Protestant doctrine, there was already in existence a church, " one," " holy," with " pure doctrine," and "real sacraments." Can there be along with " one holy Church " also a second and a third ? Has the Church, which in the year 1517 was still "one," "holy," suddenly ceased to be, because since then new Associations, by separating from her, have arisen which Associations instantly began to accuse her of false teaching, and of 1 " Xeue Preuss. Ztg.," 26th September. INTRODUCTION. 15 having untrue sacraments : without there being, according to the Separatists' own avowal, any essential changes in her? Could the authors of, and subscribers to, this article have so understood its signification, that the "one holy Church" was to consist of an undefined number of churchmen, sepa- rated in doctrine, sacraments, order, and mutually accusing one another of vital errors? Can the authority or sym- bolical value of the Augsburg Confession be seriously spoken of when this weighty and conclusive article is treated as non- existent, and when science ignores, or strongly disputes, or gives to it a directly contrary signification ? An affirmative logical answer to these questions is an indispensable pre- liminary to every Confessional understanding, and this, too, it must, moreover, be in the interest of all laymen who are struggling after religious purity and certainty. 10. So far as one can judge from literature, there appears to be the wish amongst theologians and clergymen on the Protestant side, that there should be a union amongst the Germans, now separated by religious distinctions. How it is to be effected some do not show some put it in the form of a request that the Catholics should at once turn Protestants whilst with others there is manifested the inclination, with a complete dimness as to the ways and the mode. Seldom, at least, has the author, in real life, met with a religious- minded Protestant layman who did not feel a desire for this union, and who also, for the most part, entertained the opinion that the time for it is come, as the duration of the separation has done much more evil than good. 11. Protestant theology is, at the present day, less hostile, so to speak, than the theologians. For whilst theology has levelled the strongest bulwarks and doctrinal barriers which the Reformation had set up to confirm the separation the theologians, instead of viewing favorably the consequent facilities for union, often labour, on the contrary, to conceal the fact, or to create new points of difference. Many of them may participate in the opinion of Stahl of Berlin, who, shortly before his death, said, " Far from allowing that the breach of the sixteenth century can be healed, we ought, if 16 INTRODUCTION. it had not already occurred, to make it now." 1 This, however, will not continue, and a future generation perhaps even that which is now growing up will rather adopt the recent declaration of Heinrich Leo : " In the Roman Catholic Church a process of purification has taken place since Luther's time; and if the Church had been in the days of Luther what the Roman Catholic Church in Germany is at present, it would never have occurred to him to assert his opposition so energetically as to bring about a separation." 2 Those who think thus will then be the right men and the chosen instruments for the acceptable work of the reconciliation of the Churches, and of the true unity of Germany. 12. Upon the day when, on both sides, the conviction shall arise, vivid and strong, that Christ really desires the unity of His Church, that the division of Christendom, the multiplicity of Churches, is displeasing to God that he who helps to prolong this situation must answer for it to the Lord on that day four-fifths of the traditional polemics of Protestants against the Catholic Church will, with one blow, be cast aside, like chaff and rubbish ; for four-fifths of it consists of misunderstandings, logomachies, and wilful falsifications ; or relate to personal, and therefore accidental, things, which are utterly insignificant, where only principles and dogmas are at stake. 13. On that day, also, much will be changed on the Catholic side. Thenceforward the personal character of Luther and of the Reformers will be no more dragged forward in the pulpit. The clergy, mindful of the words, " Interficite errores, diligite homines," will ever conduct them- selves towards members of other Churches in conformity with the rules of charity, and will therefore assume, in all cases where there are no clear proofs to the contrary, the bona fides of opponents. 3 They will never forget that no man is convinced 1 Address at the opening of the Berlin Pastoral Conference, in the " Evang. Kirchen-Ztg.," June, 1861, p. 564. 2 " N. Preuss. Ztg.," 27th September. 1 After the example of one of the best prelates of our time, Cardinal INTRODUCTION. 17 and won over by bitter words and violent attacks, but that everyone is rather repelled by them. Warned by the words of the Epistle to the Romans (xiv., 13), they will be more careful than heretofore to give to their separated brethren no scandal, no grounds of accusation against the Church. In popular instruction and in religious life they will accord- ingly make the great truths of salvation the centre of all their teaching : they will not treat secondary things in life and doctrine as though they were of the first importance, but, on the contrary, they will keep alive in the people the con- sciousness that such things are but means to an end, and are only of inferior consequence and subsidiary value. 14. Until that day shall dawn upon Germany, it is our duty as Catholics, in the words of Cardinal Diepenbrock, " to bear the religious separation in a spirit of penance, for guilt incurred in common." We must acknowledge that here also God has caused much good, as well as much evil, to proceed from the errors of men, from the contests and passions of the sixteenth century ; we must, too, admit that the anxiety of the German nation to see the intolerable abuses and scandals in the Church removed was fully justified ; and that it sprang from the better qualities of our people, and from their moral indignation at the desecration and corruption of holy things, which were degraded to selfish and hypocritical purposes. We do not refuse to admit that the great separation, and the storms and sufferings connected with it, were an awful judgment upon Catholic Christendom, which clergy and laity had but too well deserved a judgment which has had an improving and salutary effect. The great intellectual conflict has purified the European atmosphere, has impelled the human mind on to new courses, and has promoted a rich, scientific, and literary life. Protestant theology, with its de Cheverus, who, when he was Bishop of Boston in America, declared, from his intercourse with Protestants, converted by him to the Catholic faith : " Que plusieurs Protestans pouvaient etre dans la bonne foi ou ignorance invincible qui excuse 1'erreur devant Dieu. II en conclut qu'il falloit etre tres indulgent pour ceux qui se trompent, et tres reserve a les condainner." Vie du Cardinal de Cheverus, 2d edit., p. 140. C 18 INTRODUCTION. restless spirit of inquiry, has gone along by the side of the Catholic, exciting and awakening, warning and vivifying ; whilst every exalted Catholic theologian will readily admit that he owes much to the writings of Protestant scholars. 15. We have also to acknowledge that in the Church the rust of abuses, and of a mechanical superstition, is always forming afresh ; that the servants of the Church sometimes, through indolence and incapacity, and the people through ignorance, brutify the spiritual in religion, and so degrade and deform and misemploy it to their own injury. The right reforming spirit must therefore never depart from the Church, but, on the contrary, must periodically break out with renovating strength, and penetrate the conscience and the will of the clergy. In this sense we do not refuse to admit the justice of a call to penance, when it proceeds from those who are not of us, that is, of a warning carefully to examine our religious life and pastoral conduct, and to remedy what is found defective. 16. And yet it never must be forgotten that the separa- tion did not ensue in consequence of abuses in the Church. For the duty and necessity of removing those abuses has always been recognised ; and only the difficulty of the thing, the not always unjustifiable fear lest " the wheat" should be pulled up with " the tares," prevented, for a time, the refor- mation which was accomplished in the Church, and through her. Separation on account of mere abuses in ecclesiastical life, when the doctrine is the same, is rejected as criminal by the Protestant Church, as well as by us. It was therefore for the sake of doctrine that the separation occurred ; and the general discontent of the people, the weakening of eccle- siastical authority by the existence of abuses, only facilitated the adoption of the new doctrines. But now, upon the one side, some of these defects and evils in the life of the Church have disappeared, and more have greatly diminished since the reforming movement. And, on the other side, the prin- cipal doctrines for which men separated, and on the truth of which, and their necessity for salvation, the right and duty of secession had been based, are given up by Protestant INTRODUCTION. 19 science, deprived of their Scriptural basis by exegesis, or, at least, made very uncertain by the opposition of the most eminent Protestant theologians. 17. Meanwhile, we live in hope; comforting ourselves with the conviction that history, or that process of development in Europe which is being accomplished before our eyes (as well in society and politics as in religion), is the powerful ally of the friends of ecclesiastical union ; and we hold out our hands to Christians on the other side, for a combined war of resistance against the destructive movements of the age. For this to use the words of Von Radowitz is the state of affairs : " We plainly perceive that the minds of men are ranging themselves under two banners upon one of which is inscribed the name of ' Christ, the Son of God ;' and beneath the other are incorporated all to whom That Name is Foolishness and a Reproach." Munich, 12th October, 1861. C2 20 THE CHURCH AND THE NATIONS. IN all time, antecedent to Christ, there were none other than National and State religions. The populations had each their own divinities, and their peculiar form of worship. Their religions essentially contributed to keep the peoples more widely apart and more distinctly separated from one another. One nation might derive its divinities and take its form of worship from another; but a religious bond, embracing both, and drawing them closer together, was not thereby formed. The Christian religion, whose very existence from the beginning rested upon the disruption of Jewish national-religious individuality, was the first that appeared amongst mankind with a claim to Catholicity. It declared itself to be a universal religion ; one that did not belong to any people in particular, but, on the contrary, whose calling and innate qualification were to extend itself over the surface of the globe ; to receive into its bosom every variety of population ; to satisfy their real religious wants, and, regard- less of national or geographical boundaries, to establish a great kingdom of God on earth to found a Church for humanity ! The Roman Empire, through whose means the political, lingual, and conventional boundaries and bulwarks of con- quered nations had been broken down and levelled, had thus prepared the way, and smoothened a path for the Christian Church. And then, after a battle of three hundred years UNITY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 21 a battle in which there were suffering and confession on the one side, of persecution and of slaughter on the other this empire was conquered by the Church, which had, at the same time, through the three principal languages of the period the Greek, Latin, and Syrian produced a triple literature, extended itself far beyond the limits of the Roman boundaries, penetrated far into Persia, and travelled away to the North, and amongst the German nations. The central point of Church life was Rome the world-city " the sink of nations" where Egyptians, Syrians, Asiatics, Armenians, Greeks, Jews, Gauls, Spaniards, met and mixed together were mutually attracted towards one another, or repelled. Next to Rome, Alexandria the great emporium of commerce, the seat of Greek and Oriental science and literature served to nurture and develope the cosmopolitan character of Chris- tianity. And so was the Church nationally colourless. No one could then, or at any subsequent period, ever affirm that any one nation more than another had impressed the stamp of individuality upon the Church. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire the Church became the instructress and the foster-mother of new States. In its bosom were developed the ruling nationalities of the West, and all were penetrated with the consciousness of forming one mighty Christian folk- family; a European commonwealth, under the spiritual supremacy of the Papal See, and the temporal headship of the newly created Roman-Germanic Imperial Power. If France was proud to be called " the first-born son of the Church," it thereby recognized the fraternal relations in which it stood as regarded the other sons of the one mighty mother that is, to the people and states of the South, the North, and the East. Wars between brothers could be no more than a transitory phenomenon ; whilst a permanent state of hostilities between members of the same great family was in reality to be no longer conceivable. The Church Councils were also national Congresses. If a heathen people became Christian, and began to mould its customs, both socially and politically, in accordance with the Christian 22 NATIONAL RE-ACTION. model, its chief or duke was raised to the kingly dignity by the Pope, was solemnly consecrated and crowned by the Church, and the people were enrolled as members of the Christian folk-family, as the equals of all in birth, and like to the rest in their rights. In this manner was a problem solved, and a thought realised, which would have been declared by both Greeks and Romans to be alike absurd and impossible ; that is a multi- tude of nationalities, through a community in faith, and of reli- gious worship, as well as by the bonds of an all-embracing ecclesiastical organization, united into one great whole. That there should not be wanting a vigorous reaction on the part of particular nationalities was a thing to be expected. The long and sanguinary persecution which was carried on amongst the Persians, under the kings of the Sassanides dynasty, was a reaction of this description. The new strange religion was hated and feared as being " un-Persian," as an intrusive " Roman-Empire religion," as coming to them from the territory of their hereditary foe ; and hence they wished to exterminate its confessors, as men who had, at the same time, abandoned the national religion of Persia, and with their religion Persian patriotism ! An element of nationality speedily mixed itself up with the schism of the Donatists. The separation from the Church, and its central point at Rome, which was effected in North Africa, although it was an act repudiated by all the rest of the Christian world, was, in point of fact, an outburst of the North African spirit of nationality, which sought to establish for itself its own thoroughly pure national Church, in opposi- tion to all others, which were assumed to have become corrupt and decayed. In the same manner was Egyptian nationality urged to take a part, ever since the fifth century, in the great Christological battle of the Monophysite doc- trine, that brought it to its having its own national Coptic Church, which still remains separated from the Catholic world, and the fragments of which, in a truly lamentable condition, subsist to the present day. In Armenia like causes produced like effects. BYZANTINISM. 23 At a later period that is, since the twelfth century the separation and isolation of the Church of the Byzantine Empire has been gradually completed. Two Powers ruled there, to whom a union with the Universal Church, and with Rome, was incommodious, because with that union were conjoined dependence and restraint : these two Powers were the Emperor, and the Patriarch at Constantinople. 1 The latter (the Patriarch) sought to extend his spiritual dominion so as that it might be an absolute despotism over every inhabitant of the empire. The Emperor, for his part, wished to have in his hands the Church, and the Patriarch espe- cially, as a useable political tool at his uncontrolled disposal. Under such circumstances was developed Byzantinism, that is, the national political spirit of the Greek Empire, and whose two factors were the absolutism of Imperialism over the State and the Church ; and ignorance, combined with the arrogant self-exultation of the people. The Byzantines re- garded their emperor as the successor of the old Roman Caesars. Each Greek emperor was a new Constantine, entitled to reign over the East and the West to the utmost limits to which the old imperial power had extended ! The establishment of the Western Empire, the separation of Italy, the independence of the Pope, who, moreover, neither would nor could be the subject of the Emperor at Constantinople all these circumstances were, in the eyes of the Greeks, in- surrections, usurpations, attempts against the oecumenical power of the Emperor, who had been instituted by God as the head of all Christendom ! And then, the people, who, as they said, had, with the language, also inherited classic Greek literature and civilization they haughtily and self- complacently looked down upon all who were not Greeks, as mere barbarians ! In the complete control over the Church in their Empire, 1 The general notion, that Photius and Cerulerius were the originators of the separation, is not quite correct. In the twelfth century, there is still to be found frequent community in the Divine Services between the Greek and Latin Churches ; as, for instance, in the year 1147, when King Louis VII., of France, arrived at Constantinople. 24 IMPERIAL CONTROL OVER THE CHURCH. the Greek Emperors, especially after the exaltation of the Comnenes dynasty, went much further than the Russian Czar at a later period ever did. They willingly permitted the Patriarch to have unlimited power over bishops aud clergy ; but then, according to their own pleasure, they appointed, and they deposed him. Every Emperor was a born theolo- gian, 1 ; he was above the canons of the Church, and he was above the laws of the State. 2 Through their anointment and by their imperial dignity they had, as Isaac Angelus (who came to the throne in 1185), 3 declares, obtained a supreme superintendence in all matters of ecclesiastical doctrine and discipline. In short, they were, with the exception of the administration of the sacraments, in possession of all Church, official, and governmental rights. And the new Byzantine State and Court-Church laws had reduced all this to a regular, systematic theory. Contrasted with the active life, the juvenile freshness, and expansive vigour of the West, the Byzantine exhibited naught but that senile torpidity and haughty obstinacy which are no longer capable of learning ; and are as sterile as they are incompetent of improvement, or of expelling that which is internally corrupting. As dethroned rulers, or as a person who has been despoiled of his property, the Byzantine looked at Rome and the restless movements of the Latin that is, the half or wholly barbaric world. The great massacre, by which, in the year 1182, such numbers of the Latins were destroyed in the capital, was an outbreak of that national hatred which had struck such deep and ineradicable roots, from the moment that those foreigners had, with their army, overthrown the Greek throne, and established a Latin Emperor in Constantinople. In such a disposition, and in such a state of affairs, all even the most trivial differences 1 So says the historian, CINXAMUS, p. 521. It is permitted to no one to investigate into the nature of God, but doctors, bishops, and the Emperor ! 3 BALSAMON, ap. " Bevereg. Cod. Canon," i. 338. * Kotvos rS)i> {KAcX^criwj' t7ri<TTr)[ioi>a.pxr)s *ai u>v tcai ovo/iafo/xej/os, says DEMETRIUS CHOMATERUS, ap. " Leunclav. Jur. Gr. Rom.," p. 317. BYZANTINE ANTI-LATINISM. 25 in dogmatic expressions, in rites, and in church life, were carefully sought out, nurtured, and widened. It had formally become a question of national honour to possess the capability of accusing the Latins of heresy ; and ritual forms were invented, for the purpose of tangibly expressing the pollution which any contact with the Latins must occasion. In their common conversation, they contrasted "Christians" that is, Byzantines with the "Latins;" and in the capital, even women, workpeople, and schoolboys chattered about " the procession of the Holy Ghost;" and upon this abstruse (and only to practised theologians in some measure comprehensible) question, finally turned the controversy between the two Churches. The later Emperors, rendered by their necessities more prudent than their predecessors, yet found themselves incapable of repairing this breach : they were unable to contend against the national sentiment, which, though impotent in all other matters, was, upon this one point of anti-Latinism, obdurate and invincible. The union of Florence was again torn asunder the Church of St. Sophia was doomed to become a mosque I 1 The destructive schism which took place towards the end of the fourteenth century, in consequence of the election of a French anti-pope, and then convulsed the Church for more than forty years, had, too, its origin in purely national interests. For that which was really intended to be effected by it was to have the Papal See and court, as the exclusive possession of the French nation, located upon French soil, and under the predominating influence of the French government. And 1 Some felt strongly what injury must accrue to the Church through the operation of an Imperial Popedom ; but those entertaining such a conviction appear to be but few. The strongest expression of opinion I have met with is that of the Archbishop Simeon of Thessalonica (ap. " Morin. de Ordin.," p. 138. Ed. Amstd.). He affirms that the perver- sion of the Church order, through the assumptions and assaults of the temporal power, is the cause of the decay both of the Empire and the nation. " And hence it is," he observes, " that we have become impotent and contemptible in the estimation of all nations ; and hence, too, it is that our foes scorn us, consume our harvests before our eyes, and possess themselves of our sacred relics and consecrated places," &c., &c., &c. 26 GERMAN NATIONAL FEELING. scarcely had this wound been healed, when the Hussite movement took place that, too, was an attempt at a national separation, and the formation of a particular peoples' church. The Czechish antipathy against the Germans had from the commencement a large share in their essay at a new Ecclesi- astical Structure, which was to be limited to the race of Czechs. When, with the appearance of Luther, began that powerful movement which split asunder Western Christendom, until then whole and united ; and when new churches, with doctrines and constitutions entirely different from the old, were formed, there was not at its commencement to be found the impulse of the supreme interests of a nationality pushing onward reformation, and inciting insurrection against the Pope and the Church. The German people had, for a series of centuries, with a deep and complete devotion, been absorbed by the spirit of the Catholic religion ; they had made their churches the most nobly-endowed of any in the world ; they had created a literature that was purely Catholic, and yet was the genuine production of the German mind. But in the beginning of the sixteenth century there was spread far and wide in Germany a strong repugnance against the Popedom, as it was then ; and no unrightful indignation with reference to abuses in the Church, and the moral depravity of a much too numerous and far too wealthy clergy. The national feeling of the German people had been for a considerable time offended by the treatment which German persons, things, and interests had experienced in Rome; and by the part which had been played, since the fourteenth century, by German kings and emperors, as opposed to the See of Rome. It was when this state of feeling prevailed, that the mightiest democrat and most popular character that Germany has ever possessed the Augustinian monk of Wittenberg presented himself as a leader and eloquent orator. At the same time, he, with his newly-invented doctrine of "Justification," had discovered a lever of wonderful strength, by means of which he might destroy the still great attachment of the people to the Catholic religion. He tendered a compensation eagerly LUTHERANISM. 27 and joyfully to be sought for in repayment for what they had lost. Luther well understood how to draw into the service of his cause the German national feeling, which then exhibited itself in a decided manner, by its dislike of the Italian nation. He shews this by his frequent expressions in reference to the " Whalen" as the Italians were then called. There is scarcely a single vice that he does not attribute to them ; and he purposely descants upon their assumed " haughtiness, and their contempt for the Germans, who, in their eyes, are not even human beings." 1 When the separation had been completed, the new Church system established, and the violent movement brought to a stand-still and a conclusion, it was found that only the half of Germany had submitted itself to the Lutheran doctrine. The other half remained as it had been, or it had again become Catholic. The Protestant portion was split up anew, for Calvinism was introduced into some territories previously Lutheran. Upon the whole, however, the Germans that is, such of them as had broken off their communion with the old Church were attached to the Lutheran doctrine ; for Calvinism was in their estimation un-German and outlandish, and did not satisfy their religious feelings ; whilst Luther- anism, in the two first centuries of its existence, was felt and comprehended as the most accurate product of the German mind, in matters of religion. Outside of Germany, the kindred Scandinavians were the only states that introduced amongst them the Lutheran form of Protestantism ; whilst, on the other hand, the Calvinistic form owed its existence and diffusion on the German soil, for the most part, to the constraint exercised by individual princes. A Lutheran national Church was not established in Germany. The whole ecclesiastical power such power as in the Catholic Church had been exercised by primate and episcopacy was systematically intrusted to the temporal princes, and (in the imperial cities) to the municipal authorities, 1 See " Luther's Werke," Walch, Ausg., xiv. 273 ; xix. 1155 ; xxii. 2365 ; ii. 1429. 28 DISMEMBERMENT OF THE CHUKCH. so that there were just as many churches as there were states and territories. Every prince and every Germanic-Empire titled noble was now both Pope and Bishop in his land or little holding. He was, in fact, something more ; for he could alter the religion of his subjects according to his own pleasure ; and the Palatine Electoral princes did actually, in a single generation, and through the instrumentality of depositions and banishments, four times violently change the religion of their country. And, then, so weakened has been the Church impulse in Protestant Germany, under the influence of the Lutheran doctrine, that, in three hundred years, there never has been one serious attempt made for the establishment of one all-embracing Lutheran Church-like band, having one common Church action. They content themselves with the conviction that they are in the exclusive possession of the pure doctrine, in which is, beyond all other things, to be understood " self-attributed righteousness," and upon which is founded unconditional personal " salvation." This is called "the Gospel ! " Besides this, they console themselves for this lamentable condition, dismemberment, and territorial servitude of Church affairs, with thoughts of the assumed glory of the invisible Church, which possesses in richer abundance and more fanciful perfection all that is wanting to the visible. In the rest of Europe, the Lutheran doctrine was a decided failure. It was either rejected, or it had to give way to the Calvinistic reform doctrine. It devolved upon the Saxons in Transylvania, after the German inhabitants of the cities amongst Hungarians and Poles had paved the way for it. But even so, it was plainly nothing more than the creed of a small minority, which saw itself on all sides overridden and pressed down by the logical, and (on that which is the main point) still more consolatory Calvinism. It was the same in the Netherlands and France. It was, therefore, correctly (even though but lately) said : " That the Lutheran Church was so absolutely modified, and so thoroughly animated with the German character, that, in another country, and under different national conditions, it could never exist. The CALVIN AND THE CALVINISTIC CHUKCH-FORM. 29 Scotch, for instance, could never be Lutherans, so long as they are Scotchmen." 1 According to SchafPs remark, " Lutheranism loses more or less of its original features, and imperceptibly assimilates itself to the Reform Confession, so soon as it, through emigration, is transplanted to French, English, or American soil. This," he adds, " is to be seen very plainly in the United States, if we compare the Anglicised portion of the Lutheran denominations with the foreign German Synods of Missouri and Buffalo." 2 Calvin was as decidedly the creator of the so-called "reform" doctrine, as Luther was the originator of that which has been called after him. Calvin had only Zwinglius as a predecessor, whilst Luther was dependent on no one, and indebted to no one for anything. Calvin was not able, however, in his own country, France, to obtain the success and the high position which accrued to the German Reformer at home. The great majority of his countrymen still con- tinue to see in him only the founder of erroneous doctrines, and of a false Church ; but as regards other nations, which, either wholly or partially, have accepted his system, he remains still a foreigner; and their national feelings will not tolerate the Church in their own land to be called by his name, and so be made known as the work of a stranger. They would have, therefore, their Church only known as being reformed', whilst the German Protestants, with the conviction that Luther is flesh of their flesh, and bone of their bone, that he is the nation-born prophet of Germans name with satisfaction themselves " Lutherans," and their church " Lutheran." Upon the whole, the Calvinistic Church-form, which had not at its commencement the stamp of a particular nationality upon it, has had a wider expansion than the Lutheran. Scotland, as regards the great majority of its inhabitants, became Calvinistic; whilst in the Netherlands and in Swit- zerland the larger portion of the population that adopted 1 " Allgemeine Kirchenzeitung," 15th May, 1855. 2 " Germany ; its Universities, Theology, and Religion." Edinburgh, 1857, p. 168. 30 THE EPISCOPAL STATE-CHURCH IN ENGLAND. Protestantism accepted it in that form. In Germany Calvinism attained an entrance into the Palatinate, Anhalt, Hesse, Bremen, and finally (since the conversion of Sigismond in 1614) into the Brandenburg territory. In Hungary the Magyars, so far as they fell off from the old Church, did so, for the most part, to become Calvinists. In France, up to the time of the incorporation of Alsace, " Calvinist " and " Protestant " were synonymous terms. The churches of this confession, however, remained separated according to the territories in which they were placed; and in Switzerland, according to the Cantons in which they were located. Only once was there found to take place one common action, and one general confederation of all or the most of the com- munities conforming to the Calvinistic doctrine. It was at the Dordrecht Synod, in the year 1618, when it was desired to defend and confirm genuine Calvinism in its practical doctrines, and such as they were most wished for by the masses, against the alterations of the Arminians. This was also the culminating point of Calvinistic Church development. From that time began its internal dogmatic and Church decomposition. As a third chief form of Protestantism, and with a complete national colouring and exclusiveness, the Episcopal State- Church in England instituted itself. Wholly differing from Lutheranism, it was, at the beginning, in its dogma super- abounding with Calvinism. It is, in its constitution, a mixture of Catholicity and Protestantism ; it is territorially Protestant, or imperially papistical, in its principles and institutions ; it is, in its Liturgy, more Catholic than Protestant, and in its creed " the 39 Articles " more Protestant than Catholic. It suffers from its internal con- tradictions ; and resembles a building which, erected out of heterogeneous materials, can only be prevented from falling to pieces by the strong hand of the State. The struggle with the Calvinistic elements contending for the supreme power, and which had been carried on for a long time in its bosom, gradually led to the separation of the Puritans, and to the great civil and religious war of the seventeenth century. At last the NATIONAL CHUECHES. 31 more logical Protestant parties the Presbyterians, Congrega- tionalists, and Baptists gave to themselves a constitution of their own, and placed themselves in opposition to the State Church as independent Churches. It then shut out all the Protestant communities on the Continent so completely, that an ordained Lutheran or Calvinist preacher in England passes simply as a layman ; and, in order to enter into the service of the Anglican Church, has to submit himself once more to Episcopal ordination. When we look over the whole course of the Reformation- century, at the result of the great movement, and the state of the newly-formed religious communities, we find everywhere the victorious principle of national distinct Churches mani- festing itself. "Principle" is not, perhaps, the right expres- sion to make use of ; for this state of things was by no means systematically brought about it should rather be said that it was self-formed it was the inevitable consequence of the opposite principle that is, of Catholicity, of a Church for the entire world having been, with deliberate design, renounced. To the Temporal Power, to Princes, and their officials, in Protestant lands, was assigned, in its fulness, ecclesiastical power, with a supremacy in spiritual matters. The Reformers had willed that it should be so, 1 and therewith must necessarily cease every religious tie between different nationalities. In Germany there were as many Protestant Churches as there were distinct territories ; and 1 This has been frequently denied, but let any one confront the denial with the Wittenberg Consistorial Ordinance of the year 1542, in Richter's "Sammlung der Kirchen-Ordnungen," p. 371, which was either com- posed or approved of by Luther and Melancthon. With reference to it Professor Schenkel says : " In this manner, with a single stroke of the pen, was the important matter of Church discipline placed wholly in the hands of the heads of the State, and this, too, without any reservation of ecclesiastical rights ; so that affairs of conscience were, from this time, treated precisely like worldly matters, and were to be settled altogether according to the form of temporal legal proceedings. The subjection of the Church to the State was therewith completed, and the gate thrown wide open for boundless tyranny by the State over men's consciences." " Studien und Kriticken," 1850, p. 459. 32 THE MISSION OF NATIONALITIES. each lord of the land was invested with the highest ecclesi- astical power. If a general " Lutheran " Church, or an "Evangelical" Church, were mentioned, this expression, in reality, meant no more than an aggregate of National Churches, each one of which was limited by the frontiers of its own coun- try ; and, in no point of view, representing a living whole an organically associated unity. In the same manner there were, and there still are, in " reformed " Switzerland only Cantonal Churches. It is, however, as a Protestant theologian correctly remarks, untrue and perplexing to speak of a " unity," when it only represents " something present in one's thoughts ;" and where we can point to nothing in which this assumed unity manifests itself. "Unity" and "similarity," or " relationship," are very different ideas. 1 Nationalities are certainly not the products of accident ; they are not the children of a blindly-ruling force of nature. On the contrary, in the great world-plan of Divine Providence, every distinct people have their own peculiar problem to solve, their own assigned mission to fulfil. They may mis- take it, and, by a perverted course, wander away from it, or, by their sloth and moral depravity, leave it unperformed and of such we have examples before our eyes. This mission is determined by the character of the people themselves, by the boundaries within which nature and circumstances confine them, and by their own peculiar endowments. The manner in which a nation undertakes to solve the problem re-acts, again, upon its position and character, determines its welfare, and decides the place it shall occupy in history. Each dis- tinct people forms an organically connected limb of the great body of humanity it may be a more noble and distinguished limb it may be a people destined to be the guide and educator of other nations or it may be an inferior and a subservient limb ; but, then, each nationality has an original right (within easily-recognised limits, and without interference on the part of any other equally privileged nation) to vindi- cate and freely develope itself. The suppression of a nation- ality, or of a manifestation of its existence within its natural 1 LECHLER, " Lehre vom heiligen Amte.," 1857, p. 139. THE CHURCH A FAMILY OF NATIONS. 33 and legitimate limits, is a crime against the order decreed by I God, and which sooner or later brings its own punishment | along with it. Higher, however, than associated nationalities, stands that Community which unites the multiplicity of nationalities into one God-connected totality, which binds them together in one brotherly relation, and forms them into one great peoples' family ; the Community that does this is the Church of Christ. It is the will of its Founder that it should be just with every national peculiarity; "one shepherd and one flock." It must, therefore, in its views, in its institutions, and in its customs, bear no peculiar national colour. It must neither be prominently German, nor Italian, nor French, nor English, nor to any of those nations show a preference ; and still less must it desire to impress upon any one people the stamp of a foreign nationality. The thought will never occur to it to despoil or injure one people for the advantage of another ; nor to molest them, as regards their rights and properties. The Church takes a nationality as it finds it, and bestows upon it a higher sanctity. The Church is far from desiring that all the nationalities received into its bosom, should bend down beneath the yoke of a monotonous uniformity, much less does it wish to annihilate the differences of races, or to put an end to historical customs. As the firmest, and at the same time the most pliable of all institu- tions, it is able to become " all things to all men," and to educate every people, without doing violence to their nature. The Church enters into every nationality, purifies it, and only overcomes it, when assimilating it to itself. The Church overcomes it when it struggles against excrescences upon national character, and when it removes from the popular traits whatever had previously been intractable. It is like to the house of the father, in which, to use the words of Christ, "there are many mansions." The Pole, the Sicilian, the Irishman, and the Maronite, have each their national character a character not in common with each other whilst still each of these is, in his own way, a good Catholic. Should there, however, be nationalities or races D 34 THE PRINCIPLE OF CATHOLICITY. so deeply degraded, and so thoroughly corrupt, that the Church, with all its appliances, can do nothing with them, then they must gradually die out, and give place to others. There is a reciprocal gain. As each new and vigorous population enters into the circle of the Church, the Church becomes not merely numerically, locally, and externally strong, but also inwardly and dynamically enriched. Every people, in whatever way gifted, gradually contributes its share in religious experiences, in peculiar ecclesiastical customs and arrangement!', in its interpretation of Christian doctrine, in its impress upon life and science. It adds all these to the great Church capital to that which is the product of former times and older nationalities. Every Catholic people can learn from another, and may borrow from foreign nations institutions worthy of being imitated. This has often already happened. It has occurred, too, even in the most recent times, and mostly with an evident bless- ing; and it will for the future (with the advantage of rapidly increasing communication, and the greater means for recip- rocal knowledge) take place to a much greater extent. In this sense, populations long since degenerated have continued to exercise a beneficial influence. Even still the Church feels the operations of the old African and Egyptian Churches of the first century. The course which the history of Christianity has taken from the beginning, even to the present day, may be thus measured : With the first issuing forth of the Christian Church, from the maternal bosom of the Jewish, there developed itself, as a fundamental law of Church life, the principle of Catholicity, that is, of a world-religion, of a world-Church, of one that has space and air, laws and liberty, for all nations ; which summons all, and receives into itself all who obey its call. This principle is, however, in reality superhuman ; and it can only be maintained among men by institutions to which strength from above is given, and with which a permanent blessing abides. It will always elicit the most violent resist- ance on the part of natural humanity. The centrifugal forces and tendencies of individual nations are aroused ; they SINGULAR POSITION OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 35 tear themselves loose ; they make for themselves a creed, and manage themselves, ecclesiastically, according to their own plan and fancy ; and then have to experience what is to be their o\vn special history, which is found to be dependent on the fact of original separation from the Church, modified by the character of the nation, and of the doctrine it has accepted. As to the Church, it proceeds on its path ; the majority remains faithful to it ; new members replace those that have fallen off; and it approaches slowly, yet with a firm step (for with its great losses there are still great com- pensations and advantages), and so it at last arrives at its goal absolute Catholicity. That goal is still far distant; and the Church will only have reached it when it shall have an abiding place in every part of the earth, and when the words of Malachi (i. 11,) shall be completely fulfilled. 1 So singular is the position of the Catholic Church, both in the past and the present, that no other religion, or religious society can, even in the most remote manner, be compared with it. There are, indeed, besides the Catholic, two other religions, which, since they have passed beyond the bound- aries of one nation or state, may make a claim to the title of being " a world-religion : " these are the Mahommedan and the Bhuddist. 2 If we look to Islaininism, we find it never 1 " For from the rising of the sun even to the going down, my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean oblation." 2 Bhuddism is usually mentioned as the most numerous of all-religions ; and counting the entire of China as being Bhuddist, it is said to have five hundred millions. This, however, is incorrect. The Bhuddist religion in China is, in fact, only tolerated ; and to ask a Chinese whether he is a Bhuddist or not, would be, as Wassiliew (in the " Abhandlungen der Petersburger Akademie," xi. 356) observes, absurd. The three religions of China are those of Confucius, Taosse, and Bhudda. They subsist not only by the side of one another, but they mingle with each other, and the Chinese occasionally take a part in all. It can therefore only be said that there are in China many Bhuddist confraternities, and that a great number of the people regularly, or from time to time, observe some Bhuddist rites. Hence it becomes indispensable, if we wish to compare the religions of mankind, with reference to the numbers of their disciples, to pass over that of the Bhuddists. D2 36 CATHOLICISM THE ONLY WORLD-RELIGION. has exhibited the organic unity and brotherhood of a Church, and that it is split right asunder. The Sunnites are opposed to the Shiites; the head of the Sunnites, the Turkish, is hostile to the Shiite head, the Persian. Bhuddisrn is con- fined to Eastern Asia. It is in fact only a religion of the clergy. It knows only " brotherhoods," and has no congre- gations there is no organic relation between the clergy and the laity; no Church powers, and no ceremonies of reception. Thus, then, is there the Catholic religion, which counts more disciples than all the other Christian communities taken together nearly two hundred millions and it is the only world-religion in the true sense of the word ; and, as there was formerly only given but one world-religion, so is it at present, and so it will remain for ever ! 37 THE PAPACY. THAT a Church of nations is not able to maintain itself without a primate, without one supreme head, must be evident to every one ; and history has demonstrated it. Every living totality requires a central point of union, a chief head, which shall hold its parts together. In the nature and structure of the Church it is established that this central point shall be a determined personality ; the chosen bearer of an office corresponding to the nature of the thing and the requirements of the Church. He who declares : "I do not recognize the Pope T, or the Church to which I belong, will stand for itself, the Pope is for us a stranger, his Church is not ours," he who declares this thereupon says : " We separate ourselves from the Universal Church, we will be no longer members of that body." Or, if it is theologically maintained: "That there may be, and shall be no primacy in the Church ; that the Papacy is an institution in contradiction with the will of Christ, that it is a usurpation," then that is only saying, in other words, that one Universal Church, comprehending a variety of nations, should not exist ; that it ought to fall to pieces, and that the normal state of religion ought to be that there should be as many various churches as there are nations or states. But that the state of this one Church should be that 38 "THE INVISIBLE CHURCH." of one composed of the scattered multitudinous fragments of several national or political churches, is such a church as cannot afford a shadow of claim either from higher authority, or be based upon a Biblical foundation ; and, it may be added, there has not even the attempt been made to establish it theologically, as approved of by God. It lies in the nature of things, that a State Church, in its isolation, can no longer inspire piety, or evoke veneration ; that it appears as something conventional, from which, as soon as the political constraint that maintains it is withdrawn or crippled, one may separate with ease, and without any scruple of conscience. Thus the principle and law of Church-dismemberment being once for all sanctioned, new Church communites arise, the Sectarian system flourishes, and theologians, reflecting upon the article of faith which speaks of "one Universal Church," in despair, betake them- selves to an abstraction, an idea, which they call " the invisible Church." And so there must be euphonious sound- ing inanities of a hidden, holy community, a silent band of spirits there must be fine phrases, that are culled but to cover over the abyss caused by the loss of the Church ! J 1 Julius Miiller makes use of such phrases in his remarkable essay, " The Universal Church," in u The German Journal of Christian Science," 1850, p. 14. It is naturally easy for him to show what is untenable and erroneous in the recent efforts of Lutheran theologians to make out a visible Church confined to the professors of the pure Lutheran doctrine ; and he is able also to demonstrate that the Reformation had forced them out of a " visible," and compelled them to the conception of an " invisible Church." But when he wishes to establish this idea he can give to his readers nothing more than solemn sounding and hollow phraseology. He tells us of u a silent band of spirits, independent of space and time ; conscious of itself, but free from all guildship with external institu- tions ; as distant and yet near, as scattered and yet gathered together, as unknown and yet known, permeating the variety of Church confessions and constitutions, and in all places, wherever it is, carrying with it the consciousness that this Band is the highest that has been formed on earth," and so forth ! So then " this silent spirit band " has really been formed upon this earth, and is " conscious of itself," and so forth. When or where was it then formed ? By what signs can one know the members of " the band," or can they recognize each other ? Soberly and pro- POETICAL IDEA OF THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. 39 The more distracted and forlorn is the actual condition of a Church, so much the more poetical and enthusiastic becomes the talk of unity and love in mysterious undiscoverable regions, where the invisible Church is said to be at home ! saically expressed, the matter will stand thus : "It may be assumed that in every one of the various Christian communities some well-meaning pious souls are to be found, earnestly seeking for salvation, and for them we must hope that, with God's grace, they will find it." But no man of common sense can, for that world-institution, the one Universal Church, with its settled doctrines, and its means of Salvation, find a compensation in the fancy that has been feigned about " a band of spirits," and which may be compared to the stone that Rhea presented to her husband in place of a child a false notion, enveloped in the swaddling clothes of rhetoric ! By Jean Paul (Richter) the advice was once given to a Swedish pastor in winter, to walk up and down in his room and eat barley sugar, and thus have on his tongue, and before all his senses, a notion of lovely Italy and its gardens. H. Miiller thus advises his followers to take his " still spirit band" into their mouths, and then to fancy they have with them " the Church." That the visible Church has also its invisible portion and precisely that which is best and holiest in it is invisible that is a fact which may be taken as understood. But it is indeed something very different to rend asunder the soul and body of the one Church, and oppose them to each other as two Churches, in order to be able to withdraw into this " silent band of spirits ; " that so it happens when one has quarrelled with the Universal Church, and made the unpleasant discovery that the branch to which he adheres is rent away, that it no longer belongs to the tree, and is suffering for want of the living sap. The sharp-sighted Richard Rothe ("Anfange der Christl. Kirche," p. 100) has openly said, "An invisible Church is a contradictio in adjecto. In no way can it be made a substantiality. It suffers from one of two evils either the expression is quite unsuitable to it, or it has in itself no real existence. The idea was first, formed when it was sought to give a factitious notion of a Church in its full development, and that idea was acted upon when the idea of leaving the Catholic Church was carried into effect.'' That the whole theory of an invisible Church is self-destructive for the community which desires seriously to adopt it, is a fact that becomes more and more generally acknowledged. It is said in the " Gottin. Gel. Anzeigen," 1848, p. 224, " With this theory of an invisible Church something truly sectarian has found its way into Protestantism ; something that has shown itself as self-destructive ; and it is only to the circumstance that it has never come to a general recognition, we are indebted for finding limits set to its self- destructiveness." 40 THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. "The silent spirit band" has, in sooth, neither hand nor foot ; it speaks not, hears not ; it gives forth neither doctrine, nor discipline, nor the administration of Ecclesiastical means of grace. All these being matters that may, indeed, be dis- pensed with, since not one of " the spirits " knows anything of the other, nor can act upon another, either for good or for evil. It is well known that, in order to escape from subjection to the Papal authority, the following phrase was adopted at the time of the Reformation, and has again been recently brought into vogue : " We who have separated ourselves recognize only Christ as the head of our Church." And with this it has been intended openly to declare, or such, at least, as an inevitable consequence is to be said : " There may be, and there shall be no earthly office, which shall confer upon its possessor the supreme guidance of the Church," or, " No one is entitled to guide the common affairs of many particular churches connected together, and forming one Whole. For the guidance of individual communities or local churches, and for the conduct of some ecclesiastical departments, there may be offices, and earthly bearers for them ; but as regards the guidance of the whole Church, there shall be no office, and no bearer of such an office. That is a place which must always remain empty." A suitable symbol of this theory (in accordance with which the head of the Church can only be in Heaven, and never must come too near it on earth, lest His presence might be an inconvenience) may be found in that stately empty arm- chair which is still to be seen in the magnificent ancient Gothic cathedral of Glasgow, and that, to the inexpressible disappointment of the spectator, is placed upon the very spot where formerly stood the high altar. Thus had the Manicheans, in their halls of assembly, " the Bema" a pulpit always empty and for them the representative of their invisible Lord and Master, and before which their believing members prostrated themselves on the earth. When a community says : " Christ alone is the head of our Church," it is at the same time, in other words, saying : PROGRESS OF PROTESTANT DISORGANIZATION. 41 " Separation and isolation constitute a principle of the Church such is its normal condition." When, in common life, a person says, " I leave that to God, He may provide for it," the meaning of such words is at once appreciated. It is to the effect, " I will trouble myself no more about the matter, it does not concern me." When, for example, the Church of Greece declared, " No one shall be the head of the Church, but Christ alone," the declaration ultimately resulted in this, " We provide only for ourselves, and do not trouble ourselves about other Churches. Christ may see to them, and do with them as He pleases." And so, under the mask of piously sounding phrases, we find the most common-place national selfishness. Church communities have, in this respect, moved upon a declining path. At first, it was said by the Byzantines, " We recognize only Patriarchs, and each of these governing a portion merely of the Church ; but no Pope, no head of the Patriarchs." Then came the English Church, and it said, " Neither Pope nor Patriarchs, but merely Bishops." Upon their side, the Protestants of the Continent declared, " No Bishops either, but merely pastors, and above them the sovereign of the country." Subsequently came the new Protestant sects of England, with the declaration, " We have no need of pastors, but only preachers." Finally appeared " the Friends " (the Quakers), and many more new communities who had made the discovery " that preachers, also, are only an evil, and that every man should be his own prophet, teacher, and priest." One step still further downward has to be made. It has not yet come to pass, but already in the United States they are considering about it. Let us now approach somewhat nearer to the institution of the Papacy, which is comparable with no other; and let us cast a glance at its history. Like to all living things, like to the Church itself of which it is the crown and the corner-stone, the Papacy has passed through an historical development full of the most manifold and surprising vicissitudes. But in this its history is the law which lies at the foundation of the Church the law of continual develop- 42 HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE PAPACY. inent of a growth from within outwards. The Papacy had to pass through aH. the changes and circumstances of the Church, and to enter with it into every process of construc- tion. Its birth begins with two mighty, significant, and far- extending words of the Lord. He to whom these words were addressed, realised them in his own person and actions, and planted the institution of the infant Church in the central point at Rome. There it silently grew, occulto relut arbor aevo ; and in the oldest time it only showed itself forth on peculiar occasions ; but the outlines of the power and the ecclesiastical authority of the Roman Bishops were ever constantly becoming more evident, and more prominent. The Popes were, even in the time of the Roman Emperors, the guardians of the whole Church, exhorting and warning in all directions, disposing and judging, "binding and loosing." Complaints were not seldom expressed of the use which, in particular cases, Rome had made of its power. Re- sistance was offered, because the Pope was supposed to have been deceived ; an appeal was preferred to him, when it was believed he had been better informed ; but there was no refusal to obey his commands. In general, his interference in Church affairs was less necessary ; and the reins of Church discipline needed less to be drawn tightly, so long as the general Church, with few exceptions, was found within the limits of the Roman Empire, when it was so firmly kept together by the strong bands of the civil order, that there could neither be occasion nor prospect of success to any re- action on the part of various nationalities, which, on the whole, were broken and kept down by Roman domination. Out of the chaos of the great Northern migrations, and the ruins of the Roman Empire, there gradually arose a new order of states, whose central point was the Papal See. Therefrom inevitably resulted a position not only new, but very different from the former. The new Christian Empire of the West was created and upheld by the Pope. The Pope became constantly more and more (by the state of affairs, with the will of the princes and of the people, and through the power of public opinion) the Chief Moderator DECLINE OF THE PAPAL POWER. 43 at the head of the European commonwealth and, as such, he had to proclaim and defend the Christian law of nations, to settle international disputes, to mediate between princes and people, and to make peace between belligerent states. The Curia became a great spiritual and temporal tribunal. In short, the whole of Western Christendom, formed, in a certain sense, a kingdom, at whose head stood the Pope and the Emperor the former, however, with continually increas- ing and far preponderating authority. The efforts of the Hohenstaufen Emperors to subject Italy, and with Italy also the Papal See, led to a prolonged conflict, from which both powers, the imperial and the papal, come forth weakened and wounded ; for ever since then the position of the Papacy, in its political relations, has been more difficult and un- favourable. The Papacy saw itself compelled to lean more and more upon France, and, when the aspiring plans of Boniface VIII. were frustrated, it naturally passed into French hands, and upon French soil; and a resistance on the part of other nations was then inevitable ; its high position over peoples and princes could no longer be success- fully maintained. The authority of the Papal See sank still lower through the Franco -Italian schism. Then followed the reformatory efforts of the Councils, in the fifteenth /> , century, which were mainly directed against the oppres- J\> / - sion of the Curia ; and, subsequently, the Popes became entangled in the devious path of Italian politics. The former social-political, universal power led, when it was attempted to be realised, to troubles and disputes, and then it went utterly to wreck in the storms of the age of the Reformation. From that time forth the whole of Europe assumed a new form. Powerful and internally united political bodies, each having a special interest, and pursuing a fixed policy of its own, came into the foreground, and a new system of "a balance of power" was formed amidst severe struggles. The Papal See could no longer be the regulator of a European Commonwealth, and the centre of a general polity. It could not be so, amid the confusion of merely political interests, 44 MISSION OP THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. and changes of Catholic and Protestant states sometimes in alliance, and sometimes hostilely opposed to each other. The popes withdrew themselves more and more to their purely ecclesiastical domain. They could stand in no other relation to the new principles (the Territorial system, and such like), which had found their way, through Pro- testantism, into the laws of European states and peoples. Thus has the matter stood to the present time. On eccle- siastical grounds the Papal See is, at present, as strong and powerful as ever, and as free in its action as it ever had been. Dangers and perplexities await it in temporal affairs in the position of Italy, and in the possession of the States of the Church. . What is now, and in point of fact, the actual function and vocation of the Papacy, and why is the whole existence of the Church at this time, and in future, so inseparably bound up with the existence of the papal authority, and with its free exercise? The Catholic Church is a most opulent, and, at the same time, a most multifarious organism. Its mission is nothing less than to be the teacher and moulder of all nations ; and however much it may find itself hampered in this task; however limited may be the sphere of action allowed to it, by this or that government, its task always remains the same, and the Church requires and possesses an abundance of power to attain its purpose : it has a great number of various insti- tutions, all directed to the same end ; and with these it is continually creating new. All these powers, these institu- tions, these spiritual communities, stand in need of a supreme guidance, with a firm and strong hand, in order that they may work harmoniously together; that they may not dege- nerate, and may not lose sight of their destination ; that they may not suicidally turn their capabilities, one against the other, or against the unity and welfare of the Church. It is only an ecclesiastical primacy can fulfil this mission it is the Papacy alone that is in a position to keep every member in its own sphere, and to pacify every disturbance that may arise. MEASURE AND EXTENT OF THE PAPAL POWER. 45 Besides this, there is another task, just as difficult as it is important, which it lies upon the Papal See to fulfil. It is the duty, namely, of the Pope to represent and to defend the rights of individual Churches against the domina- tion of states and monarchs ; to watch that the Church be not altered in its character, nor crippled in its power, by be- coming interwoven with the State. For this purpose, with the voice and action of the church immediately concerned, the intervention of the Supreme Church authority becomes indispensable ; since this stands above and outside of the conflicts, which may possibly arise between any one church and the state ; and it solely is capable, in its high and inac- cessible position, and in possession of the richest experiences, won in centuries of ecclesiastical government, to specify accurately the claims of both parties, and to serve as a stay and support to the weaker to the one which otherwise must inevitably succumb before the manifold means of com- pulsion and seduction which lie at the command of modern states. It is, moreover, a beautiful, sublime, but certainly difficult mission of the Papal See a mission only to be fulfilled by the strength of an enlightened wisdom and a comprehensive knowledge of mankind and that is, to be just to the claims of individual nations in the Church; to comprehend their necessities, and restrain their desires within the limits re- quired by the unity of the Church. For all this there is wanted a power opulently endowed with manifold views and prerogatives. If there were a primacy of dignity and honour, without any real power, the Church would be but badly served. This is not the place to enumerate all the particular rights which the Pope exercises in the ordinary course of his administration over the Church. They may be found in every hand-book of ecclesiastical law. But concerning the measure and extent, the limitation or illimitability of the Papal power, a few words, amid the pre- vailing confusion of ideas on the subject, cannot be consi- dered as superfluous. Outside of the Catholic Church it has become almost a 46 THE RESTRICTION OF PAPAL AUTHORITY. common form of speech to brand the Papal power as being boundless, as being absolutist, as one which recognizes no law capable of controlling it. There is a great deal of talk of " Romish omnipotence," or of one at least with a never unceasing pretension to universal dominion. Persons main- tain that " Rome never foregoes a claim which she has once put forward ; that she keeps such constantly in view, and upon every favourable opportunity strives to enforce it." All these representations and accusations are untrue and unjust.' The Papal power is in one respect the most restricted that can be imagined, for its determinate purpose is manifest to all persons; and as the Popes themselves have innumerable times openly declared that purpose, " to maintain the laws and ordinances of the Church, and to prevent any infringement of them." The Church has long since had its established ordinances, and its legislation determined on, even to the most minute points. The Papal See is thus, then, before all others, called upon to give an example of the most rigid ad- herence to Church tenets ; and it is only upon this condition that it can rely upon obedience to itself on the part of indi- vidual churches, or calculate upon the respect of the faithful. Hence every one thoroughly well grounded in a knowledge of ecclesiastical legislation can, in most cases, with certainty anticipate what the Papal decision will be. Besides this, a considerable portion of Church ordinances rests, according to the views of Catholics, on the Divine Commandment, and are consequently for every one, and of course for the Papal power also, not to be tampered with. The Pope cannot dis- pense with things which are commanded by Divine Law. This is universally acknowledged. What then can restrain the Pope? De Maistre says, " Everything canons, laws, national customs, monarchs, tribunals, national assemblies, prescription, remonstrances, negotiations, duty, fear, pru- dence, and especially public opinion, the Queen of the World." In another respect, the Papal authority is certainly truly sovereign and free, one, too, which, according to its nature and purpose for extraordinary accidents and exigencies, EXTRAORDINARY APPLICATION OF CHURCH POWER. 47 must be endowed with an altogether extraordinary power to control every mere human right, and to permit or ordain exceptions to general rules. It may occur that serious em- barrassments, new situations of things, may be placed before the Church ; and to which existing ecclesiastical ordinances do not extend, and in which a solution can be found only by overstepping the regulations in force. If the necessity of the case requires it, " the Pope," as Bossuet says, " can do all," 1 of course with the exception of what is contrary to the Divine Law. The most conspicuous instance of an extraordinary application of the highest Church power, because the weal of the Church urgently required it, was the step taken by Pius VII., on the conclusion of the French Concordat, in the year 1801. With a stroke of the pen (by his Bull of the 29th November of the same year), he deprived of their dignity thirty-seven French bishops who had refused to resign. He, too, abolished all the episcopal churches for ever, with their Chapters and privileges ; and he erected, at the same time, ten Metropolitan sees and fifty Bishoprics. A proceeding so unprecedented, such an abolition of well- founded rights, was only to be justified by the most extreme necessity by the imperative duty of creating a new system of order out of the deeply-convulsed Church of France. Pius himself declared to individuals in whom he reposed his confidence, that, of all the circumstances in his eventful life, " the act which he then found himself compelled to perform was that which had cost him the greatest effort, and caused him the deepest pain "; but the necessity of the measure he had taken was so obvious, that everyone in the Church, with the exception of those affected by it, had approved of his conduct. The delusion that the Papal See has arrogated to itself a despotic and absolute power, and exercised it wherever it was not restrained by fear, is so generally diffused, especially in Germany and England it is so customary to proclaim the boundlessness of that power, and the defencelessness in 1 " Defens. Declar.," 2, 20 ; " Oeuvres," vol. xxxiii. p. 354. 48 PIUS VII. ON PAPAL AUTHORITY. which individual Churches and persons find themselves when opposed to it, that I cannot refrain from exposing the error by a few decisive testimonies. Let us hear on this matter one who was a pope himself Pius VII. : " The Pope," he says, in an official document drawn up in his name, and having reference to Germany 1 "The Pope is bound by the nature and the institutions of the Catholic Church, whose head he is, within certain limits, which he dare not overstep, without violating his conscience, and abusing that supreme power which Jesus Christ has confided to him to employ for the building up, and not the destruction, of His Church. Inviolable limits for the head of the Church are the dogmas of the Catholic faith, which the Roman bishops may, neither directly nor indirectly, violate ; and although in the Catholic Church faith has always been regarded as unalterable, but discipline as alterable, yet the Roman Bishops have, with respect even to discipline, in their actual conduct, always held certain limits sacred, although by this means they acknowledge the obligation never to undertake any novelty in certain things, and also not to subject other parts of discipline to alterations, unless upon the most im- portant and irrepugnable grounds. With respect to such prin- ciples, the Roman Bishops have never thought that they could admit any change in those parts of discipline which are directly ordained of Jesus Christ Himself; or of those which, by their nature, enter into a connection with dogmas; or of those which may have been attacked by erroneous believers to sustain these innovations ; or also in those parts on which the Roman Bishops, on account of the conse- quences that might result to the disparagement of religion and of Catholic principles, do not think themselves entitled to admit a change, whatever the advantages might be offered, or whatever the amount of evils might be threat- ened. "So far as concerns other parts of Church discipline, 1 " Esposizione dei sentiment! de Sua Santita," in the treatise, " Die Neuesten Grundlagen der Deutsch-Katholischen Kirchenvervassung." Stuttgard, 1821, p. 334. VIEWS OF AN AMERICAN ARCHBISHOP. 49 which are not comprehended in the classes above-men- tioned, the Roman Bishops have felt no hesitation in making many changes; but they have always been grounded on the principles on which every well-ordered society rests; and they have only given their consent to such changes when the need or the welfare of the Church required them." I will here quote the words of an individual, who, to a certain extent, speaks in the name of the whole Church of a country, which is, in point of fact, the youngest member of the Universal Church. He is the first prelate of the American Church the present Archbishop of Baltimore, Father Patrick Kenrick. "The power of the Pope," he says, " is chiefly employed in maintaining the general laws already established, regulating the mutual relations of the clergy, and mitigating the strictness of disciplinary observ- ance, whensoever local or individual causes demand it. The faithful are sufficiently protected against the abuse of power, by the freedom of their own conscience, which is not bound to yield obedience to authority when flagrantly abused. The Pope only addresses conscience : his laws and censures are only powerful inasmuch as they are acknowledged to be passed under a divine sanction. No armies or civil officers are employed to give them effect ; and in case of flagrant abuse of authority, he loses the only influence by which they can become effectual." 1 The work of the Archbishop is, even for Europe, a remarkable phenomenon. It shows how the two millions of Catholics who live in the free states of America regard their relations both to the Pope and the Republic. " The obedience," says Kenrick, ft which we owe to the Pope has regard only to matters in which the salvation of souls is con- cerned it has nothing to do with the loyalty and allegiance which belong to the civil government. The Church is indifferent as to the various forms of political administration. The acknowledgment of the primacy of the Bishop of Rome 1 "The Primacy of the Apostolic See Vindicated." Philadelphia, 1845, p. 358. E 50 THE TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPE. cannot have the most remote connexion with any danger to our republican institutions, but will much more serve to render them stronger and more lasting, since they will moderate the enjoyment of civil liberty by moral restraints, and so prevent the evils of licentiousness and anarchy. 1 There is now lying before me the most recent production of a very respectable individual, who stands at the head of an important party in Holland this is Groen van Prinsterer. He declares against Stahl, who had maintained, " that the temporal sovereignty of the Pope, and the persecution of heretics by the temporal power, were not dogmas, or articles of faith, with respect to which Rome could assert its claim to infallibility." Groen will not admit this ; he says, " Rome roust, in principle, acknowledge the independence and sanctity of the temporal powers ; it must no longer claim the right of disposing of heretical kingdoms, or of altering the law of succession, et cetera : it must, too, acknowledge that the Bull of Boniface VIII., with the assertion as to the two swords at the command of the Church the spiritual and temporal no longer affords an authentic resume of the long sought for Roman omnipotence; and, finally, it must recall its protest against the Peace of Westphalia. And when all this has been done," he adds, " Rome will have spoken its own condemnation." 2 My first reason for selecting Herr Groen van Prinsterer, out of a whole troop of persons entertaining similar opinions, is, that his is one of the most recent declarations on the same subject which I have been able to find; and next, because, in point of fact, there are hundreds of our literati who do not know that of which he also is either actually ignorant, or which he intentionally ignores. In the first place, the matter is put thus : " Rome must acknowledge the independence of the Temporal Power, and renounce the right of deposing non-Catholic monarchs." But this has been done long since. Cardinal Antonelli, 1 " Kenrick's Primacy," p. 475. * " Le Parti Anti-revolutionnaire et Confessionel." Amsterdam, 1860. INDEPENDENCE OF THE TEMPORAL POWER. 51 Prefect of the Propaganda (under whom the Irish Bishops are placed), addressed, on the 23d June, 1791, a Rescript to the Archbishops and Bishops of Ireland, wherein it was said: " We must very carefully distinguish between the real rights of the Apostolic See, and what have been, with an inimical intention, in modern times imputed to it. The Roman See. has never taught that faith was not to be kept with heretics; or, " that an oath of allegiance made to kings, in a state of separation from the Catholic Community, could be broken ;" or, " that it was allowable for a Pope to interfere with their temporal rights and possessions" This Rescript has been often enough printed, and I do not know what could be said more clearly or distinctly. 1 Some years ago, the Bishops of the United States, in North America, when assembled in their fifth council, pre- pared an address to the Pope, in which, when complaining of their numerous "calumniators" in the country, they expressed themselves in the following terms: "They (the calumniators) strive to cast suspicion and bring the odium of Government on us, their Catholic fellow-citizens, although our fathers poured out their blood like water in defence of liberty, against a sectarian oppressor ; and falsely assert that we are enslaved to a foreign prince namely, under the political and civil authority of the Roman Pontiff; and that we are faithless to the Government." 2 We see here the same things alleged which have been a thousand times before stated in Germany, and that still continue to be repeated. The Archbishop of Baltimore, who communicates this fact, adds : " This dis- claimer of all civil power in the Pontiff, which many of us have made on our oaths, was graciously received by Gregory XVI. Can any further evidence be required that the authority which we recognise in him is spiritual, and nowise inconsistent with the most unqualified allegiance to the civil Government ? " Four and seventy French Bishops, with two Cardinals at 1 See " Ami de la Religion," vol. xviii. ; also in the works of Arch- bishop Affre of Paris, " Essai sur la Suprematie temp, du Pape," p. 508. 2 KENRICK, p. 434, where he appends the Latin text of the Council. E2 52 DECLARATIONS OF THE FRENCH AND IRISH BISHOPS. their head, presented, on the 10th April, 1826, a memorial to the King, in which they declared that they held fast to the old doctrine of the French Church upon the rights of their, monarchs ; and of their full and absolute independence in temporal matters of any authority, direct or indirect, on the part of every spiritual power. Archbishop Affre has reprinted this document. 1 A short time before this, on the 25th January, 1826, the Archbishops and Bishops of Ireland put forth a similar declaration, in which they renounced, in the strongest terms, any jurisdiction or power in the Pope to interfere in tem- poral matters within the British Kingdom. 2 As a matter of course, both these Declarations were made with the consent of the Papal See. Secondly, it is briefly to be observed, with respect to the Bull of Boniface VIII., and the theory therein put forward, as to the Spiritual and Temporal Power, that the retractation or abrogation of the same had been made a few years after its assertion ; and that, too, by Pope Clement V. 3 Arch- bishop Affre of Paris, who, in the discharge of his pastoral functions, afterwards died an heroic death at "the barricades," has, in reply to La Mennais, clearly shewn that the Bull of Clement could recall nothing else than the assertion made in the Bull of Boniface viz., that the exercise of the Temporal was subject to the correction of the Spiritual. 4 Thirdly, and finally, " Rome is to recall its Protest against the Peace of Westphalia." This Protest is, in fact, a favourite theme, which is regularly discussed whenever an attack is to be made upon the Pope, or the Catholic Church in Germany. In the year 1846, this Protest was brought forward as a powerful argument against me in the Bavarian Chambers. Not long since, in the Prussian Chambers, Herr von Ger- lach resisted a proposal of the Catholic Deputies (the justice of which, as well as I recollect, he was obliged himself to 1 AFFRE, " Essai," p. 505. * Unam Sanctam, so it stands in the Lib. vi. Decretal. * The Bull " Meruit," in the Collection of Decretal. 4 AFFRE, u Essai,'' p. 340. PROTEST AGAINST THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA. 53 admit), by a reference to this very Protest. It will, there- fore, be allowable for me to go a little further back, and to enter somewhat more minutely into the true state of the case. I must here make what at first sight may be regarded as a paradoxical confession, when I say that I rejoice that there should have been, at that time, one man found in Europe, who, in the name of God and of Christian conscience, entered a Protest against the Peace of Westphalia ; and that this man should have been precisely the one who was the bearer of the highest ecclesiastical office upon earth. The Pope, indeed, did not pi'otest for the reason that he would not admit that there could be any peace between Catholics and Protestants the whole course of subsequent history has proved the contrary but he protested because it was for him a sacred duty to resist the deeply immoral and unchris- tian principles that lay at the foundation of the religious stipulations of that entire Treaty of Peace. I allude to the territorial system to the principle " that to whomsoever the country belongs, to him also belongs its religion." 1 Un- happily ! they were German Theologians and German Jurists who first brought forward this doctrine, hitherto unheard of in the Christian world namely, that it was a right of princes to alter the religion of their subjects, as it seemed good to them ; and to change Catholics into Protestants, and to make Calvinists out of Lutherans ! It is well known how willingly princes made use of this new doctrine. In the states of the Middle Ages there certainly was religious com- pulsion ; but how completely different were the ideas and practice of former times when compared with the new ! In those times people and princes were members of the Catho- lic Church, by the side of which none other existed. All were agreed that the State, by its close connection with the Church, could tolerate no falling off from it ; could allow no new religion to be introduced ; and that every attempt of the kind was an attempt against existing social order. Every heretical doctrine which broke out in the Middle Ages, either had distinctly avowed, or bore, as its inevitable consequence, 1 " Cujus est regio, illius est religio." 54 CHURCH AND STATE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. a revolutionary character. It must, in proportion as it attained influence and authority, bring with it a dissolution of the existing condition of the State, and effect a political and social revolution. The sects of the Gnostics, the Ca- thari, and the Albigenses, which especially elicited the harsh and relentless legislation of the Middle Ages against heresy, and that had to be resisted in sanguinary wars, were the Socialists and Communists of that time. They attacked marriage, family, and property. Had they been triumphant, the consequences would have been general ruin a collapse into barbarism and heathenish licentiousness. As to the Waldenses, it is well known to every one acquainted with history that their principles concerning oaths, and the right of the State to inflict punishments, were such as could find no place in the European world at that time. In the Middle Ages the laws and rights in religious matters were the same for all. It was everywhere taught that not only every bishop, but the Pope himself, must, should he have fallen into erroneous doctrines, be deposed ; and, in case of his perseverance in error, he must, like every other, be condemned. The King knew that a separation from the Church would inevitably cost him his crown, and that he would cease to be sovereign over a Catholic people. Never, during the thousand years before Luther, was an attempt even made by a monarch to introduce into his states a new religion, or a new doctrine, or in any form to separate himself from the Church. If there ever was one, like the Emperor Frederick II., who was, in fact, an unbeliever, yet he had it publicly denied, and got a testimony of his orthodoxy made out for him by bishops and theologians. All this was changed with the Reformation. The Reformers committed to temporal princes from the beginning " the authority" that is to say, power over the religion of their country and their subjects. It was the duty and the right of " the authority " to plant the new Church and the new Gospel, to root out Popery, and to allow no strange doctrine to spring up. This was at every opportunity impressed upon temporal sovereigns. There resulted, indeed, from this CHANGE EFFECTED AT THE REFORMATION. 55 an irreconcileable contradiction ; for Luther at the same time represented it as a sacred duty for every individual to please himself in religious matters to place himself above every authority, and, before all things, above the Church, and even to disregard princes ! " Notwithstanding every human command," he says, " each one must determine his own faith for himself. Even a miller's wench, or a child nine years of age, who decides according to the Gospel" (that is to say, according to the new dogma of Justification), " may under- stand the Scriptures better than Pope, and Councils, and all scholars collected together ! " In another place he says : "You must decide for yourself; your own life is at stake" and so forth. 1 Luther never attempted to reconcile this contradiction. In practice he adhered to it ; and it became the religious Protestant doctrine, that princes had the highest juridical office over religious doctrines and the Church ; and that it was their right and their vocation to suppress every opinion in matters of faith that should differ from their own. In this opinion Lutherans and Reformers were consentaneous. In the Augsburg Confession Melancthon, who was at that time inclined to uphold Episcopal authority, or to help in re-establishing it, reckons it as the office of the Bishop to judge of doctrine ; but he had already, in his " Apology," 2 declared that it is to kings and princes that the protection and maintenance of the pure doctrine is, as an office, committed by God. The Lutheran princes assumed, then, to them- selves expressly this right in the Preface to the Con- cordian-Book ; and have, since then, exercised it to the widest extent. The Calvinistic writings upon the creed give to " the authority " the right of opposing false doctrine, and defending the true. 3 Luther himself reckons it as a matter 1 LUTHER'S AVerke, Walch's Ausgabe, xii., Sermon, v. 3, 1522 ; xi. 1887. 2 At the end of the 9th Article. 8 The Swiss Confession in the 30th, the English in the 37th, the Scotch in the 24th, and the Belgic in the 36th Articles. In the Brandenburg Electorate this is placed at the head of the Confession of Faith. In the Confession of Basle it is said : u Hoc officium gentili magistratui com- mendatum esse debet, ut vero Dei vicario." For this reference is made to the example of the Jewish kings, who had abolished idolatry. 56 RISE OF A NEW DESPOTISM. to his especial credit, that he had, in this respect, benefited the temporal Powers, who, in the Catholic Church, had been robbed of their good right ; and thus, by him, those in supreme authority were u exalted, enlightened, and adorned." 1 The Danish Court-preacher, Masius, mentions it as a parti- cular advantage of the Lutheran religion, that, according to it, princes are "the highest vicegerents of God upon earth ;" that they may at their pleasure appoint and depose the servants of the Church, and freely govern the whole terri- tory of ecclesiastical rites and ceremonies. 2 This doctrine was long the prevailing one, and it still has its defenders ; for example, Petersen, who, after having assured us that the German people are the specific people of the New Testament, then proceeds to declare its " lords of the land " as the only possessors of power over the whole Christian world, and as those " in whom the Evangelical Church reverences the dele- gates of Christ." 3 And so arose a despotism, the equal of which has never before been seen. 4 The new system, as it was expounded by 1 Walch's Ausg., xiv. 520 ; xix. 2287 : " If any gratitude," he says, "from this scandalous and accursed world were to be gained, and 1, Doctor Martin Luther, had taught and done nothing else than this, that I have enlightened and adorned the temporal rule or ' authority' and for this thing alone should men be favourable and thankful to me, since even my worst enemies well knew that a like understanding as to the temporal authority was completely concealed under the Papacy," &c., &c., &c. The favour of princes was, in truth, not wanting to him. He gives another reason why princes and authorities ought to be especially grateful to him. Formerly, that is in Catholic times, they had felt great anxiety about executions. Many princes had, from religious scruples, and under the influence of their confessors, avoided signing numerous sentences of death ; but now, by Luther's doctrine, they were perfectly tranquillized. See " Colloquia et Meditationes Lutheri." Ed. Reben- stock, i. 147. a " Interesse principum circa religionem evangelicam." Hafn, 1687, p. 31. 1 " Die Idee der Christlichen Kirche," vol. iii., pp. 224-227. 4 To mention only one example : At the Westphalian Peace Con- gress, Wolfgang von Gemmingen, a deputy of the Imperial Equestrian Order, stated that the city of Oppenheim, pawned to the Palatinate, had, since the Reformation, been forced to change its religion ten times ! PFANXEKI, " Hist, pacis Westph.," i., p. 42. ITS INFLUENCE ON THE GERMAN PEOPLE. 57 theologians and jurists, was worse than the Byzantine practice; for there no attempt had ever been made to change the religion of the people. The Protestant princes were not merely Popes in their own country, but they were much more ; and were able to do what no Pope had ever dreamed of attempting. Every Pope knew that the power he pos- sessed was a conservative one that he held it to maintain the doctrine that had been transmitted to him, and that an attempt on his part to alter the teaching of the Church would infallibly be frustrated by a universal resistance. To the Protestant princes, however, it had been said and they themselves believed and declared it that their power in religious matters was entirely unlimited ; and that, in the use of it, they need attend to no other standard than their own consciences. They also, as a matter of course, declared that they were subject to " the Gospel," or the Holy Scriptures ; but then it was to the Scriptures according to their own interpretation of them, or that of the court-preachers of their selection. The Reformers had naturally so understood the matter, that the princes should proceed according to the advice of theologians, and that they would especially allow themselves to be guided in all questions of doctrine by the theological faculties of the universities of their country. But these changed, or were changed ; and as often as it pleased the sovereign to alter the religion of his terri- tory the old professors were dismissed, and new professors were summoned. With this new system of ecclesiastical and political power united in the person of the prince, was introduced a change of incalculable gravity in the condition of the entire German people. The distinction and the contrast between the two Powers, which, on the whole, had acted beneficently for the people, and which, through collisions and counterpoises, had aroused and maintained intellectual activity and political freedom, were now completely put an end to. The Church became altogether incorporated in the State, and was re- garded as a wheel in the great state machine. He who can exercise an absolute power over that which is noblest and, 58 DEVELOPMENT Or THE BUREAUCRATIC SYSTEM. for the most part, invisible he who can so rule over religion and conscience is also one who, if he chooses, can have at his disposal everything which the State can bestow or the people yield. With the establishment of the Consistories, as sovereign authorities ruling ecclesiastical affairs, began the development of Bureaucracy of monarchical and political omnipotence of Administrative Centralisation. As soon as ecclesiastical and religious affairs were placed in the hands of Government officers, a mechanical, clerk-like-scribbling system, and the benumbing spirit of a mere administrative machine, whose functions were to command and issue ordi- nances, took the place of a living organism of an authority acting through moral motives. It went on then as it goes on still ; the Bureaucratic system became a polypus, per- petually putting out new branches, and swallowing up more materials. 1 An inevitable consequence followed a still more onerous system of despotism weighed down upon the greater part of Germany. The Protestant people were oppressed by a slavery such as had never before existed, through their monarchical supreme Bishops. Pecuniary fines, imprison- ments, and banishments, were inflicted for non-appearance in church on Sunday, for not attending regularly at Communion, and for a few persons meeting together for the purpose of private edification. Upon this system of princely dominion over religion and conscience the Westphalian Peace had put its seal. This 1 So remarks the well-known jurist, LEYSER ( u Medit. ad Pandect.," vol. vii., p. 292) : u In former times, and far even into the seventeenth century, the governmental business of the German princes was so limited that it could be disposed of by a few Councillors and a single College. But afterwards, and when, by the Peace of Westphalia, the territorial authority became so very widely extended, the business of the Administration had multiplied tenfold, and a crowd of Colleges, Courts, and official persons became necessary. It was then seen what influence must have upon the Government the committing into its hands the whole of the Church business and religious affairs." The same Leyser also reminds us (vol. vi., p. 49), that " the Protestant Consistories conducted themselves in a much more tyrannical manner than the Pope." THE TERRITORIAL SYSTEM. 59 Reformation law was only limited by the fixed normal year 1624. But, beyond the right of quiescent continuance guaranteed for that year, every Catholic might be compelled by his Protestant sovereign, and every Protestant by his Catholic sovereign, either to change his religion or to quit his country. The Protest of the Pope was, therefore, a solemn declaration that the fact of his envoy taking part in the Congress must not be regarded as an assent to its articles, which had, as their inevitable consequence, the compulsory secession of a number of Catholics from the Church. 1 It is true that the Pope in his Bull places himself in this exclusive stand-point, that every cession of Catholic bishoprics and Church property to Protestant princes, and every further extension of Protestantism, were things to which he could not give his approval, and against which he must endeavour to guard. This, under the circumstances of the times, was a course which the Supreme Pastor of the Church could not avoid taking. He stood there opposed to a system which, at the same time with a denial of the Church and its authority (and in consequence of that denial), had exalted into a principle of religious doctrine the arbitrary power of the Prince in ecclesiastical affairs, and the boundless dominion of the Prince over the consciences of mankind. With such a system a substantial peace was, in reality, not possible ; it was nothing more than an armistice. Every advance of such a system, into countries hitherto Catholic, must be regarded as a calamity to be prevented at any cost. The terrible territorial system must first be moderated, and, in some measure, its destructive conse- quences obviated by custom, by public opinion, and by experience, before there could be expected a friendly, neighbourly feeling between Catholics and Protestants. In Rome, as in Germany, it was known right well that in purely Lutheran countries, like Sweden and Denmark, the punishment of death had been affixed to the exercise of the Catholic religion, and had, only a few years previously, been 1 Instr. P. O., 5, 30 : " Cum statibus immediatis cum jure territorii et superioritatis eti&mjus reformandi exercitium religionis competat." 60 AUTHORITY OF PRINCES OVER RELIGIOUS OPINION. carried into execution, by Gustavus Adolphus, on several young persons. 1 It was known also that, in the symbolical books of the German Protestants, it was said to princes and kings : " You are the lords and rulers over religion and the Church in your countries, and you have to regard in this matter no other limits than the Bible, as interpreted by your- selves, or by your chosen theologians." It was, finally, also known that the authority of princes over religion was declared by Protestant theologians and jurists to be a real and essential constituent part of the sovereign power ; and, therefore, that every prince must regard persons adhering to a religion different from his own, as in a state of permanent revolt against his lawful authority as half-subjects, who perversely refused to acknowledge and yield obedience to the nobler and more perfect part of his governmental authority. 2 This position of affairs must be taken into consideration when reference is made to a treaty by which so many Catholics, and so many territories and possessions formerly Catholic, were ceded to Protestant powers, and with scanty or very feeble security for freedom of con- science. At that time the Chief Pastor of the Church could, in reality, do nothing else than enter his Protest against partitions and concessions, the consequence of which must be a considerable number of souls being lost to the Church. Had the Pope taken up his former position that which through the circumstances of the Middle Ages, and since the great emigration of the Northern nations had been occupied by him his rejection of this Treaty would have been equi- 1 BAAZ, " Inventor. Eccl. Suegoth." Lincop. 1G42, p. 739. * The jus circa sacra, and the jurisdictio Ecclesiastica constituted, it was said, the most costly and precious jewel of territorial superiority. See SUAUROTH, " Sammlung d. Concl. Corp. Evang.," ii. 39. The statesman and historian, Lord Clarendon, designates the Church supremacy of the Kings of England " the better moiety of their sovereignty." " Edinburgh Review," vol. xix., p. 435. In point of fact, u this better moiety" of the sovereignty has, since the Revolution of 1688, become partly a dead letter, and has partly passed away from the Crown to the Prime Minister for the time being, and a Parliamentary majority. THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF INTOLERANCE. 61 valent to a demand that war should break out anew, and that the whole work of the Peace negotiation should be gone over again from the very beginning. It was now far otherwise. The Papacy, since the Reformation, no longer stood at the head of the European commonwealth was no longer the general acknowledged mediator of peace : the protector and interpreter of international law. The Papal rejection of the articles of Peace had, therefore, only this effect it was to be regarded as a disapproval and a censure, taken from the ecclesiastical point of view. No prince has ever called into question the validity of the Peace of Westphalia by an appeal to the judgment of Rome, and theologians have always taught that a Papal Dispensation from its obligation would not be admissible. 1 It is certain that in Catholic countries compulsion was exercised to eject Protestantism, which had found its way into them, and to restore the unanimity of the Church ; and Catholic princes willingly appealed to a right invented at the Reformation by the Protestants, in order thus to over- come it in their own territories, with a weapon offered to them by their adversaries, and which was declared by them to be legitimate. In order, however, that a just judgment should be formed upon this point, the following matters are to be taken into consideration : First, On the Catholic side they had to do with a theory and a practice whose founders and adherents had declared, at the celebrated Protestation of Spire, in the year 1529, that they would not tolerate the Catholic religion by the side of the new one ; and they, in fact, had everywhere begun to destroy all traces of the old religion, and they likewise had devised a system which, by committing the ecclesiastical power to temporal princes, had degraded every religion, even that of Luther and Calvin, into a mere question of power, or the will and pleasure of the sovereign. Where the Catholic prince recognised above him and his 1 LAYMAN, " Theol. Moral," lib. ii., tr. 3, c. 12. " Si Catholici cum acatholicis publicum foedus ineunt, non potest per auctoritatem Pontificiam solvi aut relaxari." 62 EPISCOPAL AUTHORITY OF SOVEREIGNS. people the firm and always equable authority of the Church, and desired to be ^>nly a member, a faithful and obedient member, of that great organism, the world-Church there was (on the other side) the Protestant prince ; and this prince, according to the supposition of his being invested with a su- preme religious judgeship in religious affairs, both for himself and his subordinates, knew of no authority higher than his own. So had they constructed in England an Episcopal church, out of an unnatural combination of Catholic and Protestant elements and this had so happened because the king had so willed it. Then there were Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, which became and remained Lutheran, because their kings regarded that doctrine as the most convenient, and also as the most favourable to the extension of their power. In Holland there reigned a pure Calvinism, because it was pro- fessed by the more numerous and powerful party, who, as soon as they felt themselves strong enough, violated the agreement they had made with the Catholics of the country, 1 and annihilated their religious freedom. In the German principalities no one could know whether the country the next year would be Lutheran, or Calvinist, or half-Calvinistic, according to the pattern that had been introduced into Brandenburg. It depended upon the person of the monarch and his varying views, or on the death of one and the succession of another of a different opinion. Secondly, The theory of the supreme episcopal authority of the Sovereign, and his obligation to allow no other reli- gion than his own, was distinctly a part of the Protestant system, and had become an article of faith. When a prince, hitherto Lutheran, suppressed Lutheranism in his territory, and forced Calvinism upon it, the Lutheran theologians na- 1 Namely, the Union-Treaty of Utrecht, in the year 1579, and by which the still preponderating Catholic provinces and cities joined the League. Four years afterwards William of Orange issued a new edict, which, without the slightest pretext, broke the promise that had been given to the Catholics, and permitted only the exercise of the Calvinist religion. Compare on this point STOUPE, " La Religion des Hollandais," 1672, p. 12 ; and " Oeuvres," D'Axx. ARNAULD, xiv. 509. THE CHURCH IN RELATION TO HERETICS. 63 turally said, "Your Calvinist conscience is in error;" but at the same time they were obliged to admit that, since the prince considered the Calvinist doctrine as the Biblical one, he was certainly entitled nay, bound to "reform" his coun- try in that direction. The Catholic Church found itself in quite a different position. Here, the two Powers were com- pletely separated ; the prince and the authorities had not to be the rulers and bishops of the Church, but merely its protectors. The Church had already passed through various stages with respect to its position as regarded persons dif- fering from it in faith. Under the Christian Emperors it had been, taking it on the whole, the ruling or most favoured corporation in the Roman Empire ; but the conduct of the Emperors towards those outside of the pale of the Church, towards heathens, Jews, heretics, and schismatics, was very unequal. Amongst the great variety of sects it was observed that, whilst some had an extremely immoral character, others were distinguished by the severity of their manners, so that general rules could not be applicable to both. On the whole, amongst the bishops of that time the prevailing view was, that a departure from the faith of the Church, if no other offence were conjoined with it, could not be severely punished by the State. " The mildness of the Church," declares Pope Leo the Great, " contents itself with the sacerdotal judg- ment, and desires no blood-stained vengeance." Therefore was the action of two Spanish bishops, who appeared before the Imperial tribunal as accusers of the Priscillianists, visited with the severest reprehension by the most illustrious men of the Church by an Ambrose and a Martin. For a long pe- riod of time during the Middle Ages there was no separation from the Church on the ground of varying doctrines. In the eleventh century first began that gloomy, morally de- structive sect, with Gnostic doctrines, and which had come hither from the East, and in secret extended itself. Against the adherents of that sect the ruling authorities acted with great severity, and not one obdurate member of it was permitted to live. Gradually it became the rule that a fall- ing off from the faith, and the diffusion of un-ecclesiastical 64 THE NEW DOCTRINE AND THE OLD CHURCH. doctrines, should be regarded as a crime worthy of death. The idea that by the side of the Church, by which the whole political and social life of the time was penetrated and sup- ported, there should also be other religious communities with a doctrine of their own, and that such might exist in the State, was a conception of a condition of circumstances such as no one at that time regarded as a possibility, and to which no one had ever given expression. Where sects did exist they retreated into the deepest obscurity, and the decrees of Popes and Councils, with respect to heresies, were naturally based upon the views generally prevailing at the time. But the regulations and commands therein contained do not fall within the domain of faith of received and unchangeable doctrine; they appertain to discipline, which is changeable and capable of modification by peculiar and transitory circumstances. The insurrection of Protestantism against the Church assumed, in a very short space of time, the character of a conflict of life and death. Already in the writings of Luther, in the years 1520-1521, there was opened between the new doctrine and the old Church an abyss that could never more be bridged over. The rejection of all ecclesiastical tradition and of every Church authority the setting up of a dogma concerning the relations of God to man, of which the originator confessed that it had remained unknown to the whole Church from the time of the Apostles to him- self. Such were the principles now undisguisedly brought forward and maintained. The demand was no longer merely this : " that the Church should reform itself thoroughly, in its head and in its limbs," but that " it should be dissolved, and that the judgment of self-destruction should be executed by itself." Its Primacy and Episcopacy were to be abolished; the organism which had kept nations together was to be rent asunder, and in the place of its worship, prayer, and Sacrifice, there were to be preachers appointed, and the Church must break with the entire past, in doctrine, in sacraments, and institutions. Upon a common understanding, upon a mere half-candid reunion, could only the person think who neither INTOLERANCE OF THE REFORMERS. 65 comprehended the nature of the Protestant doctrine nor the bearing of the Reformation movement. For a long time there was no question as to mutual tolera- tion, or an attempt at a friendly communion together. Such a thought was utterly foreign to that entire age. On the Protestant side the theory of absolute ecclesiastical power being vested in the temporal sovereign, rendered a system of toleration an impossibility. Historically, nothing is more untrue than the assertion that " the Reformation was a move- ment for freedom of conscience." The fact is that it was precisely the very opposite. Both Lutherans and Calvinists, as well as all men at all times, desired freedom- of conscience; but then, to grant it to others when they were themselves the stronger party, was a thought that did not even occur to them. The Reformers all regarded the complete suppression and extirpation of the Catholic Church as a matter of course. From the very beginning they called upon princes and the political authorities to abolish by main force the worship of the Ancient Church. In England, Ireland, Scotland, Den- mark, and Sweden, they went so far as to affix the punish- ment of death to the practice of the Catholic religion. To- wards other sects, that arose about the same period, they proceeded with no less severity. That the Anabaptists should atone for their doctrine with their lives, was required even by him who was renowned as the mildest of the Reformers, Me- lancthon. 1 The same man desired that corporal punishment should be inflicted on the Catholics, because it was the duty of the temporal power to proclaim and defend the Divine Law! 2 Calvin also besought of the Duke of Somerset, as the Regent-Protector of England, that he should destroy with the sword all namely, the Catholics who opposed the new Protestant Constitution of the Church. 3 Kings, states- 1 See " Corpus Ref." Ed. Bretschneider, ii. 18, 711, 713. " Corp. Ref.," ix. 77. * " Epistolse Genev.," 1579, p. 40. It is remarkable that he also brought forward, as a ground why the punishment of death should be inflicted, that an attempt against the monarchy, appointed by God, was involved in the refusal to submit to its ecclesiastical authority. His F 66 DEFENSIVE WAR OF THE CATHOLIC PRINCES. men, theologians, and philosophers were all agreed that neither the Catholics, nor any one of the sects who differed from the dominant Church, were entitled to claim toleration. To have two or several religions in a country, they said, was dangerous, and enfeebled the Government I 1 Even the Lord Chancellor, Bacon, considered that the extreme limit of to- leration to which a Government could venture to go would be attained when it should content itself with a mere ex- ternal conformity to the established religion, and should make no attempt to penetrate into men's consciences and secret convictions. 2 Thus, the Catholic princes, clergy, and people knew with perfect certainty that they themselves would be oppressed so soon as the party of the new religion felt itself strong enough to work out its will against them. They carried on a war of self-defence, when they endeavoured by all means to prevent the entrance of Protestantism into their territory, or to expel it if it had already penetrated. All the Reformers and the theologians of the New Church expressed in their writings not the slightest doubt upon the principle " that the Ca- tholic religion must be exterminated wherever men had the power to do so." In Germany, in the Scandinavian coun- tries, in England, in Switzerland in short, everywhere that the Protestant religion predominated its practice was soon found in correspondence with its theory. And as Reformers at the same time held firmly to the doctrine that princes and the civil authorities were the possessors of supreme religious authority, it was resolved, by the Coryphasi of the reformed faith, that they should refuse to princes, who did not conform friend Beza even urged that anti-Trinitarians should also be put to death, and this, too, even though they recanted ! u Crenii Animadversiones," xi. 90. 1 As, for example, Lord Burghley, minister of Queen Elizabeth. His fixed principle was that the State could never be secure in which two religions were tolerated, for there was no stronger feeling of animosity than that on account of religion See " Life of Lord Burghley," in PECK'S "Desiderata Curiosa," p. 33. 2 " Certain Observations made upon a Libel, 1592," WORKS ; London, 1846, i. 382. THE MAXIM OF THE REFORMERS. 67 to Calvinistic principles, the right to govern, and declare their deposition as permissible and necessary. It is well known how far Knox and others went in this way, and what share such men had in the dethronement of Charles I. of England. In Sweden, Sigismund was despoiled of his crown because he was a Catholic. Bayle supposes that the Reformers and their followers must have felt themselves in a very embarrassing position, because they had always, when opposed to the old Church, insisted upon " freedom of conscience," and declared that the com- pulsion exercised towards them was criminal; whilst they themselves, nevertheless, exhorted the authorities to suppress every other doctrine and religious community. Such a cir- cumstance, however, took place so universally, and it was so much in accordance with the spirit of the times, that it was not felt to be self-contradictory. 1 The French Protestants, although they formed but a poor minority, and only found protection from the Edict of Nantes, yet refused, in the places of security that had been granted to them, to allow any Catholic, or the practice of the Catholic religion, to be where they were. The same scene was enacted in all parts of Protestantised Europe. The prevailing maxim was : " Freedom for ourselves, and oppression for every other party ! " The first who were in earnest about religious freedom, and who really placed the two religions on an equality, were the Catholic Englishmen who, towards the middle of the seventeenth century, founded the colony of Maryland, under the leadership of Lord Baltimore. That little State, under a Catholic administration for a few years, was in the enjoy- ment of perfect tranquillity and the most complete freedom. But barely two decades had been completed, when the more numerous Protestants, protected by the government of the mother country, overthrew the existing regulations, 1 We need only see how the well-known Marnix de Saint -Aldegonde defends himself in his " Reponse Apologetique," 1598, against the reproach made to him in the piece entitled "Antidote ou Contrepoison contre les Conseils Sanguinaires, de M. S. A." F2 68 THE PRINCIPLE OF TOLERATION. brought in the Church of England as the established religion, and passed severe penal laws against the practice of the Catholic faith.i For a long time, the Netherlands had the reputation of being the only country in Europe where freedom of faith, although very limited, existed. Here Calvinism was the State Church, but a very considerable part of the population remained Catholic ; and there were, besides, Arrninians, Lutherans, Mennonites, and other sects from foreign countries. These the States -General allowed to live in peace, so that many settled down in Holland on account of this freedom. The Catholics alone lay under severe oppres- sions. 2 Since the middle of the seventeenth century, various isolated Protestant voices had been raised in favour of the concession of religious freedom. The first of these was the Dutchman, Koornheert, a predecessor of the Arrninians; but he stood quite alone in his views concerning toleration. After the middle, and towards the close of the seventeenth century, some defenders of the principle of toleration came forward : Milton, Richard Baxter, Bayle, Locke. But Locke alone discussed the question thoroughly and candidly, without falling into glaring contradictions, or taking refuge 1 The facts are given in detail in MACMAHON'S " Historical View of the Government of Maryland," Baltimore, 1831, pp. 198-250 ; and in BANCROFT'S "History of the United States." Boston, 1834. It is interesting to have the opinion of a living Protestant theologian, Thomas Coit, of Newrochelle, on this point. He says (in his work, " Puritanism, or a Churchman's Defence ;" New York, 1855) " In Maryland, as the Roman Catholics claim, the rights of conscience were first fully acknow- ledged in this country. This is a fact I never knew disputed by good authority, and though a Protestant with all my heart, I accord them the full praise of it with the frankest sincerity," &c. 2 This is noticed by Sir William Temple, in 1670, in his " Observations upon the United Provinces." WORKS ; London, 1720, i. 58. The preacher Brun, in his treatise (" La Veritable Religion des Hollandois ;" Amsterd. 1675, p. 171) adduces, as a proof of the commendable piety of the Netherlands Government, that they had not only taken from the Catholics their churches, schools, and institutions, as well as excluding them from any office, but also continually interfered with and disturbed them in their religious worship ! &c., &c. PERSECUTION IN ENGLAND. 69 in prevarication. The others required, in accordance with the precedent given by the Netherlands, that all Protestant parties and sects should reciprocally afford to each other liberty ; but the Catholic Church, as their common antago- nist, was still to be oppressed and persecuted. As grounds for thus dealing with Catholics, they stated, first, that the Catholics alone acknowledged an Ecclesiastical head in a foreign country ; and next, that the Catholics would, if their side ever became again the stronger, oppress the Protestants. 1 Subsequent experience has, indeed, proved that this Protes- tant possibility has long since been worked out by them into an actual reality ; because, for two hundred years after the rise of Protestantism, no religious freedom was granted to Catholics, in any country or district where Protestants had gained the upper hand. In some towns and villages of Germany alone, there was a prescriptive parity in pursuance of the provisions of the Peace of Westphalia. How deeply-seated was the principle of religious persecution in the very blood of the professors of the new doctrine, is shown in a striking manner by the conduct of the Anglo- Saxon race. In England, after the Restoration, executions were no longer numerous, and these fell only upon Catholic clergymen ; but the prisons there did the work of the execu- tioner for they were so unhealthy, that human beings died in them by thousands. The Quaker, William Penn, reckoned that, in a short space of time, about 5000, who had been incarcerated on account of their religion, had perished in the English jails. 2 This was also the fate of numerous Protestant Dissenters, as well as of Catholics and especially so of the new sects of Baptists and Quakers. Puritans and Presbyterians were, by turns, oppressors and oppressed; but they were also theoretically convinced that it was a matter of conscience to tolerate no other religion than 1 BAYLE, " Oeuvres," ii. 412. * MACKINTOSH, "History of the English Revolution," pp. 158-160. Ac- cording to the calculation of this historical investigator, there were in England, from 1660 to 1685, about 25,000 persons imprisoned on account of their religion, and 15,000 families utterly ruined. 70 LAWS AGAINST HERESY IN AMERICA AND SWEDEN. their own, the moment that they should possess the means of exercising compulsion. So soon as the very men who had escaped from persecution in the mother country founded new States on the soil of North America, they devised a body of laws unequalled for their severity and intolerance. 1 Catholic priests were put to death, if they were but seen in the country ; Quakers were hanged ; the mildest punish- ments of the new Code, for them and other heterodox persons, were branding, banishment, and piercing through the tongue with a red-hot iron. In that land which, since the Declaration of Independence, in the year 1776, has carried out to its widest extent a separation between the Church and the State, there was, in the seventeenth century, a theocracy established that so mingled together religion and civil life as to destroy all freedom ; and, for the like of which, a second example is not to be found in history. The state of things in Lutheran Sweden, came the nearest to that of the Calvinists in America. There it was a law of the State, that whoever remained a year under the ban of the Church should be expelled from the kingdom ; that a person under excommunication should be excluded from all social intercourse ; and further, it was ordained that whoso- ever, in theological matters, should use even an objectionable mode of speech, and would not recant it, should be dispos- sessed, and transported out of the country. 2 As a matter of course, in such a state of affairs, and with such a restrictive system of laws, a theological literature, and scientific culture of the sacerdotal order in Sweden, must come to naught. / O Mackintosh has strikingly remarked what an incalculable amount of despotic power Protestantism placed in the hands of princes, for, by committing to them the chief authority over religion, it armed them with powers whose 1 The so-styled " Blue Laws" of New England. Dr. Spalding, Bishop of Louisville, in North America, has given an elaborate analysis of them in his " Miscellanea : comprising Reviews, Lectures, and Essays." Louis- ville, 1855, pp. 355-380. * u Kirchengesetz und Ordnung Karls XI." Stockholm, 1687, pp. 7-33. DESPOTIC POWER OF PKOTESTANT PRINCES. 71 exercise was not restrained either by law or custom, of regulated by experience, and whose limits were undefined. 1 This notion, however, became so intertwined with Protestant views, that theologians, when they were urging persons to conformity with the Church of the country, and writing against Separatists, made loyalty towards the sovereign, and veneration for the law and authorities, their most weighty arguments. It is thus Archbishop Tillotson expatiates on this theme : " That whosoever cannot, like the Apostles, show a directly Divine mission, is committing an offence against authority and the law, by proclaiming any other doctrine than that approved of by them." 2 Even in a Catholic country, in France, the theory that the religion of the king should be also that of all good subjects, had, in the seventeenth century, met with general accept- ance. To it especially is to be attributed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, by Louis XIV., and the attempt to change Protestants into Catholics, by all means, gentle and coercive, allowable and unallowable. It is a fact that the Intendants and Magistrates were accustomed to bring forward, as a decisive argument to Protestants, that it was "the command of the King;" and the reproach which Bayle makes to the Catholic clergy is, that they suffered this to be done, and did not loudly protest against it, although such a proceeding was contrary to the Catholic religion. The reproach was not unjust; 3 and the French clergy had, one hundred years afterwards, to wipe away, in streams of 1 " History of the Revolution." Ed. Paris, i. 230. " The execution of the prerogative, of which neither law nor experience had defined the limits." 2 See his treatise or discourse, " The Protestant Religion Vindicated from Novelty." WORKS, London, 1751, ii. 247. In later times has DAUBEKY ("Appendix to the Guide to the Church," ii. 434) put in a very prominent light a separation from the National Church as a crime of disobedience against the highest authority in the State. Every one acquainted with the state of affairs in England is aware that the same motive has still a considerable influence with certain classes of the population. 3 " Oeuvres," ii. 348. 72 THE EVIL AND ITS REMEDY. their best blood, this fault of their predecessors. The same Bayle remarks that "the Royal Edicts which suppressed Protestantism were referred to in books and pastoral writings, as if they had been ' Sacraments.' ' n A precedent Protestant author, Brueys, endeavours, in a work of his, upon the obedience which Christians owe to the temporal power, to show that the Protestants were bound in conscience to obey the Royal Edicts which forbade their assembling for Divine worship ! Instead of an Ecclesiastical repudiation of his work, it obtained praise and commendation ! 2 From the excess of the evil out of the paroxysm of the malady there arose gradually the recovery. It required a lonjr time. Several circumstances concurred together to o o bring ultimately about a more endurable state of things. There was, in the first place, the internal languor of the Protestant State Church namely, of the most powerful of them all, the English, which was severely damaged by the consequences of its own victory the Revolution of 1688. With the eighteenth century had appeared such a wide and deeply-penetrating decay of religion, and such a temper of 1 " Oeuvres," ii. 33. a In a note appended to the Introduction in this book, the author remarks, with reference to the persecution of the French Protestants by Louis XIV., that in writing the above paragraph he would have wished to have called attention to the fact that " Pope Innocent was greatly displeased at the oppression of the Protestants in France, and took steps to have them treated with more lenity." The author, however, adds, he could not at the moment discover the authorities upon which this statement rested ; but whilst his work was passing through the press he had dis- covered, and therefore cites them. They are MAZURES, " Histoire de la Revolution de 1688," Paris, 1825, ii. 126 ; and MACAULAY'S well- known work (Tauchnitz Edit., ii. 250). The author adds : " It is notorious that the relations between the Pope (Innocent) and the King (Louis XIV.) were not merely unsatisfactory, but actually hostile, and the Pope was therefore under the necessity of seeking to attain his object not by a direct appeal to the French King, but through another channel. He therefore commissioned his Nuncio, D'Adda, in London, to pray of King James II. of England that he might intercede with Louis XIV. in favour of the persecuted Protestants. James declined complying with this request, although he himself did a good deal for an alleviation of their sufferings." CLESARO-PAPISM. 7.3 indifferentism had become dominant, that in the upper classes there was not so much of that kind of zeal which is necessary for the persecution of people for a different opinion. Indif- ferentism had gone so far, that strangers, like Montesquieu, received in England the impression that there existed no religion any more ; and serious men, like Gibson and Butler, expressed their anxiety lest the whole nation should fall into demoralization and infidelity. 1 The sects of dissenters were left to act as they pleased, because their doings were regarded as mere folly, or harmless fanaticism ; and as to the Catholics in England, they had shrivelled up into a small, quiescent, scarcely perceptible group ; and persons were ashamed to put in motion the heavy hammer of the Penal Laws for the purpose of crushing a feeble and scarcely visible antagonist. The state of affairs in Ireland was, however, far different. There the interests of the Protestant party still required that the majority of the nation should be kept in a state of Helotism. But in England, to the feeling of indifferentism, which allowed things to go on as they might, was added that disposition in favour of right and freedom peculiar to the Anglo-Saxon race ; and which served to arouse still more and more an inclination towards religious toleration Germany, during the seventeenth, and at the beginning of the eighteenth, adhered constantly to the track of the six- teenth century. The yoke of the ecclesiastical princes' dominion "the Caesaro- Papism," as people called it weighed with undiminished and suffocating force upon the Protestant Church system. Almost every well-disposed man complained of it ; and, forgetful that it was the fathers and reformers of the New Church who had put this bandage upon their child in its cradle, at its birth, they said, with Valentin Andrea, " that Satan had been the inventor of Ca3saro-Papism." 2 Executions, too, on account of religion, still continued. 3 The reaction against Pietism led to new 1 " Quarterly Review," vol. cii. p. 463. 2 ANTON BOHME'S u Schriften," ii. 986. 3 In Sweden, Banier of Stargard was executed, because he did not think as a true Lutheran concerning the doctrine of " Justification." At 74 RATIONALISM IN GERMANY. and endless religious oppressions and vexations. No one was allowed to meet with others for religious purposes. 1 There was soon added to this the hostility of the authorities against the disciples of Zinzendorf. It was forbidden, under pain of banishment, to circulate the books of the Moravians. 2 In the Prussian States Lutherans were taken to task, and the Government prohibited religious practices that were distasteful to the Calvinists. People were so accustomed to religious despotism, and to the interference of the authorities in private life, under religious pretexts, that persons of the world, in their writings, urged the authorities to bring before the tribunals and severely punish expressions used in social intercourse which did not sound as being quite ortho- dox! 3 In the meantime by the middle of the last century Germany had become thoroughly weary of the theology of the sixteenth century. The dogmatic system of the Con- cordian-Book and the Heidelberg Catechism, with their internal contradictions and their social-political consequences, lay like a mountain upon the German mind. The tsvo chief supports of the old Protestant system the authority of the University Professors and the Church Government of Princes were worn out and decayed. The Professors became Rationalists ; and, on the throne of the principal Protestant State, there sat a Supreme Bishop of the Church of his country, who, as he said, " never lived under the one roof Kbnigsberg, John Adelgreiff was, in 1636, beheaded and burned. At Lubech, Gunther was beheaded on account of his Socinian views in 1687, on the recommendation of the Jurist faculty of Kiel, and of the theological faculty of Wittenberg. ARNOLDS, " Kirchenhist.," ii. 643. 1 John James Moser reports in his Biography, p. 191, that in Auspach- isch, for a few persons singing a hymn together in their own homes they were thrust into the tower ! "Whole volumes are filled with Penal edicts against Pietists and Conventicles. 2 MECSELS, "Hist. Lit. Magazin," 1790, ii. 26. * This is required, for example, by Bernard von Rb'hr, in his introduc- tion to " Staats-klugheit," (Leipsic, 1718, p. 292.) with respect to the then of ten -repeated expression, " that a way to salvation was to be found in all religions." REACTION IN GERMANY AND FRANCE. 75 with religion," and whose favourite occupation it was to mock the clergy, who, in his eyes, were only a heap of blockheads, sluggards, and profitless bread-consumers I 1 With wonderful rapidity a flood of rationalism and infidelity, under the mask of theology, poured over Germany ; and everywhere theo- logians and preachers were the first to yield to it. Frederick the Second's expression "That in his States everyone might become blessed (work out his salvation) after his o\vn fashion" portrayed the revolution that had taken place. By the want of faith in the princes and theologians (a sentiment which soon communicated itself to the upper classes in Germany), persons showed themselves well content with the temporal and police-like treatment of ecclesiastical affairs; but it also indisposed them to the application of compulsory measures, upon religious grounds. The liberty of taking part in, or withdrawing from, a particular form of worship, was generally desired and conceded. This led further ; it appeared to be natural and reasonable that confessional restrictions and the civil inequalities of various religions should be done away with. Then, the separation hitherto existing between Lutherans and Calvinists had also lost much of its significance since the diffusion of the Rational- istic mode of thinking. The old opposition between the Catholic Church and that of the Protestants remained, however, as strongly marked as before. Denmark, which, in respect to religion, was accustomed to follow the German current, did, however, in the years 1777 and 1779, issue ordinances by which the regular (Catholic) clergy were prohibited, upon pain of death, from entering the country. 2 In France, the violent and hateful proceedings against / 1 O O Protestants, and the consequences of these proceedings the emigration of so many thousands, which had inflicted a deep wound upon the prosperity of the country had also aroused a strong and long- continued reaction. The emigrants, amongst whom were many men of scientific attainments, 1 "Fur die protestantische Kirche und deren Geistlichkeit, ein Journal," 1810, ii. 84. 2 EEUTER'S " Theolog. Repertorium," 702, vol. Ixx. p. 168. 76 PREVALENCE OF MORE LIBERAL IDEAS. got hold of a great part of the foreign press, and filled all Europe with their complaints. The " dragonnades " and the persecuting tyranny of the French Government passed into a proverb. People began in France to feel ashamed and humbled before foreigners. The " halo " of the monarchy, which had made every measure of Louis XIV. appear in a favourable light to Frenchmen, had been extinguished by the Regency, and the despicable government of Louis XV. The story of Galas afforded an occasion for popular, warm, and eloquently-written treatises concerning " the advantage and rationality of religious freedom;" and then the deistical and indifferentist mode of thought, which had got possession of the upper classes, did the rest. Every turn in the views and disposition of the French people is accustomed to exer- cise a decisive influence upon the mode of thought and condition of all Europe. At that time it was considered in France, as elsewhere, that persecution and restraint only made hypocrites ; that the fact of suffering for the faith, and being able to show martyrs, exalted the self-complacency and the confidence, as well as the authority, of a religious com- munity. It was felt and said that a Church which called for the arm of temporal power to sustain it, and that closed the mouth of its antagonists by compulsion and punishments, did, by so acting, make out a certificate of its own spiritual impotency. In all Europe the idea became more and more prevalent that Churches only needed spiritual weapons for their protection ; and that it was the duty of the temporal power to refrain from all constraint in matters of religion. The old legislation, which rested on the opposite principle, existed certainly for a long time indeed, it still exists, parti- cularly in Sweden and Spain ; but the aversion to put its enactments into execution, with all their exclusive severity, has, for a long time, restrained the temporal power, and has made an alteration in the still existing Penal Laws appear, even to the Governments themselves, desirable. Catholic Bishops also endeavoured now to show that the principle of persecuting and oppressing persons of a different opinion had never been a dogma of the Church ; and if Catholics in former THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND PUBLIC OPINION. 77 times practised persecution, their so doing was not to be regarded as a consequence of a Church dogma. 1 The Catholic Church could, in fact, always, without diffi- culty and without scruple, enter into the new direction of the times, and contribute to the sustainment of public opinion, now becoming continually stronger and more unanimous in disapproving of constraint being employed in matters of religion. It had never put forward the assertion " that sovereigns were to be rulers over the religion of their people." Its whole doctrine of the princely power, and of the relations between governments and their subjects, was limited to the Apostolic demand of "obedience in things lawful." It had always left the most ample room for the most manifold political combinations. It had, remembering what were its own boundaries, never undertaken to decide what should be the amount or the form of political authority, and how much should be left to the mass of the people, or how much to the ruler and his organs it has never de- termined what things should be reserved as matters for the administrative, and what, on the contrary, should be left to the decision of the people, nor what should be dependent upon the consent of the Estates : all these were subjects that did not concern the Church. Freedom of movement in its own spiritual sphere is what it had always demanded. Thus there could not only exist in its bosom states with the most various institutions, as regarded their religious rela- tions, but monarchs also could, without experiencing the disapproval of the Church, make the strongest concessions to persons of another belief in their dominions, as the French King had already done by the Edict of Nantes, and that, too, without any contradiction on the part of the French Episco- pacy and the Papal See. On the part of the Church, it was considered to be reasonable and right that King James II. of England, although a Catholic, should bind himself to maintain the freedom and the possessions of the Anglican 1 So speaks Bishop SPALDLSG in the " Introductory Address" to his " Miscellanea," p. xxx. 78 POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM. Church, and to urge on Parliament a general freedom of religion. He, indeed, did not keep his promise, and thereby brought about his own downfall. It was then to be generally expected that the Church, in its altered situation, and in the revolution that had taken place in the views of nations, should occupy a position where it might show, as it had already done, with what tranquillity it could bear inde- pendent and fully-developed religious communities to exist by its side, whether with equal or with lesser rights. At present there reigns in all Europe the most decided dislike to make use of religion as a political instrument, and just as generally and decidedly do men protest against com- pulsion in religious affairs by the State or the police. As often as, in any part of Europe fwith the exception of Russia, which is herein regarded as privileged), any act of religious restraint takes place, there arises a general sensation an agitation and a demonstration in the opposite direction and that, too, is almost always so well-managed, and so perse- veringly carried out, that it finally gains its point. And yet there is another side to this question. Let us especially consider the position of a State, and a popular Church still in the possession of the entire nation that unity still exists in the country, and that this unity and this religious peace can only be disturbed through the diffusion of a new doctrine by intruders from abroad. If we place ourselves in that which is the general Christian point of view (and abstractedly from the differences prevailing among Christians^, we may certainly say " that the religion and morality of a people are, in every state, inseparably connected with one another, and that an attack upon the one inevitably involves an injury to the other. It i?, then, the business of a government to provide for the public weal for the maintenance of those principles and views by which general morality is sustained, and to prevent all threatened violations of it." 1 From this follows the duty also of pro- tecting the religion of the country. It might here be 1 Compare the opinion of Bossuet with Mazure, " Histoire de la Revolution de 1688." Paris, 1825, iii. 386. THE DUTY OF PROTECTING THE CHURCH. 79 objected that the Christian Church is strong enough, or ought to be strong enough, to protect itself and overcome attacks from heresy or infidelity ; but, as a matter of fact, it is not strong enough to do so. It is not so, in the first place, C5 O ' * because the attack allies itself with the passions and strongest inclinations of the natural man, and also finds a fellow-combatant in the breast of every individual aban- doned to his own impulses, and who is thus arrayed against a religion felt to be burdensome, and requiring so many difficult things for him to do. In the second place, religion is not equal to the struggle, for this reason that is, when its opponents are completely unrestrained, because Christianity is one connected whole of doctrines, precepts, counsels, arid historical facts, in which each is supported and responsible for the other. There are, however, very few who are competent, at one commanding view, to take into contemplation this connexion, and still fewer, perhaps, who are able to keep it clearly and constantly present before their mind. Its an- tagonists direct their attacks always upon isolated points, taken away from their connexion with the whole ; and so the attack seems to be stronger and more plausible than the defence. On this account the weight of the power of the State must be thrown into the scale in favour of the assailed religion. Furthermore, no advocate for the freedom of attack on existing religion has ever yet succeeded in determining exactly the limits within which that freedom is to be permissible. Logically has this freedom never yet been carried out in the world not even in England, nor in North America. On the other hand, it may indeed be replied that the defenders of protection to be afforded by the State to religion, and for compulsion for, without such, protection cannot be made effective are, on their side, not in a position to point out any rational limits, up to which the repression of new doctrines and the defence of the State Church may proceed. In times of religious excitement such a repression, if severely and thoroughly carried into execution, becomes an awful tyranny, which revolts all minds against it; and the reaction 80 PRESENT STATE OF THE CHURCHES. from which is far more destructive to the Church than a state of defencelessness would have been. This, then, at the end, is the only thing to be said : That, since the great divisions of the sixteenth century, a condition of circumstances has come to pass in the cultivated states of Europe, and the intercourse and the intermingling of nations, (with the facility of communication,) have so increased, and the reciprocal influence of populations has become so incal- culable, and public opinion exercises such an irresistible power, that Governments, in their own interests, as well as in that of the various churches, find themselves placed under the necessity of refraining, so far as it is possible, from any interference with religious entanglements, and of preserving for the members of various religious creeds, so long as they really can be called Christian, equal duties and also equal civil rights. And then these Governments, looking tranquilly on at the spiritual struggle of the Churches, must still be careful to provide for the preserva- tion of the public law, of civil order, and the perfect freedom of all. For one hundred years past the whole course of development in Europe has led to this and we may see in it the hand of Divine Providence that Protestants and Catholics have been approaching each other more and more have been brought into closer, more frequent, and more intimate civil relations with one another and have been placed under the necessity of a common action and a common understanding. The old confessional bulwarks and walls of separation have fallen down more and more, and become untenable. We can no longer withdraw from one another we can no longer retire back to the old distance and separation, however troublesome and painful the conse- quences of the present state of things may be. And many problems and puzzles which have sprung from this inter- mingling, however insoluble they now appear to us, may yet with time find a solution ; or, at least, it is to be hoped they will. Our posterity will one day perceive that this inter- twining and mingling has yet had preponderating beneficial consequences ; that it A CHRISTIAN STATE. 81 " Like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in its head. " At the same time, however, the State can and must (if it will not abandon its cause altogether and yield itself, as cap- tured, to the destructive forces and tendencies of the age) pre- serve and defend its character as a Christian State. It may not put off and give up what is common to all Christian Churches, because it must, in the existing equality of creeds, do so with what is peculiar as to individual religious church com- munities, and does not afford to their doctrines or institutions a governmental guarantee. The Christian social elements and principles are those by which marriage, the family, childhood, the foundations of civil order, are fortified and consecrated ; the social virtues of neighbourly love, industry, chastity, and moderation have become Christian duties ; and with them is bound up the relation between the civil power and its subjects. These are all built upon one sanctified basis. This whole Chris- tian social order, and its sureties in doctrine and in life, must be maintained at all cost, by every State which desires to con- tinue in existence. And every State, too, must be prepared with a negation if there is required from it, as is now fre- quently done, by an appeal to " the freedom of science," to yield up such things to the assaults of " the scientific," and of their destructive doctrines, whether couched under the name of a " materialist theory of nature," or of a " critical, analytical treatment of history." The State must be pre- pared to refuse permission to do mischief it must act precisely as if one were to say of a tree, that it might still hope to bloom, if permission were once given to destroy its roots through which hitherto it had imbibed sap, and strength, and life. 62 THE CHURCH AND CIVIL FREEDOM. A FEW years ago, the " Privy Councillor of Justice," Pro- fessor Stahl of Berlin, in some printed lectures of his, 1 made a sharp attack upon the social and political character, as well as influence of the Catholic Church. With respect to what he says on the point of religious toleration, I shall not sub- ject it to any further examination. The description which I have already given of the historical development of this question will, when compared with that of Herr Stahl, be sufficient for forming a judgment upon it. Herr Stahl, however, goes much further. According to his theory, Pro- testantism gives, by its "justification from faith, a higher degree of inward (moral) freedom to man, and carries him forward thereby (" to a certain extent," he cautiously adds) " also to a degree of external (political) freedom." According to this, he assumes that the States which have become Pro- testant have attained, by their change of religion, to greater freedom than the Catholic. I cannot refrain from a brief historical examination of this assertion. Stahl points out the chief doctrine, from which he deduces 1 "Der Protestantismus als politisches Princip." Berlin, 1853. I confess that I had not paid any particular attention to this work. I only lately read it, when I wished to write upon the subject. I have perused it with astonishment. I really had no idea that one in the position of the author could possibly have indulged in such notions and treatment of history. LUTHERAMSM AND POLITICAL FREEDOM. 83 such great political blessings, more precisely as the doctrine of imputed righteousness; and he is quite correct when he, in this "article of the standing and falling Church," as well as the same in the Concordian-Formulas, and of the whole old Protestant theology, recognises the dogma in which the contrast between the Catholic Church and Protestantism, in its old form, is most sharply marked out. I must, however, remark, that he with this, his favourite doctrine, as the mother of political freedom, stands somewhat isolated. All, or almost all, learned theologians of his own faith in Germany, as well as elsewhere, have renounced it. Exegetists acknow- ledge that it is foreign to the New Testament, and that Luther had only introduced it into one of the Epistles of St. Paul by a false translation ; and dogmatic theologians have repudiated the attempt to establish it on speculative or biblical grounds. I, for myself, undertake to point out to him for every single one who adopts it, fifteen who have given it up as untenable. 1 Let us now see how it stands with the greater measure of political freedom which the " imputation" doctrine is said to have brought to the people. We will begin with the Scan- dinavian States, as those in which Lutheranism has developed itself most purely, without any foreign interference, and has been able to unfold its social and political consequences without any obstacle. The Englishman, Lord Molesworth, who made himself thoroughly acquainted with the Protestant North, remarks in the year 1692, "In the Roman Catholic religion, with the head of the Church in Rome, is a principle of resistance 1 Stahl refers to p. 98 of Baxter's ascetic -writings, which he far prefers to the " Exercises of St. Ignatius." He appears not to know that this certainly distinguished theologian made it the peculiar task of his whole life to contend against the Protestant doctrine of " Justification," and especially the "imputation" dogma, as an un-Biblical and soul- destructive error ; and this, too, as well in his practical-ascetic as in his dogmatic writings. For forty long years did Baxter oppose this doctrine which Herr Stahl regards as the innermost mystery of the Christian religion. Baxter pursued it in all its windings, and hunted it out of every corner in which it sought refuge. G 2 84 THE SCANDINAVIAN STATES. against unlimited civil power; but in the North, the Lutheran Church is entirely subject and subservient to the civil power, and the whole northern population of Protestant countries have lost their freedom since they exchanged their religion for a better." The cause for this he seeks in the absolute and sole dependence of the clergy upon the monarch. " The Lutheran clergy," he says, " protect their political power in a chamber of their own at the Diet, although at the same time they are dependent on the Crown, as their temporal and spiritual head." 1 In Denmark the Lutheran doctrine obtained as complete a victory as possibly could be desired. Its influence and its strength are neither disturbed nor lamed by the existence of sects, nor by any remnants of the old religion. Denmark and Sweden are still purely Lutheran countries. The social and political consequences of the victory over the Catholic Church in Denmark are described by Barthold in a very few words: 2 "A dog-like servitude weighs down again upon the Danish peasant ; and the citizens, deprived of all repre- sentative power, groan under oppressive burdens, and the quartering of soldiers upon them. The North has become Lutheran, but the King and the nobility share the dominion between them, and even the children of preachers and sacristans continue to be serfs" The nobility at once made use of the Reformation to appropriate to themselves not only the greatest part of the Church property, but also that belonging to the free peasants. At the same moment (in 1569) by the increased severity of the Religious Article, the non-reception of which was punish- able with death, they drove strangers out of the country. 3 From 1536 to 1660 the nobility had become rich and power- 1 "Account of Denmark," p. 236. 2 " Geschichte von Riigen und Pommern," iv. 2, 294. 8 This and the following facts are taken from ALLEN'S " History of the Kingdom of Denmark," translated into German by Falck, 1846, pp. 287, 296, 304, 309. The Copenhagen Society assigned to this book a prize, as the best work of its kind published. See " Berliner Polit. Wochenblatt," 1832, p. 224. OPPRESSION OF THE PEASANT CLASS. 85 ful by the oppression of the other orders, and the monopoly of all state privileges in their own hands. To the wants of the State they contributed nothing. The oppressive taxes had to be borne by the poorer classes. " The impoverish- ment and degradation of the peasant class, in consequence of the strong and stern rule of the nobility, operated most disadvantageously for the State." " The dwellers upon the great estates of the Church were now obliged," says Allen, " to exchange the mild rule of the clergy for the oppressive yoke of the nobility. Forced labours were arbitrarily multi- plied, and the peasantry were treated as thralls." 1 " Agri- culture sank to a much lower degree than it had been in the Middle Ages ; the population declined, and the country was overspread with untenanted farms." Through new nobility privileges, by the cruelty of the Game Laws, 7 introduced directly after the Reformation, and by forced compacts, was the servitude, the spoliation, and the degradation of the once free peasant class completed. Not only were the peasantry, but also the citizens and the clergy in short, the whole nation was trampled under foot by a nobility comprising from eight to nine hundred individuals. 3 Christian IV. (1588-1648) made an attempt to procure some alleviation of this oppression ; but his attempt was frustrated by the resistance of the nobility, whose power proved to be greater than that of the monarch. The slavery of the peasantry continued. King and citizens were in reality the bondmen of the nobles. By the Revolution of 1660, the power of the nobility was broken ; but then, on the other hand, King Frederick III. and his successors were declared to be absolute monarchs. The Royal Law of 1665 decreed that the King of Denmark was bound to take no oath, and need impose on himself no duties of any kind, but, with uncontrolled and boundless power, do as he pleased. By this means was lost an interest ' "ALLEN," pp. 310-11. 2 In 1537, by pulling out the eyes. Even the punishment of death was inflicted for keeping a hunting dog. ALLEN, 313. * ALLEN, p. 319. 86 CONDITION OF THE DANISH PEOPLE. in public affairs, and the public spirit and co-operation of the people with the government was annihilated. 1 The peasantry remained in the 'same slavery as before, and the nobility retained a great part of their privileges. The wretchedness of the peasantry was still further aggravated, after the year 1687, by new despotic laws; "so that one-fifth part of the farms on the crown-lands lay waste, and things appeared to be still worse on private estates." 2 In the year 1702, Frederick IV. abolished slavery; but another yoke attach- ment to the soil was soon put in its place ; so that the position of the peasantry, by a regulation of 1764, was little, or not at all, different from their former thraldom. The result was, that the population of the country in the eighteenth century diminished from year to year, innumer- able peasant farms were abolished, and even whole villages destroyed to make room for manors. 3 Schools were want- ing. The education of the people still stood, in 1766, at the very lowest grade. It was not until 1804 that personal freedom was conferred on twenty thousand families, who had been in a state of servitude. 4 The Provincial Estates, introduced by Frederick VI., did not restrain the absolutism of the Danish monarch. An observer, favourable to the Danes, Mr. Laing, a Scotchman, remarked in the year 1839 that since the Danes are, politically, quite passive, and had no voice in their own affairs, they had found themselves, in spite of many good regulations of the government, merely in the same state in which they had been in 1660, and had remained two hundred years behind the Scotch, Dutch, and Belgians, with whom, according to their population and position, they best could be compared. 8 1 ALLEN, p. 336. 2 ALLEN, pp. 389, 431. 1 ALLEN, p. 438. Out of 600 landed proprietors in " Holland" before the year 1660, there were no more than 100 remaining in 1766. 4 How much remained to be done for " the Danish peasantry," is shown by a frightful description of their situation in WEGENER'S u Chronik Friedrichs VI.," in the u Gegenwart." Leipz., 1853, vol. viii. p. 473. 5 " Tour in Sweden." London, 1839, p. 12. LUTHERANISM IN SWEDEN. 87 In March, 1 848, " after a hundred years of legalised and systematic despotism," Denmark had its revolution ; and the government of Frederick VII. was brought, by frequent changes of ministry, into relations with a Diet, in which (in most striking contrast to the former state of things) the peasant-order preponderated. To this must be added a press, which in boundless licentiousness equalled that of the French, in 1793. 1 A new institution a national convoca- tion (a Reichsrath), two-thirds of which were elected by the people, was created ; and now the fate of the greatly enfeebled monarchy will very speedily be decided. In Sweden, Gustavus Vasa had introduced the Lutheran religion, and by robbing an immoderately wealthy Churcli, had founded a strong monarchy and kingdom. The people were, in fact, cheated out of their religion ; for Gustavus had always denied that he had introduced any new doctrine ; and fifty years afterwards, notwithstanding the changes that had been made, a great part of the people were not at all aware that they were not Catholics ! 2 By degrees, however, Sweden became a thoroughly Lutheran country. Three results now followed. The first we will permit to be described by the classical historian of Sweden Geijer. After the great religious wars, he says, the share of the Commons, in Ecclesiastical affairs, was suspended, and in the same degree that of the princely power was confirmed. Thus the Church lost more and more its connection with the people, and soon became merely a monarchical or aristo- cratical external form a clerical addition to the military and civil officers of the State. 3 The second result which followed the subjugation and spoliation of the Church by the monarch was, a new public law. Gustavus declared that the commonage lands of the villages and hamlets, and even also the rivers, weirs, and mining districts finally, even all uncultivated lands, were 1 "Allgemeine Zeitung," 1859, p. 5932. 2 GEIJER'S " Geschichte Schwedens," ii. 218. 1 u Ueber die innern gesellschaftlichen Verhaltnisse unsere Zeit mit besonderer Riicksicht auf Schweden." Stockholm, 1845, p. 47. 88 RESULTS OF THE REFORMATION. the property of the Crown. Therewith was, as Geijer says, an arbitrary power given into the hands of the King, which was extremely perilous to the rights of private property belonging to individuals. 1 Gustavus unhesitatingly per- severed in his spoliations ; and, since he looked upon himself as the universal heir to Church property, he took also the farms wherever he pleased. 2 He could not, however, keep the whole inheritance of the Church to himself : the nobility, whose support he much needed, had to be adopted as co-heirs ; and, in the end, obtained an equal, or still larger share of profit than the monarchy, from the change in religion. As a third result of the Reformation, came that dislocation of the national relations of the Estates, that discord into civil order which has given to the history of Sweden for three hundred years its changeful character, and has occasioned a series of revolutions, such as never occurred in any European state until 1789; and which has also elicited revengeful feelings, party spirit, intrigues, a violent disposi- tion, corruption, and caprice, as prominent national character- istics. 3 Three of their kings have the Swedes (namely the nobles) murdered Erick IV., Charles XII. and Gus- tavus III ; two of them have been deposed, Sigismund and Gustavus IV; and finally, they have driven out their native, hereditary dynasty, and presented or sold their crown to a foreign officer, one of Napoleon's generals. Here, too, as well as in Denmark, there has arisen out of the Reformation an oppressive and pettifogging domination on the part of the nobility ; and it was only because " the laws and customs of Sweden in its early rude state had been so excellent," as Arndt says, " that Sweden was saved from the fate of Russia and Poland. 4 There was wanting the O? dignified, independent position, and the regulating influence of the Church. The Lutheran clergy were always too dependent on the possessors of power." Arndt further remarks, " that the priests " (for the clergy there are called priests) "have always been accused of never having originated 1 GEIJER, ii. 101. * GEIJER, ii. 110. See AKXDT, pp. 29, 31. Schwedische Geschichten." Leipsic, 1839, p. 30. 4 1C DOMINATION OF THE NOBILITY. 89 an important movement ; and, also, that they, more than any other of the Estates, have been the most subservient to those possessed of power. 1 The Reformation had given over the clergy completely into the hands of the king and the nobility. Every nobleman residing in a parish had the right of choosing the pastor, whom he paid whatever he chose to give. 2 The four Estates were represented at the Diet ; but the nobility, who possessed almost all the public offices of the kingdom, were the only real Estate of the monarchy, and dared not be outvoted by the other Estates. As to the peasantry being under the control of the nobility they were only indirectly subjects of the kingdom. 3 As the nobility had, already, on the change of religion, and at the division of the Church plunder, gained immensely in posses- sions, privileges, power, and influence, so was their gain still further increased, when the government was compelled to alienate its domains, and could only alienate them to nobles. 4 There were, indeed, after the death of Gustavus, attempts occasionally made on the part of the clergy to withdraw themselves from the domination of the nobility. They de- sired that the admissibility to office should be made possible for the sons of preachers ; but the nobility were too strong for them, and the hopes that were held out to Bishops, Superintendents, and Doctors of Theology, of being them- selves ennobled, sufficed to separate the higher from the lower clergy. 5 That a married clergy cannot attain to a resolute corporate position, or cannot maintain it, lies in the nature of things. Under the yoke of a nobility-mastership the pea- sant class had been impoverished and degraded, and the people had become feeble, wretched, and oppressed. 6 To free themselves from this yoke, they endeavoured in Sweden, as well as in Denmark, to make the King's power unlimited. Thus, in the year 1680, the Estates declared, " That the King was bound to no special form of government"; and in the 1 ARXDT, p. 47. 2 GEIJER, iii. 400. * GEIJER, iii. 18. 4 GEIJER, " Ueber die innern gesellsch, Verhaltnisse," p. 65. * GEIJER, " Verhaltnisse," p. 110. ARNDT, p. 80. 90 SWEDISH FREEDOM. year 1682, "the Estates held it as absolutely unreasonable that the King should be compelled, by statutes or ordinances, first to hear the Estates ;" and from this time was adopted the maxim, "That the King's will is law" and everything, as Geijer says, was now interpreted to the advantage of an Autocracy. The Estates were no longer called the Estates of the Kingdom, but of his Royal Majesty ; and in the year 1693 the monarchy was declared to be fully absolute. " The King," it was said, " could, without any responsibility, go- vern according to his own will. 1 This led to the pernicious reign of Charles XII., who had, in answer to the Diet, told them "he would send one of his boots to preside over them." His reign plunged the country into the greatest misery, and brought it to the very brink of destruction. After his murder kingly absolute power was condemned, and what is called " Swedish freedom," that is to say, the mastership of the nobility, was re-established. All power and official administration, all great privileges and superior rights, fell again into the hands of the nobility. In the acts of the Diet, from 1720 till 1772, "aristocratic ignorance and arrogance were " (according to Arndt's remark) " expressed in the most shameless terms against what were called the lower Estates." The monarchy was a mere misty shadow despicable and impotent. At the same time, two factions of the nobility contended fiercely for dominion. These were the " hats " and the " caps" or the French and Eussian parties. At length Gustavus III. brought about the bloodless revolu- tion of 1772 : the Council was dissolved, and the Kingr aorain 7 O c5 ruled as lord. But he was not long a match for the nobility. The officers of his own army betrayed him, and he fell at last, in 1792, the victim of a conspiracy of the nobility. 2 "Until now," says Geijer, in the year 1845, "no change in the representation has ever taken place in Sweden, unless in and by a revolution ; and of revolutions, after our own fashion, we have had too many." 3 Since the assassination of 1 GEIJER, pp. 113, 115. * ARDNT, p. 92. * " Ueber die innern gesellsch. Verhaltnisse," p. 128. POSITION OF AFFAIRS IN GERMANY. 91 Gustavus, Sweden has become the hotbed of intrigue and corruption. Finland was parted with to Russia lost by the treacherous sale of the fortresses Gustavus IV. was de- throned even his posterity were excluded, and a foreign officer, unknown in Sweden, was preferred, to be the founder of a new dynasty, to the descendants of Vasa. The acqui- sition of Norway continuing independent was no compen- sation for the loss of Finland. Sweden now stands powerless before the mighty Northern Colossus, whose cannons can almost reach its capital ; and it can but now abide whatever Russia may be pleased to decide concerning its destiny. Mr. Laing, the Scotchman, who has occupied himself much with the political and moral condition of the Swedish people, and both in the one respect and the other, assigns to Sweden the lowest place amongst the nations of Europe, has, although himself a decided Protestant, come to the conclusion that the Reformation has injured more than it has benefited the moral and social state of the Swedish nation ; and that the Lutheran Church has shown itself to be completely powerless in its influence on the people ; whilst the Catholic Church, on the contrary, had been in its time, as he affirms, an effective system of moral discipline. 1 In Germany it was a natural result of the Reformation that the power of the prince and of the imperial cities (of their magistrates namely) should be increased, and the free- dom of the lower order of nobles, the rural classes, and the peasantry diminished. 2 The German clergy had previously been (unfortunately for themselves) the richest and most powerful in the world, and the change was now so complete, that their Protestant successors became, according to Menzel, the mere serviceable tools of political power, and within a very short time the most insignificant link in the chain with which the new order of things had bound the nation. 3 A brief survey of the position of affairs in particular Ger- man states will serve to show more clearly the great change 1 " Tour in Sweden," p. 125. 2 LEO'S li Universalgeschichte," iii. 208. 3d Edit. * " Xeuere Geschichte der Deutschen," v. 5, 6. 92 MECKLENBURG. that the Reformation had effected in the political and social condition of the nations. In Mecklenburg the first effect was, that the order of pre- lates disappeared from the Diet. Since the year 1552, only two orders had appeared there the Ritterschaft, or Equestrian Order; and the Landschaft, or Provincial Estates. The nobles as well as the dukes had carried off their share of the Church property ; and there now began a system of subjugation and plunder of the peasantry, whose rights, since the suppression of the Church, no one any longer re- presented. The plan was to appropriate the labour of the peasantry for the benefit of the nobles, and to drive them from their farms by the process called " Legan," or laying. At the Diet of Giistrow, in the year 1607, the peasants were declared to be mere colonists, who were bound to give up pos- session of their lands, even of those that they might have held from time immemorial, at the desire of their landlords. In the year 1621, the unlimited disposal of the farm lands was secured to the landlords ; and subsequently, by the ordinances of 1633, 1646, and 1654, the personal freedom of the pea- santry was completely annihilated, and all persons of this class declared to be serfs. 1 As the peasants frequently en- deavoured to escape from this slavery by flight into other countries, they were punished, when they were caught, by flogging, and other severe penalties were inflicted upon them, and occasionally even they were put to death. In the year 1660, indeed, the punishment of death was openly affixed to the crime of leaving the principality. " Then," says Boll, " was forged the slave-chain which our peasantry had to drag within a few decades of the present time. Their lot was only in so far better than that of negro slaves, that it was forbidden to sell them singly, like so many head of cattle, by public auction, to the highest bidder, but it happened never- theless often enough that people traded underhand with their serfs, precisely as they did with their horses and cows. About the middle of the eighteenth century it is observed 1 BOLL'S " Geschichte Mecklenburgs." New Brandenburg, 1855 i. p. 352 ; ii. 142-147-48. POMERANIA. 93 the peasantry of Mecklenburg were treated by the nobles like the most abject slaves, 1 and they attempted, whenever they could, to make their escape, even to Russia. To pre- vent this, they were again threatened with condemnation to forced labour in the prisons or fortresses ; and " there was," according to the ordinance, "a complete depopulation of our generally thinly-populated country, and the ruin of all the landed estates was greatly to be feared." 2 In the year 1820 serfage was abolished. In Pomerania, which, down to 1637, had its own Duke, though it was afterwards united with the Margravate of Brandenburg, Protestantism had won the victory so early as 1534. Duke Philip had well weighed the project that the new doctrine would bring him " in the wealth of the clergy the numerous prerogatives and the supreme headship of the National Church." 3 The citizen?, say the historians of Pomerania, having attained the spiritual goal (of the Reformation), renounced mere earthly freedom ; and in Stralsund and Stettin all representation of the Commons ceased. The lower population of the towns became " pain- fully sobered from its dream of civil freedom, and looked with contented resignation to heaven." 4 The confiscated Church property was squandered here, as in many other places, in luxury, drink, and gormandizing. The fate of the peasantry in Pomerania was what it had been in Mecklen- burg. Since the Reformation the "laying" of the villages had been carried on with great earnestness and success, and sheep pastures and manors took their place. Sometimes the nobles would lay waste the peasants' farms, inclose them in their estates, and by that means make them free from taxa- tion. 5 The oppression of the peasantry became so atrocious, that even those who still held farms fled the country. 6 But 1 FRANKE'S " Altes und neues Mecklenburg," i. 102. 2 BOLL, ii. 569. 3 BARTH;OLD'S " Geschichte von Pommern," iv. 2, 259. 4 BARTHOLD, 297-299. 5 ARNDT, " Gesch. der Leibeigenshaft in Pommern und Riigen," 1803, p. 143. ARNDT, 159, 211 ; BARTHOLD, 365. 94 BRUNSWICK AXD HANOVER. it was, according to Barthold, the principle of the Roman law that first brought down the full curse of slavery upon Poraerania. In the Peasant Ordinance of 1616, 1 they were declared to be "serfs without any civil rights," and preachers were compelled to proclaim fugitive peasants from the pulpit. The peasants whose farms were seized by the nobles were in general completely plundered ; and the Pome- ranian jurist and noble, Balthazar, confessed, in the year 1779, whilst in Germany the original serfs had become almost free, in Pomerania the ancient methods of establishing serf- dom had increased. And down to the present century complaints were made of the desolation of the country, and the thinness of the population. In the territories of Brunswick and Hanover it is very evident how the new absolute ecclesiastical power of the princes, simultaneously with the substitution of the Roman law for the German, which took place subsequently to the Reformation, undermined the ancient liberties of the nation, and paved the way for the bureaucratic mode of government and arbitrary power. The judges and magistrates, taken from the rural districts, were gradually supplanted by lawyers, salaried as princely counsellors ; and cases formerly de- cided by precedent and the law of the country, were now settled by Roman law. 2 The towns lost the independence they had inherited (Brunswick alone retained it for some time longer), "and the rulers, supported by learned disciples of the Roman law, exercised an arbitrary authority before unknown." The confiscated Church property sufficed, at least for some time, for a luxurious and extravagant mode of life in the palaces, and a great increase in the number of attendants. In the courts of law, for the speedy verbal method of trans- acting business, was substituted a tedious, long-winded written process. 8 Down to the middle of the seventeenth 1 DAHXERT, " Urkunden-Sarnmlung," iii. 835. * HAVEMANN, " Geschichte der Lande Braunschweig und Liineburg," 1855, ii. 479. u With all these complaints of the state of the country," says SPITTLER (" Gesch. von Hannover," i. 347), "the Kouian law obtained a complete victory." * HAVEMAXX, ii. 515. THE PRUSSIAN TERRITORIES. 95 century, the cities and the knightly order offered some resistance to the measureless extravagance, oppressive taxes, and demands of the Court ; but the old beneficent institution of Administrative Councils chosen from various orders nobles, prelates, and others, \vho had mediated between sovereigns and their subjects, and whose decisions in cases of dispute were binding also on the princes now fell to decay through the absence of the spiritual members, consequent on the Reformation, and became gradually supplanted by a Princely College. 1 The habits of extravagance engendered and encouraged by the robbery of the Church property occasioned a complete disorder in the finances of the Princi- palities ; the princes took to debasing the coinage, and other immoral means. The nuisance and scandal of " money- clipping," combined with the general luxury and passion for gormandizing and drinking, completed the ruin of thousands. 2 In place of the decisions of the Administrative Councils came ordinances of the governments (first, in the Principa- lity of Calenberg, in 1651); and soon after this the last traces of the ancient freedom and independence of the Estates was annihilated. " The clergy," says Havemann, " had been long (that is, since the Reformation) sunk into dependence, and the nobles had entered into the service of the Court. The cities were languishing for want of public spirit ; and in the after-pains of the great German War, as well as of corrupt internal government, the ' free ' princely power of modern States was unfolding itself over the sad remains of the ancient life and liberty of the Estates." 3 In the Brandenburg and Prussian territories the condition of the Estates, even after the Reformation, remained for a time strong and unbroken. Duke Albert of Prussia was a O man feeble in character, and had, in the consciousness of his very doubtful title, been fearful in his dealings with the Estates ; and the Elector Joachim was, by his own extravagance and that of his paramour, rendered constantly HAVEMANX, iii. 112. * SPITTLER, i. 380. 3 " Geschichte der Lande Braunschw. und Liineburg," iii. 172. 96 CONDITION OF THE PEASANTS. dependent on them for the payment of his debts. 1 His son, John George, found himself (1571 to 1598) in the same pecuniary dependence. The condition of the peasants had become more and more miserable 9 since the Church had fallen ; and the nobles and princes were the only powers in the country. After the seventeenth century, the princely power, by the im- poverishment of the nobles and cities, continually struggled onwards to unrestrained dominion. Military executions, for- merly quite unknown in Germany, became frequent, especially for non-payment of imposts. The Estates were not summoned to meet, and the prince imposed taxes by his own autho- rity. Stenzil has not allowed it to pass unobserved, how, in Prussia also, the princely power being above that of the Church, led to the practice, that affairs of the higher police and the administration, which were formerly discussed and determined by the Estates, should be more constantly decided by princes on their own authority, and settled in the cabinet, 3 so that the Estates became continually more insig- nificant, and the government in an increasing ratio more despotic and bureaucratic. After the reign of the Elector Frederick-William (1640- 1688), the absolute arbitrary power of the government was developed more systematically. A General Diet was not called after 1656 ; and the oppressive taxes imposed not only without the consent, but against the protest of the Estates, were extorted by the Elector with military violence so that the peasants left their farms by troops, and turned robbers. Peasants and nobles fled to Poland, twelve thousand farms lay uncultivated, and the taxes of many thousands of acres were greater than their produce. The Estates of the Duke- dom of Prussia, who had imagined themselves still protected by the treaties with Poland, asserted that all that was left them of their ancient freedom was "the right of complaining of their ruin ;" and they threatened to emigrate. In the Markgravate, the Estates were degraded into a mere credit institution. 4 1 GALLUS, " Gesch. der Mark Brandenburg," iii. 94. 8 STENZEL, u Gesch. d. Preuss. Staats.," i. 347. s " Gesch. des Preuss. Staats." i. 359. 4 STENZEL, ii. 422. THE LUTHERAN CLERGY IN PRUSSIA. 97 It was an unexampled tyranny, and deeds worse than those of the French, when laying waste the Palatinate, were perpe- trated by a prince whom persons afterwards agreed and in his dominions, too to call " the Great ! " Prussia was, according to Stenzel's expression, on the way to a complete Asiatic despotism, which would stifle everything noble and beautiful. To maintain soldiers, and to gratify a passion for the chase (for which the Elector kept three thousand people in his pay), 1 were the objects for which the country was exhausted, and many thousands brought to beggary, whilst, at the same time, the subjec- tion and serfdom of the peasants was maintained in all its severity. Frederick I., the parade-loving first king of Prussia, con- tinued the system of his father ; and the Estates, where they still subsisted, had no other function than, willingly or un- willingly, to vote taxes and guarantee loans. 2 Frederick William I., however, (1713 1740) surpassed even his grand- father ; and with his accession began in Prussia the reign of a petty, capricious, and often cruel despot; 3 a harsh, narrow- minded man, filled with the notion of his own unlimited power, and eager only for money and soldiers, who beat his judges with sticks, to compel them to alter their decisions according to his wishes; who had men hanged "without prolix law-suits," and who decreed, that if a deserter should be harboured in any hamlet or place too poor for a pecuniary fine, the chief inhabitants should be made "to drag carts" for some months. 4 Under this king, the Lutheran clergy had to drink to the very dregs the bitter cup of monarchical Church supremacy. The king himself undertook reforms, in ecclesiastical as well as worldly affairs, in an equally ignorant and arbitrary spirit. He dictated to the Lutheran clergy, as their spiritual head, what subjects they were to treat upon in their pulpits, and what they were to be silent about ; as well 1 STEXZEL, ii. 456. * STEXZEL, iii. 196. 8 " n faut donner une victime au bourreau," said the nobles, speaking of him. MORJENSTERN, " Ueber Fr. Wilh. den Ersten." Brunswick, 1793, p. 140. FORSTER'S " Friedrich Wilhelm I.," ii. 202. H 98 DESPOTISM OF FREDERICK II. as what ceremonies were to be -observed at divine service, and what to be omitted. Thus, for instance, in 1729, he forbid the Lutherans to carry a crucifix or a cross before the body, at funerals, as the custom was known to bear a vexatious relic of Papistry." l His son, Frederick II., was enabled, by his own genius, and the utmost exertion of all the energies of his people, and all the resources of the country, to raise Prussia into the rank of a powerful state of European importance. His government, also, was a pure despotism ; but it was, in the French sense of the word, " an enlightened, philosophical despotism," and the despot was a man of powerful mind a born ruler of men who knew how to inspire his people with a spirit not so much national as devoted to the Prussian state. The most numerous portion of the population remained, however, in the same oppressed, miserable condition as before. The greater part of the rural inhabitants were so entirely without personal freedom, that Buchholtz compares their condition to that of a West Indian colony. 2 Frederick decreed, not only that discharged soldiers should again become subject to their former landlords, but even that their wives, widows, and children should be submitted to the same destiny. 3 Dietereci,the Prussian government statist, describ- ing in 1848 the state of the country in 1806, exclaims, at the conclusion of his portraiture, " How many restraints are there on the freedom of the individual ! How many difficulties are thrown in the way of a man wishing to exercise his energies to improve his condition, and earn as much aa possible ! How much personal dependence is there of one on another. What arbitrary authority ! what violence on the part of the privileged towards the unprivileged or oppressed ! What heavy taxes and personal burdens are laid on the lower classes ! 4 One kind of liberty, however, 1 STENZEL, iii. 474. See also p. 475, the description of the so-called " Priest Review " in Berlin. * " Gemalde des gesellch. Lebens im Konigr. Preussen," i. 19. * Verordnung Vom., 7th April, 1777. ; Ueber Preussische Zustande." Berlin, 1848, p. 13. 4 (I CHURCH AND STATE OPPRESSION IN SAXONY. 99 Frederick had left the people. Every one was allowed to seek salvation in his own way ; and every one might, if he pleased, after the example of the sovereign, announce himself as a mocker of religion. In the Electorate of Saxony, it is very evident how, after the Reformation, the princely power over the whole Church went hand-in-hand with the increase of taxation the oppres- sion of the lower classes, the extinction of ancient liberties, and the ever-growing vice of over-government. The struggle between the Lutherans and Calvinists, which broke out twice under Augustus and Christian I., led to a long series of acts of violence, to depositions and banishments, to the dungeon, the rack, and the scaffold. The government intruded itself into every sphere of life, in order to root out more effectually Calvinism, which had got into the land, and to insure the strictest observance of Lutheranism, which was further secured by a new book of Faith, and an oath to be taken upon it. People became accustomed to violent modes of proceeding, and to a severe and unmerciful treatment of those who were subjects. The cities lost their former independence, the Estates had to submit to the most oppressive laws of the chase, 1 and even, in 1612, the introduction of a secret police ; ' and they were obliged more and more to limit their functions to the granting of taxes, and in undertaking the payment of the Prince's debts. At the Diet of Torgau, in 1555, the Estates declared, "it vrt.s not possible for them to pay the new excise on liquor their lands would become waste, and they would be utterly ruined." But it was maintained, nevertheless, and, in 1582, with the addition of a greatly increased land-tax. 3 The results were such, that even one of the Court preachers declared " that the people were so destitute, that they had scarcely the means of keeping them- selves alive;" and a contemporary reports "that in 1580 the people were so steeped in poverty and hunger, that they 1 All dogs, not belonging to persons whose occupation is the chace, were to have a fore-foot cut off. BOTTICHER, ii. 67. 2 BOTTICHER, ii. 141. 3 GRETSCHEI,, tl Gesch. des .Sachs. Yolkes und Staates," ii. 70. H2 100 THE DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH. had eaten the husks in brewhouses." 1 "It is not to be denied," says Arnold, " that tyranny, injustice, and extortions had risen to the highest point since the Reformation." 2 I refrain from entering into any further consideration of the state of affairs in Germany in Hesse, Wiirtemberg, and still smaller states. It is sufficient to quote StenzePs remark : " Whilst the unlimited power of the princes advanced in many other German countries, no less rapidly than in Prussia, the produce of the subject's toil was, in that country, lavished upon mistresses, favourites, courtiers, cham- berlains, opera singers, dancers, and other objects of princely caprice, and ministrants to princely pleasure, without any of it being expended on the higher purposes of a government. 3 Let us now turn to those countries which accepted Protest- antism in its Calvinistic form, amongst which the Nether- lands and Scotland appear the most prominent. England, with its Church like to none other, is to be considered by itself. We will not speak of Switzerland, since there Catholic and Protestant cantons subsist together, and no one will maintain that civil liberty has flourished more in the latter than in the former. The Netherlands, that dismembered portion of Germany which came forth from the struggle with Spain, in the form of a Republic, but had barely maintained itself as such, through the internal contests and factions of two hundred years, and had vacillated between the "republican" constitu- tion desired and represented by the city aristocracy, and the " monarchical," represented by the Stadtholder-General and the House of Orange. Had Calvinism become generally preva- lent in the country, the power of that house would have been developed, and confirmed as a stable religious or political despotism. "The Dutch Reformed Church," says Niebuhr, " has always, wherever it was free, become coarsely tyran- nical, and has never, either for the spirit it manifested, or the good dispositions of its teachers, deserved any great esteem. The Calvinistic religion has everywhere, in England, 1 " Jenisii Annal. Annaeberg,'' p. 45. * " Kirchenhistorie," i. 792. * " Geschichte des Preuss. Staates," ii. 4, POLITICO-ECCLESIASTICAL STRUGGLES. 101 in Holland, as in Geneva, set up its blood-stained scaffold as well as the Inquisition, without its possessing a single one of the merits of the Catholic. 1 The uncontrolled rule of Calvinism, and with it that of the House of Orange, was prevented, partly by the formation of new sects, partly by the continued adherence to Catholicity of a considerable portion of the population, which was, indeed, robbed of every civil and ecclesiastical right ; but being, by that very means, withdrawn from the influence of party spirit, threw its weight as far as it had any into the scale of the Orange party and the Stadtholdership, and strengthened the opposition to the domination of the Calvin- istic preacher-party. The new Arminian doctrine, which opposed the Calvinistic, brought about the first politico- ecclesiastical struggle. With the execution of Olden-Bar- neveldt, the imprisonment of the Arminians, and the holding of the Dordrecht Synod, the United Calvinist and Orange party obtained a complete victory ; but the party of the States, the chiefs of which were disposed to Arminianism, or at all events friendly to the Arminians, rose again after the death of Maurice. And then, when Holland declared the Provincial Estates the sovereigns of the country, William II. took up arms ; and it seemed to him that he would be able to succeed in subjecting the republic to monar- chical dominion; but his bold plan was frustrated, in 1650, by death. The States party now obtained a transitory preponderance, and attempted, by its " Perpetual Edict," to get rid of the Orange party and their Stadtholdership. The contest led to a bloody conflict. Young William III., of Orange, was brought forward by the Calvinistic preachers, and the populace under their guidance ; and the murder of the brothers De Witt, which William had sanctioned and turned to account, confirmed his authority. 2 When, how- ever, he became King of England, and governed the Nether- lands from thence, there arose in Zeeland and elsewhere an energetic resistance. 1 " Nachgelassene Schriften." Hamburg, 1842, p. 288. * VAX KAMFEN, u Geschichte d. Niederlande," ii. 322. 102 THE KEFORMATION IN SCOTLAND. Their great, and, on the whole, their successful wars, their naval supremacy, their foreign conquests all those things turned the energy and the attention of the nation to external affairs, and domestic dissensions were thereby checked. But with the eighteenth century decay set in. The selfishness of the provinces asserted itself against the country at large, and that of the cities against the provinces. Eagerness for money, a narrow, shopkeeping greed, and party spirit, remained to the end of the century the chief motive powers of the people. There were no longer any men of weighty character; there was only a crowd of little tyrants, and at the same time, as Niebuhr observes, " not only the ruin of the States but the decline of the nation was hastened by the madness of party spirit." Towards the end of the century even foreign aid was called in, and the Netherlanders saw without shame Prussians, French and English in the heart of their country. The Prussians in 1787 conquered Amsterdam, and procured for " the Orangemen " the triumph they had desired. The "patriots" fled to France, and in 1795, without striking a blow, took possession of the whole country. From this time forth, the French revolutionary doings with clubs, Jacobinism, and all their appurtenances were mimicked by a people who had now lost all character of their own. The Netherlands became the Batavian Republic, after that a French kingdom, next a French province, and finally but by the aid of foreign powers again an independent kingdom. The freedom enjoyed in the Netherlands was essentially determined by the circumstance that Calvinism had lost its great authority ; and we see in Scotland, where Calvinism in its most genuine form had been introduced by Knox, a simi- lar result. Up to the end of the sixteenth century the civil condition of the country was very unsettled. It had long been the prey of feudal violence and private feuds, which James I., towards the end of -his reign in 1624, boasted of having suppressed. Then came the period of the struggle against the " episcopal constitution " and " the Liturgy," which Charles I. wished to force upon the Scots. VV r ilh the CALVINISTIC SPIRITUAL TYRANNY. 103 victory obtained by Scotch Calvinism, was that state of Pro- testant power and supremacy restored, which the Reformation in Scotland, according to the intentions of its founder, had established, since the Reformer Knox declared that the " or- dering and reformation of religion specially appertains to the civil magistrate," 1 and the punishment of death was on two different occasions affixed to the celebration of mass. And now began such a system of spiritual tyranny, and such merciless meddling in private and family life, as has never been seen anywhere else, except in North America. The Presbyteries extended their power so far, and wielded the terrible weapon of excommunication, which amounted almost to complete expulsion and banishment from society, with such effect, that no one could feel himself secure, and that almost every action of life might be brought before the Presbyterian forum. 8 As a matter of course, every attempt in a spiritual direction to break through the narrow limits of Calvinistic views was crushed in the germ. It has often been maintained that the Calvinistic Church Constitution was, before all others, popular and favourable to freedom, because it afforded so much room to the lay element in the Presbyteries, and gave it so much influence even in higher matters. Experience has shown, however, that no other Church form ever led to so potent and intolerable a tyranny, or irritated men everywhere to such strong opposi- tion ; for which reason, wherever it came, it sowed bitterness and discord, and was unable to maintain itself long. The institution of the Presbytery, as a tribunal of morals, has never been effectively introduced except in small towns and villages, where everyone knows the domestic circumstances of every other, and stands connected with many others by ties of kindred, and everyone is influenced by motives of friendship or hos- 1 " To the civil magistrate specially appertains the ordering and reformation of religion." " Westminster Review," vol. liv., p. 453. 2 A striking picture of this state of things has been lately given by ROBERT CHAMBERS, in his " Domestic Annals of Scotland, from the Reformation to the Revolution." Edinburgh, 1858. 104 THE PRESBYTERY " LAY ELDERS." tility. When individuals are chosen in such cases as " lay elders " to sit in judgment on their fellow-townsmen, then three evils are unavoidably incurred. In the first place, these men are exposed to the strongest temptation to abuse such a completely discretionary and vaguely denned power to pri- vate purposes of personal advantage, or for the satisfaction of personal dislike or vengeance. In the second place, a system of espionage is established in every such community, of meddling intrusion into the secrets of private life. De- nunciations, tale-bearing, malice, and hatred are all veiled under the appearance of religious zeal. In the third place, persons invested with such power become the objects of ge- neral displeasure, suspicion, and hatred. Their externally religious life, which had determined their election, appears now as hypocrisy, as a calculated means of advancing them- selves. People will consent to allow a certain amount of moral and religious authority to a man who has received the seal of a special vocation, and occupies a position apart from the business of every-day life ; but they will not consent to sub- ject themselves in religious affairs to one who is entirely their equal, and who like themselves is engaged in worldly business and the care of their families. That in the age when these religions and churches were constructed, there should have been devised an institution like the Presbytery, with lay elders and tribunals of morals, is one of the many instances of short-sightedness, and want of practical sagacity and knowledge of human nature, that were then exhibited by the Reformers. This state of things had not, however, a lengthened dura- tion ; for, from 1660 to 1688, the Calvinist Church of Scot- land was compelled, by the renewed efforts of the English Government, tointroduce the Anglican form of worship; and to put forth its utmost energies for the preservation of its own existence. Calvinism was, indeed, again victorious with the Revolution of 1688 ; but an Act of Parliament of 1712, by which the assistance of the temporal arm was refused to Presbyterian tribunals, made the re-establishment of the former tyranny impossible, and at the same time the THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. ' 105 Calvinists were compelled to tolerate the establishment of an Episcopal Church by the side of their own in Scot- land. England had in its Catholic days, and with the powerful assistance of the Church, laid the foundations of its political freectom, and carried the edifice far towards completion. It was the Church that the nation had to thank for the Magna Charta of 1215 ; for the gradual amalgamation and equaliza- tion of the conqueror and the conquered, of the Norman and Anglo-Saxon races, and also for the abolition of " villenage." The first sparks of the religious conflagration that had broken out in Germany had just kindled on the British island, when Henry VIII. conceived the plan of opening the way for himself to unlimited monarchy, by the complete subjugation of the Church. How he succeeded in this is well known. He and the succeeding princes of the House of Tudor, or those who ruled in their name, could manage the National Church as seemed good to them and they made abundant use of their power. It was not till the reign of Edward VI. that complete Protestantism, as it had developed itself on the Continent, was introduced into England. Eli- zabeth restored the work of her brother, or rather of his guardians and advisers (after it had been interrupted by Mary), but with some important modifications. The Pro- testant doctrine was so foreign to the nation, that no English- man in the sixteenth century originated a single idea on the subject, nor added anything to the doctrine as it was brought from the Continent. Nothing more was done than that the ready-made doctrine, as it had been stamped in Geneva and Zurich, was imposed on the people by those above them. By force, and with the assistance of the arms of foreign mer- cenaries, were the people compelled to renounce the Catholic religion, and submit to the creed of Bullinger and Calvin. Even such a laudatory historian of the English Reformation as Bishop Burnet, confesses that all the efforts of the Go- vernment to overcome the dislike of the people to Protest- antism had been in vain, and that a troop of German mer- cenaries had to be brought over from Calais, in 1549, to con- 106 THE NEW STATE CHURCH. quer their resistance. 1 " With eleven-twelfths of the people," said at that time Paget to the Duke of Somerset, the Pro- tector, " the new religion has found no entrance." 2 The resistance of the Catholic people was indeed over- come, under Edward VI. as well as under Elizabeth, but it was found still more difficult, or rather impossible, to establish the unity of the Protestant Church, or prevent separations, on the basis of the Reformation. The new State Church, with its peculiar character and hete- rogeneous elements, was of no party, and belonged to no one of the systems then present ; but owed its existence, on the one hand, to the exertions to afford to the still preponderating Catholics, by the retention of some externals the priestly vestments and certain customs an appearance of what was traditional and Catholic; and on the other hand, to the per- sonal inclinations of the Queen, who, being a Protestant, more from policy than from any preference for the doctrine, desired to retain as many elements of the old religion as possible, at least in the liturgy and the administration of the sacraments. The men who stood at the head of the new Church, however, Parker, Grindal, Jewell, Nowell, and others, were all decided Calvinists, as well as Puritans, though they were at the same time very obedient, palace theologians. In the nation they had no genuine support ; the portion of the people disposed to Catholicity, which was now constantly decreasing, saw in the new Court and State Church a less evil than the yoke of hated Calvinism; whilst zealous Protestants were all at heart puritanically disposed that is, they reasoned logically that the exterior of a Church should express its inner life, and that a Calvinistic doctrine required a Calvinistic constitution and a Calvinistic form of 1 " History of the English Reformation." London, 1681, fol., iii. 190-196. " In Cornwall an insurrection broke out in 1547 against the Protector, who wished to make England Protestant. The people sought to be allowed to obey the decisions of the General Councils of the Church." " Quarterly Review," 1857, vol. cii. p. 319. In 1569 there followed in the North a great rising against the yoke of Pro- testantism. It was only crushed by wholesale executions. 2 STKYPE'S " Ecclesiastical Memorials," ii. Appendix H. H. A ROYAL PRIESTHOOD. 107 divine worship. The State Church had therefore for fifty years no theological literature of its own, but subsisted entirely on the productions of the Schools of Zurich, Stras- burg, and Geneva. It was not till 1594, when Richard Hooker came forward with his celebrated book on the con- stitution of the Church, that any attempt was made to afford it a dogmatic foundation ; and here, in a necessary contradis- tinction to Calvinism, he endeavoured to make the breach with the old Church as trifling as possible, and so found himself irresistibly impelled into a path leading back to Catholicity. Another extremely important point of dispute now came into discussion. The Court reformers of the Tudors, Cranmer at their head, had not kept to the theory of other Protestants (Lutherans as well as Calvinists) that the civil authorities had also the right of deciding on matters of religion, of ordering Church affairs, and, if need were, of reforming the Church. They had gone further, and, according to them, the King was the representative of God upon earth, in the sense that, as High Priest, he was the chief teacher of Church doctrine, and the source of every power relating to Church service. 1 The archbishops Cranmer and Parker maintained that princes could make as good priests as bishops, and that a person once nominated a priest by the king stood in need of no further ordination. They were accustomed, indeed, to except from the func- tions of their royal priesthood the performance of divine service and the administration of the sacraments. It was said the King or the Queen made no claim to these func- tions ; but it is evident, as a living theologian of the Anglican Church has correctly remarked, that this was the only ex- ception the Court reformers wished to make, and that they claimed for the monarch every other ecclesiastical power. 2 In accordance with these principles was the reformation of 1 " The vicar of God, the expositor of Catholic verity, the channel of sacramental graces" thus does Macaulay quite correctly express this theory in his " History of England." Tauchnitz Ed., i. 54. 2 PRETYMAN, " The Church of England and Erastianism and the Reformation." London, 1854, p. 34. 108 THE ROYAL SUPREMACY. the English Church carried through ; the bishops consented to receive from the Crown every kind of spiritual power, and allowed those powers to be limited or extended at the plea- sure of the Crown ; and as such powers were supposed to expire with the death of the bestower, they had to be re- newed at every new accession to the throne. 1 Elizabeth would not indeed appear, as her father and brother had done, as possessor of the high priestly dignity ; but she and the Parliament together confirmed the principle of the boundless power of the monarchy of England over the collective Church, and that all jurisdiction concerning the doctrine, discipline, or reformation of the Church should be vested in the Crown for ever. 2 When James I. was on the point of ascending the English throne, and was informed for the first time of the full extent of the inheritance left him by his predecessors, and of the greatness of his royal prero- gative, exclaimed, "I do what I please, then. I make the Law and the Gospel !" 3 The new Protestant Church became in this way, for a hundred and fifty years, the slavish servant of the monarchy, the persistent enemy of public liberty. 4 The character of the English people seems to have undergone a complete meta- morphosis. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, two foreign historians, Froissart and Comines, had described them as the freest and proudest nation in Europe, the one that would least endure oppression. And what had now this nation become? Its Parliament subjected its holiest 1 David Lewis has, in his " Notes on the nature and extent of the Royal Supremacy in the Anglican Church," given from original sources abundant proofs of this fact. London, 1847. See p. 29 especially. * " Yet it was not in fact the Queen or her successors, but the Parlia- ment, which formally claimed for itself infallibility, by adding to the Act concerning the Royal Supremacy a clause to the effect, that no act or decision of the present Parliament on religious matters shall ever be altered or regarded as erroneous." See the passage in u Lewis," p. 37. 8 Literally, in his Scotch dialect, "Do I mak the judges? Do I mak the Bishops? Then God's Wauns! I mak what likes me law and Gospel." u Hist. Essays," by JOJIN FORSTKR. London, 1858, i. 227. 4 MACAULAY'S " Essays." Paris, 1843, p. 73. SUBJECTION OF THE CHURCH. 109 interests, the most solemn rights of conscience, to the arbi- trary authority of a woman ; its Church lay humbly at the feet of the monarchy, preaching the absolute power of the Crown, and unconditional passive obedience to the will of kings. If it is remembered, too, that the Government had at the time no standing army in the country, the matter will appear still more striking; but the condition of affairs and the state of parties well explain all. The Government, by supporting itself on two, or in fact on three parties, could with their help overpower, first, the adherents of the old religion, and then one of the factions which had lent their help for that purpose. The State Church had of course in its favour all those who had carried off a portion of the spoils of the convents, and of the ancient Church namely, the court nobility, and a large proportion of the rural gentry; and as long as the object was to destroy the Catholic Church, and to oppress its adherents, it had all the Protestants for its friends and helpers. United, they would have been strong enough to effect a complete Reformation, according to the Swiss view, and erect a Calvinistic Church establish- ment; but by means of the bait of Church dignities and benefices, the Court succeeded in dividing them. The majority of the theologians accepted, along with the Cal- vinistic dogma, the liturgical and sacramental constituents that had been retained from the old Church, partly in the hope that if once this dogma should take root in the minds of the people, these papistical remains would fall away of themselves, or could be easily stript off. The genuine Cal- vinists found too late that they had given their assistance to the erection of an absolute and oppressive Church and State power, and that the rope they had helped to put round the necks of the Catholics was now pressing on their own throats; and then resistance was broken, under Elizabeth, by the dungeon, the rack, and the scaffold. In the Lower House sat only Protestants, since the Catholics had been excluded : but amongst these were not a few zealous Puritans, and yet laws were passed which affixed the most oppressive and cruel punishments to the slightest deviation from Elizabeth's 110 THE ORDINANCES OF QUEEN ELIZABETH. Church even the mere absence from Divine service. It was, indeed, a great advantage to the Government that the Calvinists were united among themselves, for whilst Cartwright and his followers were developing the Presby- terian system, the more thorough-going Brovvnists became the harbingers of the subsequent Congregationalists. On the whole, the state of things was such that, according to Macaulay's expression, had it lasted, the Reformation would have been the greatest curse, in a political point of view, that had ever fallen upon England. 1 The English people, says another historian, had sunk to the lowest degree of civil and political degradation to which it is possible to press down the moral and physical energy of the Anglo-Saxon race. 2 The Queen had established her court of Inquisition, 3 which decided upon heresy and orthodoxy, and imposed pecuniary fines, the dungeon, and the rack, at its pleasure. From this, her favourite tribunal, she decreed suspensions or removals over the third part of the whole clergy, on account of non- conformity. She made it an offence for several persons to meet together to read the Holy Scriptures. " No one shall be allowed," she said, in a letter addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury, " to depart, in the smallest degree, to the right or the left of the line drawn by my ordinances." 4 Her statesmen andlawyers maintained, and the House of Commons readily admitted, that she might exalt herself above all laws ; could restrain all rights and liberties ; that, by means of her Dispensing Power, she could set aside every Act of Parliament ; and that her prerogative had no limits. 5 Ac- cording to these doctrines she reigned; but tyrannical as were many of her proceedings, she was, and remained, in a high degree, a popular sovereign. Her subjects did homage to her intellectual superiority ; they knew that under her England was powerful and respected in Europe ; that it stood 1 " Essays," p. 153. * MACGREGOR, u History of the British Empire." Londou, 1852, i., p. cclxx. Court of High Commission. 4 MACGREGOR, i., eccl. xxi. * Dr. EWES, p. 649. CATHOLIC LEANING OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 1 1 1 at the head of Protestant states and Protestant interests throughout the world ; and they bore from her what a feebler or more narrow-minded monarch would not have dared to attempt. One circumstance of the highest importance prevented the English people from sinking into the condition of the Pro- testant continent. The country had retained in constant use its old Germanic laws. The Roman law could never gain an entrance into England ; no class of Roman jurists, no officials trained in the views of Roman jurisprudence, could ever be formed there. England received no Consistorium, after the German pattern ; it never became a bureaucratically-governed country ; and it kept clear of the continental bureaucracy, with its ever-increasing numbers of government officers and places. Notwithstanding the exceptional courts created in consequence of the Reformation, England had, on the whole, maintained the German independence of its courts of law against the power of the Crown. Under the first Stuarts James I. and Charles I. the seeds scattered in two opposite directions ripened to their harvest. In the State Church, though it took part in the Dordrecht Synod, the aversion to Calvinism was constantly on the increase ; and in the same degree arose the wish and the effort to return towards the ancient Church. The anti- Calvinistic doctrine, the ecclesiastical-political regulations, the theory of an Episcopacy of divine institution, and of the Apostolic succession all this gave to the Anglican Church a more Catholic colouring. The Church of England was no longer to pass for one of the various Protestant, communities, but for an improved and purified branch of the Catholic Church ; and on this account the wrath of the Calvinists against all this Arminianism and Papistry in the State Church burned the more fiercely. The royal supremacy over the Church, now no longer maintained by a powerful, respected, and dreaded woman, but by a petty, pedantic^ and generally despised king, like James I., who was always talking of his divine right and his unlimited prerogative's, sank very low in public opinion. \ 112 STRUGGLES OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH. It was also felt that the Church was destined to serve as the protecting bulwark to the absolute power of the monarchs, and to act as its pliant, tool. Charles the First actually declared that he regarded the Episcopacy as a stronger support of the monarchical power than even the army ; l and thus did the political struggle against royalty become like- wise a struggle against the State Church. The Puritans of Elizabeth's time were now, for the most part, Presbyterians ; and they sought, in the overthrow of the Episcopal order, the establishment of the Calvinistic doctrine, united with stricter Church discipline ; the extermination of the Armin- ianism and Papistry that had made their way into the Church ; the abolition of a liturgy, which had been the source of these evils ; and, finally, they desired to make the Church independent of the Crown. Their influence in the Lower House was strengthened by the " doctrinal Puritans " that is to say, the Calvinistically-disposed members of the State Church. 2 The Independents wished for no further eccle- siastical organisation, but the independence of the several congregations ; and though they were subsequently the most dangerous enemies of the Presbyterians, yet they at first made common cause with them against their common enemies monarchy striving for absolute power, and its subservient implement, the State Church. The vicissitudes of the great politico-ecclesiastical struggle are well known. Straflford, Archbishop Laud, King Charles, the three representatives of ecclesiastico-political absolutism, died on the scaffold. The Church fell with the monarchy ; but the hopes of the Presbyterians, that they would be able to overpower all other churches and parties, as in Scotland, and bow the whole English nation under the yoke of genuine Calvinism, were frustrated. Their brief triumph was followed by defeat, under Cromwell's dictatorship ; the Independents rose again, and with them the sects of Baptists and Quakers ; and all sects (with the exception, perhaps, of the Quakers) 1 MACAULAY'S " Essays," p. 86. * See SANDFORD'S " Studies and Illustrations of the great Rebellion." London, 1858, p. 77. IMPOSITION OF THE TEST OATH. 113 desired to rule, and to persecute, and oppress the rest. Of the State Church it could hardly be said that it had been crushed into a sect, for it had ceased to exist. With the Restoration, however, it revived ; it rose into full glory as a National and Parliamentary Church, with a royal head-bishop, and once more it was able to plant its foot on the neck of its enemies. So violent was the re-action against the intolerable oppression Calvinism, in its various forms, had then recently exercised, that King Charles II. was com- pelled to retract his promise of religious toleration. The removal of 2000 preachers, the Conventicle Act, the laws that annihilated the hopes of the anti-Episcopalians, followed rapidly, blow after blow. The Parliament seemed desirous of finally settling ecclesiastical affairs, and of securing the Episcopal Church, not only in the possession of its ancient rights and privileges, but the exclusive possession of the nation. In 1673, the Test Oath a solemn declaration upon oath of belonging to the Anglican Church, and an acknow- ledgment of the Royal Supremacy was imposed on all civil and military officers. This measure, however, was directed especially against the Catholics. Since the heir to the throne, the Duke of York, had become a Catholic, fears certainly not unfounded were entertained, that the future king would use his supremacy over the Church to bring it back, step by step, to Catholicity. Such apprehensions prevailed among all statesmen and zealous Protestants, and formed, with them, the strongest motive of political action. The Catholics, as a party, could not then cause the slightest anxiety. They were lost in the mass of the population, and it was only on account of the names of some distinguished families that the little group retained any significance at all. They would be perfectly content to have, in peace and quietness, toleration, and the permission to worship God in the chapels attached to their own homes. It was not on them that James II. founded his hopes, but upon the reli- gious distractions of England ; on the unconditional de- votion of the State Church to its royal head-bishop; and the fidelity with which, as he imagined, they would act up I 114 THE DOCTRINE OF PASSIVE OBEDIENCE. to their favourite doctrine of " passive obedience," and show an example to all others; and, finally, he trusted to the Catholic elements and tendencies in the Church itself. The most important theologians had, then, for fifty years, been combating most of the chief doctrines of the Reformation the very foundations of Protestantism with acuteness ' and learning, and had declared the old Church doctrine to be, in many and important points, the only tenable one. The great Protestant doctrine of " Justification " had been so thoroughly demolished by Bafll, Hammond, Thorndyke, and others, in the Church, and by Baxter outside of the Church its contradictions and destructive consequences were shown to be so glaring, that, in spite of its assertion in the 39 Articles, it had never been able to maintain itself in the Episcopal Church, and no one scientifically-cultivated theo- logian continued to defend it. 1 The amalgamation of the political king's power with that of the State Church had generated the doctrine of passive obedience; and the Anglican bishops and theologians had maintained that, according to Christian principles, the people and the Parliament were bound, even in the most extreme cases of defence of life, or of the ruin of the social order, not to resist the will of the sovereign, but to obey unconditionally ; and, in case the thing commanded were a sin, to remain entirely passive. They appear to have been considering the origin of their religion and Church, which was really the will of a king, by whom it had been forced on a reluctant people. This duty of passive obedience was, it was said, the doctrine of all Protestant Churches, but especially of the English, in contradistinction to that of the Catholic, which maintained that in certain cases there was a right of resistance, and even (according to the principles of the middle ages) of deposition of princes in extraordinary circumstances. 2 This 1 The so-called Evangelicals at the end of the preceding century, Toplady, Venn, Newton, James Hervey, and others, cannot be reckoned among learned theologians. 2 In fact, even under the reign of Philip II., the doctrine put forward by a Spanish preacher in Madrid, that kings had an absolute power over the persons and property of their subjects, had been condemned by AVERSION TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 115 doctrine of passive obedience was not merely taught in books and pamphlets, 1 but it sounded from all pulpits, and was de- clared to be a doctrine necessary to salvation. 2 It was practi- cally applied to all the measures of Charles IT. and James II., and both rnonarchs were thus encouraged and assured in their efforts for absolute power by the Church, whose Head they were. Defoe bitterly reproached the bishops and Church clergy for having flattered James II. with assurances of his unlimited power, and thus led him on to the brink of ruin, and then overthrown him. When William III. landed, the whole Anglican clergy, in mockery of its own teachings, went over to the usurper, and only 400 Nonjurors had so much of conscience as to refuse the new oath. 3 James II. had been mistaken in his calculation ; for the attachment to Protestantism was then deeply rooted in the feelings of the great majority of the people. All parties, Calvinists as well as Anglicans, were united in their fear of, and aversion to, the Catholic religion, or what was repre- sented to them as inseparably connected with it political and ecclesiastical despotism, persecution, Smithfield fires, subjection under a foreign Italian prince, or, as the zealots said, " the Romish Antichrist," and a drain of English gold to- wards Rome ! All these terrific phantoms hovered before the English fancy, in connection with the words " Catholic Church." That it was precisely the Catholic period in England which had been that of increasing civil freedom, the Inquisition. The preacher was compelled to revoke his assertion from the very pulpit where he had made it, and declare that " kings had over their subjects no other power than such as was afforded by Divine and human law ; and by no means any power proceeding only from their own free and absolute will." This is reported by ANTOXIO PEREZ in his Relations. u Universite Cath.," xxii. 76. 1 A rich fund of material concerning this matter, so important to England, is contained in the work of an unknown person (Abr. Seller). " History of Passive Obedience since the Reformation." Amsterdam (London), 1689. 2 " Edinburgh Review," vol. lv., pp. 32-34. See there the answer of James II. to Burnet's Remonstrances. WILSON'S " Life of Defoe," i. 160. 12 116 PROTESTANT SUCCESSION SECURED. and that of the Reformation the time of slavery, absolutism, and the loss of individual rights, perhaps not one in a thousand of the English knew, and that one took good care to say nothing concerning it. It is doing no injustice to James II. to say that, as a true Stuart, and as an admirer of Louis XIV., he did aim at absolute power, and would have used the Church of England, when restored to Catholicity, as a serviceable implement to this end. The short reign of James, and the preceding years of fear as to what he might attempt, served to give a powerful impulse to Protestantism, and occasioned an approximation, though cer- tainly only a transitory one, amongst all Protestant sects and parties. Even the toleration offered by James was rejected by them, with the exception of the Quakers. He had offered it, persons supposed, merely for the sake of procuring a more tolerable position in the country for his hated fellow-believers. With the fall of James II. and the Stuart dynasty, and the elevation of William III., the Protestant succession was secured, and the movement which had begun with the Reformation completed as to its main features. The most important acquisition of recent times was the Habeas Corpus Act, the guarantee of personal freedom against arbitrary power, which passed in 1679, under Charles II., and where- with the rights secured by the ancient Magna Charta were thus then confirmed and secured against the ambiguous inter- pretations of Crown lawyers. 1 The " birth-rights," or funda- mental rights, of the English nation, as it was expressed when William ascended the throne in 1689, contained, with the exception of the limitation of the succession to the Crown, only the ancient rights and franchises. Two powers, how- ever, or rather one power regarded in two different points of view, were for ever destroyed these were an arbitrary monarchy, and the royal supremacy over the State Church. William himself was not able, even by the threat of an abdi- cation, to overcome the opposition of the Parliament ; and since his death, and the accession of the Hanoverian dynasty, no King of England has ever been able to govern in his own 1 HALLAM'S " Constitutional History." London, 1832, iii. 17. ECCLESIASTICAL SUPREMACY OF THE CROWN. 117 person. 1 The kings of this dynasty continued to be strangers, unloved by the nation. And whilst the monarchy withdrew from the eyes of the nation into the background, and lost more and more of its dignity, the power and authority of Parliaments were considerably on the increase ; and during nearly sixty years the administration of the Whig party, the political centre of gravity, was moved entirely into the Lower House. With this enfeeblement of the monarchical element in England, the ecclesiastical supremacy of the Crown could not but gradually receive a different interpretation, and produce different results. Queen Anne had, in 1707, declared her supremacy to be a fundamental element of the constitution of the Church of England; 2 and George I., who, shortly before, had been a Lutheran, issued, as early as 1714, certain ordinances concerning things connected with the liturgy, that went very much into detail. 3 But the political advantage and importance of the supremacy now fell to the Prime Minister for the time being, and ecclesiastical patronage was used in the interests of the Whig party, and as a means of gaining over the more powerful families, and obtaining their influence in the elections and in Parliament ; but the Church, 1 It may be objected that George III., from his accession to the dissolu- tion of the Cabinet under Lord North (1761-1782), exercised great influ- ence on the course of Government and the decision of political questions, and that by means of a party formed outside the Cabinet, and in opposition to it. But that was an abnormal, unnatural state, which awakened great discontent in the nation, as BURKE has shown in his " Thoughts on the Causes of the Present Discontent." (Works, London, 1834, i. 127, &c.) " The power of the Crown," he says, " ' almost dead and rotten as pre- rogative,' has grown up anew, with much more strength and far less odium, under the name of influence." He then goes on to describe this plan as a system of favouritism, the invention of a double Cabinet, &c. It was exercised through the corruption of a great number of the members of the Lower House, to which purpose a portion of the Civil List was applied. The matter proves, in the most striking manner, that henceforward there was to be no such thing as a legitimate exercise of personal power on the part of the king. 2 See WILKINS'S u Concilia Britannise," iv. 685. 1 DAVID LEWIS, p. 41. 118 ERASTIAMSM. in which Jacobite and Tory tendencies prevailed, was robbed even of what had remained to it of the power of free move- ment, and for this purpose the royal supremacy did excellent service. The Convocations were no longer allowed to meet ; and the Church was more and more temporalized, and degraded into an institution for the advantage of the sons and cousins of influential families. As soon as the Constitution of the Estates of England entered into its new Stadium of Parliamentary government, that which was formerly called in England Erastianism, namely, the control and depression of the Church, and " turning it to account" by the laity, became a regular prac- tice, as if belonging to the natural order of things. The Government has had since then greater power over the Church, and in the Church, than in the State, both in theory and in practice. 1 Tf ever a statesman employed this supremacy for the good of the Church, it was a mere lucky accident. Since the Nonconformists, or Dissenters, were friends of the Hanoverian dynasty, and of the Whig party, the govern- ment, which was glad of their support, set aside the restraint under which they had lain in Anne's reign, though this certainly was only effected by an Indemnity Act yearly re- newed ; still it granted them access to public affairs, whilst the State Church was not only unable to make any aggres- sion on the Dissenters, but was incapable of protecting itself against heterodoxy and infidelity in its own bosom. The penal laws remained in force against the Catholics alone. Thus there was presented in England the remarkable phenomenon of one State (since Scotland had become by the Union a province of the British Empire), with two entirely different and mutually hostile State Churches a Calvinistic Presbyterian in the North, and an Episcopal Church in the South ; and further, the English Church, deprived of all power of free action, lay bound and helplessly dependent on the State ; whilst all the sects and religious societies that had arisen, or were to arise out of it, whatever 1 PRETYMAX, " The Church of England and Erastianism," p. 215. EESULT OF ECCLESIASTICAL STRUGGLES. 119 their doctrines or institutions might be, could govern them- selves in perfect autonomy and freedom. An Englishman thinks this quite in the regular order of things ! The supremacy is, according to Hallam, who expresses the prevalent view on the subject, the dog's collar which the State puts on the Church that it has endowed, in return for food and shelter. 1 If we now ask what has been gained in almost one hundred years of an embittered struggle between parties and Churches? what can be shown as the actual result ? it appears to amount, in the first place, to this : that religious freedom, or rather the liberty of not belonging to the State Church, but of forming an independent community, has been won after a contest of about a hundred and seventy years, and after thousands of Englishmen have lost their lives ; and this, too, has been won in direct contradiction to the original principles of Protestantism. Secondly, the civil liberties that the English possessed in Catholic times, had been essentially enervated, and in some cases destroyed, by the Keformation and the spirit of State-Churchship. They had primarily to be reconquered, and then confirmed and extended, in the sanguinary war which the partisans of the sects, in alliance with the political champions of freedom, carried on against the monarchy and the dependent State Church. In so far as all these sects proceeded from the principle of the Reformation, and all called themselves Protestant, it may be said that Protestant- ism in England, after having been, in its first form, the most dangerous enemy and destroyer of civil freedom, did, in all subsequent forms, or through the consequences of Church dismemberment involved in it, contribute to the re-establish- ment and extension of political liberty. Every one of these Protestant communities oppressed every other when it could, or was prepared and resolved to do so ; every one wished to lay on the nation the yoke of its own views and institutions. The Presbyterians, Prynne and Edwards, as soon as their 1 " Constitutional History of England," iii. 444. " The supremacy of the Legislature is like the collar of the watch-dog," &c., &c. 120 DEMOCRATIC TENDENCIES. sect had obtained a momentary pre-eminence, endeavoured to prove that the authorities were entitled and bound to wield the sword against all erroneous doctrines that is to say, against all that were not Calvinistic. 1 Ultimately, all religious parties came forth from the long contest weakened and shaken. The Presbyterians disappeared in England, and were replaced by other sects. The State Church had become so powerless; there was such an uncertainty in all its doctrines, and such a dissolution of all ecclesiastical bonds had taken place within it, that even bishops declared the English clergy to be the worst in all Europe ; and in the eighteenth century England was distinguished above all other nations for its general contempt of the Church, and a wide-spread infidelity, even among the female sex. The fall of James II., and the summoning of a new dynasty, did not, in fact, bring any accession to English popular liberty, for such had been, as to all essential par- ticulars, already won ; but it brought with it two changes, pregnant with important consequences, viz : the degradation of the monarchy into a mere powerless phantom, and the system of parliamentary government by majorities of the lower house, whose views and aims had to be modified by the limitation or extension of the suffrage. Upon the value of these two acquisitions the future must decide. Since the passing of the Reform Bill, England has been treading a downward path ; and, upon the question whether it can be arrested in its decline whether it is in a position to recoil from the increasingly democratic tendencies of the House of Commons and of the constitution will depend the future prospects of this kingdom, and, to a certain extent, of the world also. On the whole, it appears, as a fitting inference from the do- mestic history of each country, that wherever the Reformation produced one united State Church, it acted prejudicially on civil liberty ; that such States retrograded on the political path in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and that it is 1 See the expressions of Burnet, Lady Mary Wortley, and others, in the "Quarterly Review," vol. ccli., p. 462. THE CHURCH AND CIVIL LIBERTY. 121 only where Protestantism did not attain to absolute supre- macy, in the form of a State Church, but where a considerable portion of the population remained Catholic, while another formed various religious communities, that there arose, from the collisions and limitations thereby occasioned, a greater measure both of civil and political freedom. 122 THE CHUKCHES WITHOUT THE PAPACY A PANORAMIC SURVEY. IF we wish to understand all that must stand or fall with the Papal See, and how inextricably interwoven it is with the innermost being of the Church, we must cast a glance upon those religious bodies which have separated themselves from Rome, or have arranged their constitution so as to have no place for a Primate. 1 here, then, enter so much the more willingly on a survey of the Churches, since it is my object to make clear the condition of the present time, with respect to ecclesiastical affairs ; and I also do so because such a survey is indispensable for a comprehension of the question concerning the States of the Church. THE CHURCH OF THE PATRIARCHATE OF CONSTANTINOPLE. We will begin with the oldest of the dismembered Churches, the Oriental, or " Orthodox Anatolian Church," which recognises the Patriarch of Constantinople as its head. It embraced, formerly, all the countries of the Greek Empire, but has been for some time past continually crumbling away, by ecclesiastical resistance to, and separation from it of particular portions. The separations have been based on the antagonism of various nationalities, and on the decay of the Turkish Empire, which, in the day of its power, upheld, THE ORTHODOX ANATOLIAN CHURCH. 123 for the sake of its own interest, the authority of the Patriarch. The Plellenic Church, that of the kingdom of Greece, has declared itself independent ; the Metropolitan of Carlowitz, in Austria, with his eleven bishops, has done the same, and his Church is now an independent Patriarchate. The Churches of Cyprus, of Montenegro, and of Mount Sinai, have declared their independence. In the Danubian Principalities a similar attempt has been made to form an independent Romaic Church. Almost all the organs of the press there demand a solemn declaration of the independence of the " Moldavo-Wallachian Church," and the formation of a Moldavo-Wallachian Synod. A separation of the Bul- garians has taken place, but they have joined the Catholics. That the Ionian Islands have not gained the Hellenic Church, but still acknowledge the Patriarch as their eccle- siastical head, is probably to be ascribed to English influence or compulsion. 1 The Patriarch, whose sway still extends over about nine millions of persons, has in some respects more than a Papal power. He can appoint or remove, on his own irresponsible authority, all archbishops, bishops, and priests, and, with ex- ception of four prelates belonging to the standing synod, can relegate them all to their dioceses. He possesses at the same time an extensive civil jurisdiction, the right of punishment, and an unlimited power of taxation. His whole administra- tion has now been for hundreds of years connected with an unexampled system of extortion, corruption, and simony. Every Patriarch attains by these means to his dignity. Ac- cording to long-established precedent, the patriarch is usually changed every two or three years ; he is, namely (the custom originates in Turkish despotism and Greek corruption), de- posed by the synod, for bad administration, or he is com- pelled to resign. The cases in which a Patriarch dies in possession of his dignity are extremely rare, for those who make a profit by bargains for the patriarchate take care that they shall be transacted as often 1 In Roumelia and the Herzegovina, separations from the Patriarchate are expected. " Xeue Evang. Kirch.-Zeitung von Messner," 1860, p. 400. 124 THE PATRIARCHATE OF CONSTANTINOPLE. as possible. 1 When the Patriarch has purchased the dignity of his deposed predecessor for hard cash, he gets his money back again by the sale of archbishoprics and bishoprics, and the purchasers of these, in their turn, make amends by extortions on the inferior clergy and the people. The most important part in these intrigues and bargainings about the patriarchate is played by a temporal official, the Logothetes, who at the same time, as an ecclesiastical dignitary for the patriarch, stands by the side of the executive and mediates between him and the Porte. Only a year ago the Patriarch Kyrillos was deposed on account of simony and waste of the patriarchal finances, and, after a regular election contest, Joachim, Bishop of Cyzikus, was chosen in his place. The clergy attached to Greek na- tionality have been hitherto the instruments by whose means the Turks have ruled over not only the Greek, but also the Sclavonian population of the empire, and in so doing exercise a despotic power that the Sclavonians are more and more revolting against. The eight dignitaries of the Synod (they bear the name of metropolitan, but six of their number are mere villages), are the ruling powers, in subordination to the patriarch, but when united against him are more powerful than he can be. The temporal power that has been com- mitted or left to the Greek-Church-princes is a source of innumerable outrages, and the means of enriching immode- rately their families, as well as those upon whom they feel themselves to be dependent. The great Sclavonian party, relying on " the Hatti-Hu- mayun" of the Turkish monarch, and in alliance with a portion of the Greek laity, is endeavouring to break through these ecclesiastical and political fetters. The Greek oli- garchy, however namely, the seven first prelates of the Synod, in union with the national Hellenic party, which dreads the Sclavonic preponderance is ever contending against them, and a struggle for life or death is carried on, in which national hostility, strengthened by indignation at a state of 1 EICHMANN, " Die Reformed des Osmanischen Reiches." Berlin, 1858, p. 27-28. PITZIPIOS, u L'Eglise Orientale," Rome, 1825, ii. 82. GELZER'S " Monatsbliitter," vii. 224. CORRUPTION AND IGNORANCE OF THE CLERGY. 125 things so intolerably corrupt, leaves apparently no room for reconciliation. Thus the patriarchate of Constantinople has already entered on the stage of approaching dissolution. The three other patriarchates, which, according to the Anato- lian schismatic theory, exercise, in conjunction with that of Constantinople, the supreme authority in matters of faith, are scarcely more than titular dignitaries, for the patriarchate of Alexandria has but 5,000, that of Antioch 50,000, and of Jerusalem 25,000 souls. The Patriarch of Jerusalem has his regular summer residence on the Prince's Island, near the capital ; and the two others reside, with his permission and that of the Synod, in the capital itself. The Greek Patriarchate is in the most shameful and pe- rishing condition to which an ancient and venerable Church has ever yet been reduced ; but that does not prevent the youngest prophet of Slavism, which is to be called to the dominion of the world, from founding on that See the most splendid hopes. " When the Turkish dominion is destroyed," says Pogodin, " the Patriarchate of Constantinople will arise again in all its glory, and the Church of the East will again, attain its world-wide importance. Then" (according to Po- godin) " will the worn-out West be rejuvenated, namely, by the Slave and his Church, for all the future belongs to the Sclavonic race." 1 This Church certainly lies under the most pressing neces- sity of reforming itself and of becoming re-vivified ; for simony in its widest sense, veniality, corruption of the clergy both high and low, the employment of all imaginable means, both religious and superstitious, for the extortion of gifts all these features of the Byzantine Church system have been authenticated by all observers. To this must be added the gross ignorance of the clergy, the majority of whom in many districts cannot write, and sometimes not even read. Las- karato, the author of a work that appeared in 1856, on the state of Cephalonia, declares, in his letters to the archbishop of that place, that it might happen to any one to dismiss a servant one day for misconduct, and meet him on the mor- 1 u Politische Briefs aus Russland." Leipsic, 1860, p. 17. 126 DEVOTION TO THE CIVIL POWER. row as a priest ; people that you have known as petty chandlers, day labourers, or boatmen, you may see in a few days appear on the altar or in the pulpit. 1 Devotion to the civil power is so completely the lot of all special churches that have been rent away from the one uni- versal World-Church, that the Greeks will even acknowledge ' O their Turkish ruler as a supreme judge in ecclesiastical ques- tions. As incredible as this appears, it has been stated in the most decided terms, and in the most official form, in quite recent times. Pius IX., in his evangelical letter to the pre- lates of the East, in the year 1848, reminded them of their want of religious unity ; and thereupon the Patriarch an- swered, in his own name and that of his Synod, u In disputed or difficult questions, the three Patriarchs discuss the matter with the Patriarch of Constantinople, because that city is the seat of empire, and because he is the president of the Synod. If they cannot agree the affair is, according to ancient precedent and usage, referred for decision to the head of the (Turkish) Government." 2 The Greek who makes known this communication, mentions also a case in which a decision was really given. The Armenian clergy had a dis- pute with the Greek priests concerning the custom of mixing water with the sacramental wine ; and the dispute was finally brought before the Turkish Reis-Effendi, who accordingly gave his decision. " Wine is an impure drink, condemned by the Koran ; pure water only, therefore, should be made use of." And yet it is undeniable that a splendid prospect lies before the Church of the Turkish Empire, if it should be able to raise itself only in some measure from its present degraded condition, and to comprehend the greatness of its mission. For the days of the Turkish dominion are num- bered. Not only can the Empire not continue in its present 1 Td fivarrjpia TTJG Kf^aXovi'crf, 1856. This work entailed on its author the punishment of excommunication. z AioyytXXtrai 7-6 7rpay/m Kai tig TI\V Aioinrjaiv Kara TO. PlTZIPIOS, 1. C. 1., 140. DEGRADATION OF THE TURK. 127 form, but the power of Mohammedanism in Europe must also fall. The Turks will be compelled to emigrate and to return to Asia, or they will die out and in fact they are actually dying out at the present moment. The Christians are already four times more numerous than the Turks, and the latter already begin to fear that if the Hatti-Humayun were truly and honestly carried out, they (the Turks) would within five years' time be driven across the Bosphorus. They themselves are absolutely unimprovable and stationary : the hatred of every kind of reform is as much an article of faith with them as the hatred of all non-Mahommedans. Their polygamy, their frequent divorces, the seclusion and unna- tural mode of life of their women, the criminal methods employed to prevent the increase of families, the want of an aristocracy, as well as of a genuine middle class their entire social position, as a slothful, parasitical race, living on the impoverishment and plunder of the Christian population all these things make the elevation of the Turkish race an im- possibility. They themselves are filled with the idea that their time is coming to an end. They are continually declining in num- bers, in morals, in courage, and in hope. 1 Their slothfulness nourishes their fatalism ; and, again, their fatalism serves as a pretext to their slothfulness, and disinclination to every kind of exertion. The Christian stands towards the Turk in the 1 " All is dying around the Christian populations," says RAOUL DE MALHERHE (" L'Orient.," 1718-1845. "Histoire, Politique, Religion, Moeurs." Paris, 1846, ii. 157.), " All is perishing, under that hard law of fatalism all is becoming extinguished in polygamy, vice, and debauchery ; beyond these the East has no other prospect than depopulation and the desert." See also the communications of so excellent an observer as NASSAU W. SENIOR, in his "Journal kept in Turkey and Greece." London, 1859, pp. 28, 32, 147, 212. The British Consul, Mr. Finn, lately said, " The Mohammedan population of Syria is dying out, and I cannot even say that it is dying slowly." " Allg. Zeitung," 1861, p. 1144; llth March. "Even Asia Minor, which, in 350 years, the Turks have changed from a rich and prosperous country into a desert, shows the same phenomenon. A Pacha himself reports that, in his Pachalik, the deaths exceeded the births by six per cent." SENIOR, p. 183. 128 DECAY OF MOHAMMEDANISM. same relation as if a living man were bound to a corpse ; but the Christians are evidently increasing in numbers, in pros- perity, in intelligence, and in courage. The Turks them- selves say that it will soon be necessary to fill all offices with Christians ; and then some day the ministers will say to the Sultan that he must become a Christian, and so it will happen. 1 The future belongs, then, to Christianity, and not to Islam ; and the same thing is true of a great part of Asia, for the Persian Empire also is in a state of hopeless internal distraction, and the population is very thin and constantly decreasing. At the beginning of the present century it was estimated at twelve millions, it is now said not to exceed eight. Almost all Persian cities, with the exception of Tabris, Teheran, and Schiras, are in ruins, 2 and must fall more and more under the Russian dominion. Moham- medanism also, though it has in recent times made some pro- gress among the Malays of Borneo and the negroes of Soudan and Madagascar, 3 has, on the whole, entered into the stage of decay, and must fall back whenever the superior energy of the Christian nations advances against it. Apart from the question of truth, Islam bears within itself the germ of dissolution, since it is a religion of fixed definite precepts, embracing every department of life, and in their nature destructive of all progress. As the production of an individual nation, and of a decidedly low degree of culture, it could not, when transferred to other nationalities, be other- wise than injurious and inadequate, and must ultimately fall before the internal contradictions it occasions, and the neces- sities of life ; whilst Christianity, as a religion of ideas, and of an institution adapted to the whole world, and limited neither by time nor locality, is capable of doing justice to every really human requirement of promoting and encourag- ing the onward progress of the human race. 4 1 " Diary in Turkish and Greek Waters," by the EARL OF CARLISLE. London, 1864, p. 78. * " Allg. Zeitung," 1st March, 1857, p. 956. 3 " Edinburgh Review," vol. c. (1854), p. 412. 4 This contrast of the two religions has lately been noticed by a very CONSTITUTION OF THE GREEK CHURCH. 129 THE HELLENIC CHURCH. The Church of the Kingdom of Greece has dissolved its connection with the Patriarch and Synod of Constantinople. On the motion of thirty-five bishops assembled in Nauplia, the Regency, in the year 1833, declared the " Orthodox Oriental Church of Hellas" independent of every foreign authority. The government of the Church is to be vested in a Synod, consisting of five ecclesiastical members, to be appointed by the king, and two laymen, of whom one is to be the Attorney-General (Staats Procurator). A Concordat had been previously agreed upon (the Tbwos), by which greater freedom had been granted to the Church with respect to the constitution of the Synods. The Government, how- ever, altered this arrangement, and arrogated to itself the right of appointing the members, in accordance with the pre- cedent given by Russia. In fact, the whole new Constitution was an imitation of the Russian ; whilst the remarkable pro- vision, that the members of the Synods should only be appointed by the State authorities for a year at a time, went far beyond the Russian model. But the Patriarch of Byzan- tium nevertheless, in the year 1850, acknowledged this peculiar kind of Church constitution, merely with the reserva- tion of certain acts of homage. The clergy of the newly constituted Church are taken from the lowest classes of the people, and are so parsimoni- ously paid that they are obliged to carry on some mechanical trade or rural occupation in addition to their priestly func- tions. They are mostly men utterly uneducated, and have no influence whatever amongst the cultivated classes, amongst whom a species of Voltairianism has made great progress. 1 In the powerful, and, in fact, wonderful intel- acute observer, the COUNT D'ESCAYRAC DE LAUTURE, in " Le Desert et le Soudan." Paris, 1853, p. 185. The remarks made by him were the result of his close attention to the condition of the Mohammedan population. The author is the person who, a short time since, was taken prisoner by the Chinese, and frightfully mutilated. 1 W. SENIOR, " Journal kept in Turkey and Greece." London, 1859, K 130 THE RUSSIAN CHURCH. lectual movement that has taken place of late years among the Greeks, the clergy have not participated. An attachment to the National Church, a preference for the peculiarities of the Anatolian doctrine and rites are found, to some extent, among the Greeks, but such attachment is more political than religious. The ecclesiastical peculiarities were regarded as the bulwarks of Greek nationality, as things connected with the great superiority of the Hellenes over other nations. For this Church of Hellas, also, there is a hopeful prospect ; because, in proportion as the kingdom extends of which, in the rapid decay of the Turkish Empire, there is every likeli- hood the Church also will be enlarged at the cost of the Patriarchal See of Constantinople. The inhabitants of the Ionian Islands would doubtless join the Church of Hellas on the first opportunity ; and Thessaly also, where the Greek race is preponderant, desires greatly a union with the kingdom of Greece ; and the subjects of King Otto look to this event with eagerness ; l and no sooner should the incorporation take place than the province would certainly separate itself from the Patriarchate of Stamboul, and enter the Synodical Church. The politico-ecclesiastical hopes of the Hellenes of the king- dom, however, are well known to extend much further even to Little Asia. THE RUSSIAN CHURCH. The Church of the great European-Asiatic Empire, if we p. 330. GELZER'S " Monatsblatter," vii. 251. The author of the Essays called " The Cross and the Crescent," in the latter publication mentions (vii. 226) that he visited a great number of bishops and metropolitans in the islands of the Archipelago, in Asia Minor, and in Syria, and some- times enjoyed their hospitality ; and that in conversation with them he frequently alluded to the religious apathy of the people, whose worship appeared to him as if they were rather troublesome ceremonies of polite- ness, in which the heart had no share. The answer he got was, " What can we do ? How can we thiuk of devoting ourselves to quiet study and the instruction of others, when we have our own wives and children to provide for, and are scarcely able to procure the means of existence ?" 1 SENIOR, p. 35. THE PATRIARCH. 131 include the sects of which the State does not recognize the existence, numbers more than fifty millions of persons, and is also a daughter of the Byzantine ; and though, towards the end of the sixteenth century, it declared itself separate from the Patriarchate, it has retained, with perfect fidelity, the Church system, with its doctrines and ritual, as it was received from Byzantium. According to theory, it recognizes in matters of faith the four Anatolian Patriarchs as a supreme authority ; and if the decision of a point of doctrine is in question, it is laid before them, that is to say, in fact before the Patriarch of Constantinople, with his Synod for the three others no longer represent any great ecclesiastical body, but are merely titular, and must be regarded as members of the higher Byzantine clergy. The Catholic Church passes for heretical, on account of the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Ghost ; and even in Russia for heretical and for schis- matic, on account of the claims of the Papal See. But with respect to the third point of difference, the intermediate state after death, it would be easy to come to an understanding. It is only put forward when there is a desire to multiply the pretexts for separation, and to widen the chasm. The Russian Church has been, since the separation from the Patriarchate of Constantinople (1587), a completely iso- lated National Church, without any connection with the rest of the Christian world. At its head stood the Patriarch, resident at Kiev, who was the Metropolitan for all Russia, and, in power, almost the equal of the Czar for the Church was still independent, and represented the rights of the people, in opposition to the imperial power, and that of the Boyars so that the remonstrances of the Patriarchs were almost equivalent to a veto. Peter I., who was early initi- ated, by his Genevese tutor, into Protestant views, and who was determined to get the mighty influence of the Church into his own hands, abolished the Patriarchal dignity, because " the people would otherwise think more of the Chief Pastor than of the Chief Ruler," and appointed (1721) a "Holy Synod," appointed by himself a permanent Council, in the eyes of the Bishops, and an Upper Consistory, in the Pro- K2 132 IMPERIAL STATE CHURCHSHIP. testant sense, in the eyes of the Czar. When the clergy petitioned for the re-appointment of a Patriarch, Peter replied, angrily striking his breast " Here is your Patri- arch." 1 This overthrow of the ancient ecclesiastical consti- tution was acknowledged by the Patriarch Jeremiah of Constantinople. "The Synod appointed by the Czar Peter," he declared, " is, and is to be called, our brother in Christ." Jt has the power to transact and to decree, like the four sacred Apostolic Patriarchal Sees.' These Synods, with their permanent Procurator, taken from the laity (and occasionally from the army), form a kind of State Council and Ecclesiastical Tribunal, an administrative machine for the Church, which is placed by the State on a level with other administrative authorities. Being in itself a body without a soul, it receives the principle of life from the Czar, through the Procurator, without whose signature none of its proceedings are valid, and none of its words have any power. It cannot even itself appoint its secretary and subordinate officials ; but they are all nominated and displaced by the Czar. It subsists only by the will of the Emperor, and merely to fulfil his commands. On the whole Russian religious system, therefore, is im- pressed the stamp of Imperial State Churchship. The entire property of the Church was attached by Catherine II. to the estates of the Crown, in order, as it was said, to relieve the clergy from the burden of their administration. 3 The Church bears this supremacy as a yoke that has been laid upon it; but it bears the burden willingly it undeniably serves the State as a political instrument, and assists in confirming the absolute power of the Czar. The slightest movement towards inde- pendence in the Bishops, leads to threats of imprisonment and exile ; and although the three Metropolitans of Peters- burg, Kiev, and Moscow, are permanent members of the governing Synod, the latter, when he on one occasion pre- 1 HERMANN'S u Geschichte des Russ. Staats," iv. 350. * MURAWIJEW'S u Geschichte der Russischen Kirche." Carlsruhe, 1857, p. 252. DOLGOEOUKOW'S " La Verite sur la. Russie." Paris, I860, p. 344. ARCHIEPISCOPAL POWER OF THE CZAR. 133 sumed to differ in opinion from the Emperor Nicholas, was immediately dismissed to his diocese, by which he was prevented from taking any further part in the proceedings of the Synod. 1 Notwithstanding this, the Protestant idea, that the sove- reign, as such, must be the chief Bishop or head of the National Church, is really foreign to the Russians, and to the Sclavonic nation in general. A religious Russian would not admit, even now, that the Czar was the head of his Church, or that it belonged to his office to decide on questions concerning faith and doctrine, divine service, and the Sacraments. In fact, no Czar has ever taken on himself to do, what, in Protestant countries, is regarded as among the ordinary, and, what may be called, the normal proceedings of the government to make enactments con- cerning faith and divine service, or impose any changes on the Church. What, however, the Russian Czar, with all his power, declines to do, with respect to his own Church, that he arrogates to himself, according to the Protestant system, with respect to the Lutheran Church of the Baltic provinces. 2 This archiepiscopal power, too, has even been exercised in a somewhat hostile spirit, not only by the extension of the laws concerning mixed marriages to the Protestant provinces, according to which all the children of such marriages belong to the Russian Church, 3 but also by prohibiting Protestant clergymen from baptizing heathens, Jews, and Moham- medans. Authority in dogmatic or liturgical questions has never been ascribed to the Emperor in his own Church, but he has assumed it over that of the Protestants, for the Edict 1 DOLGOROUKOW, p. 343. * By a Rescript of the year 1817. HENGSTENBERG'S " Kirchen- Zeitung," vol. xxxi., pp. 569-567. 3 Concerning the consequences that have already resulted, see " Russ- land und die Gegenwart." Leipsig, 1851, i. 163 ; and HENGSTENBERG, " K.-Zeitung," i., p. 575. Both witnesses maintain that, by this law, the Protestant Church of those countries must gradually pass into the Russian-Greek Church. 134 THE RUSSIAN CLERGY. of 1817 commands the General Consistory to refer all such matters to the Czar. There is, therefore, no question of an Imperial Papacy or Caliphate in Russia ; but, nevertheless, in the " Order of Succession," which the Emperor Paul read aloud in the Cathedral at Moscow, and then laid on the altar, the Emperor is styled the " Head of the Church." In the Book of Laws he is called merely the " Divinely annointed Protector" of the Church of God ; and at his coronation he is treated as the " first-born son " of the Church. Prince Dolgoroukow remarks that the Emperor Nicholas never regarded himself as head of the Church, though he certainly acted as if he was ; ! and, as a matter of fact, the Church of Russia is more completely in the power of the monarch than any other religious community in the Christian world. It is wanting, to a degree, of which there is scarcely another example in Christian history, in every capacity of free action. There are no Councils, no conferences of the clergy, no co-operation of the clergy and their parishioners, no centre of ecclesiastical knowledge and culture, no exchange of views through literary organs, or an ecclesiastical literature. No such things exist in Russia, nor may they exist ; and thence it follows that there is in the Church no such thing D as public opinion or public feeling ; and it cannot be said that the Russian clergy have before them any purpose clearly defined or recognised, or even instinctively felt, or that it has any indwelling organic life. The Bishop and his clergy are separated by a broad and impassable chasm. The Bishop is mostly an aged monk, who, after a life passed in his cell, in total ignorance of temporal affairs and administrative business, sees himself suddenly elevated by the Imperial will to an Episcopal throne, the choice being made with special refer- ence to personal qualifications a lofty stature, a majestic beard, a generally imposing appearance. He has two main duties : first, devotion to the Emperor, and unconditional obedience to his will ; and, secondly, a watchful attention to the pomp of liturgical ceremonies. The serious business, 1 " La Verite sur la Russie.' 1 Paris, 1860, p. 341. THE SECULAR CLERGY. 135 and the cares of Catholic Bishops, are unknown to him ; for these the Bishop leaves, partly to the Imperial Synod (since the Emperor has withdrawn from the Episcopacy the greater part of its spiritual power and jurisdiction), and partly to the Consistories, which are notorious for their venality and simony. Among the Bishops themselves there is no hierar- chical organization, no internal connection, and no reciprocal action. All these the Czars have annihilated ; and thus the Russian Church is found in glaring contradiction to a fundamental law acknowledged by itself namely, the 3>!d Apostolic Canon, by which "every national Church is to recognise one bishop as its first and its head." The secular clergy, who are mostly the sons of clergymen for the clergy here form an hereditary class have usually, even before the time of their ordination that is, from their early youth to maintain in a church that the Czars have robbed of its property, a constant struggle against poverty and destitu- tion. They are mostly married to priests' daughters, and the fathers of a numerous progeny, and they have to till their fields with their own hands : they are in general, as may be supposed, extremely ignorant indeed, are merely taught to read and to sing, and but too often addicted to the national vice of drunkenness. They are entirely defenceless against the bishops, who sometimes treat them like slaves ; they cringe before them with trembling humility; and as it is impossible for them to live with their families on the income allowed them by the Church, they are compelled to descend to the most supple pliancy of demeanour, both towards those above them (their Bishops and patrons), as well as towards the people below them. 1 The Russian Church is a dumb one : there is no singing by the congregation, and there is no sermon only occasion- ally, and especially on Imperial fete-days, does the Pope or Bishop say a few words, to impress on the people the duty and great merit of unconditional obedience towards the Czar, and to point out that they cannot better show their 1 See the description given by an eye-witness in the " Correspondant," vol. xxii. (1826), p. 316. 136 THE MONASTIC ORDERS. love to God than by a faithful subjection to the Imperial will. 1 Amid such a want of all instruction and of spiritual renova- tion (for there are neither prayer-books nor ascetic writings in the hands of the people), the individual remains com- pletely confined within the circle of his own thoughts, and there are no remedies against the overwhelming mass of superstition which cannot fail to be engendered by a purely ceremonial religion in the absence of doctrine and of the living Word. Spiritual culture, and even a smattering of theological knowledge, can only be found in the monasteries, and with a few monks. Very unfavourable opinions are, nevertheless, given of the monastic orders: " They are," says Dolgoroukoxv, " idle and demoralized, and, with the exception of the Bureaucracy, the most mischievous class of men in Russia. At the same time, the secular priest stands so much lower in the social scale, and in public opinion, that he can, if he pleases, again become a layman, or be, by degradation, restored to the laity, and may then even be placed in the ranks as a soldier." 2 The Russian is, however, unconditionally devoted to his Church ; it is for him the firm citadel of his nationality, in which, and through which, he feels himself invincible ; and the Slavonian Liturgy, which so completely expresses the manners and the tendencies of the people, gives to the clergy 1 Intelligent Russians now acknowledge that it is a perverse practice, in their Church, to make marriage compulsory on the clergy, and to admit no man to ordination who is li ving in celibacy. See upon the sub- ject DOLGOKOUKOW. p. 350. The difficulty is not to be got rid of, as the Prince thinks, by leaving them free on this point for a married clergy, and one living in voluntary celibacy, could not well subsist together. The former would sink too low in public opinion by the contrast : the confidence and, as a natural consequence, the contributions of the people would be bestowed upon the latter. In the appointments to livings, the parishes would certainly petition for a wifeless pastor, that is, if they were allowed to express their wishes. There have been, very lately, complaints from Galicia, of the injurious consequences that have followed from the compulsory early marriages of the Greek clergy there. See u Kleine Beytrage zii grossen Fragen in Oesterreich." Leipsig, 1860, p. 81. 2 LOUZON LE Due, p. 224, et seq. EXTENSION OF THE RUSSIAN CHURCH. 137 a great power over their minds. The Russian is far from feeling that moral indignation at the low moral state of his " Popes," which to the Germanic and Romanic nations made the corruption of their clergy ultimately intolerable. 1 The Russians believe in themselves, and in a great futurity for themselves, and this confidence especially applies to their Church. The extension of their empire and of their Church are jointly regarded as great national objects ; and as their Church stands alone in the world, the government can always stamp every war as a religious one as, indeed, Nicholas, in the recent great war, actually did. All who are not Russians are, in accordance with the opinion officially incul- cated on the people, either heterodox or infidels. According to this view, an Appeal of the Holy Directing Synod of Petersburg summoned the people, in 1855, to devote their lives and fortunes to the cause of their country and their holy religion. And the proclamation of the year 1848 closed with the words, "Hear, ye heathens, and humble yourselves, for God is with us !" Russia is, for the people, the "Holt/ Land" Moscow, the "Holy City" the monarch, the "Holy Czar" God is the " Russian God." In the prayers of the Church supplication is made for the extension of the dominion of the Czar and of the orthodox Church on earth, and many a Russian hopes to see the day when the Greek cross will be planted on St. Peter's at Rome. The Government only acts in accordance with the spirit of the nation when it meditates preparing the other nations of the same confession, Greeks and South Slavonians, for the reception at some period into the Russian Imperial and ecclesiastical body. Before all things, 1 The Russian author of the work called " Vom anderen lifer" (Ham- burg, 1850), p. 167, says, indeed, of the Russian peasant, " He despises the clergy as slothful, covetous fellows, who live at his cost, and in all street ballads and popular ribaldry, the priest, the deacon, and their wives, are always brought in as examples of the absurd and the despic- able." Even if that should be the case, yet that the clergy occasionally exercise great power over the country people would not be contra- dictory to the fact, but would rather afford a psychological explanation of it. 138 IDEAL OF SLAVONIAN EMPIRE. however, the Russians look longingly towards Constantinople the Emperor-city (Zargrad), as they call it. They be- lieve that God has given them a right to possess that city the mother of their Church and that they are to have the church of Saint Sophia. It is their mission to restore this great church of Anatolian Christianity, after its desecra- tion into a mosque, once more to its original destination. One great Slavonian Empire, extending from Archangel to the Adriatic, and, by means of this empire, a dominion over the world, which, as the pious say, is to serve for the diffusion and the glorification of the orthodox Church this is the ideal that, more or less consciously, hovers before every Russian. As early as 1619, in an original document of the Holy Synod at Moscow, the Czar is solemnly assured of the dominion of the world, and it is promised that there shall be continual prayer offered up that " he may be the only sovereign over the whole earth ! " ! It is well known how this expectation, and the devotion to the great Pro- tector of their Church, has been awakened and cherished among the Slavonian populations belonging to the separated Anatolian Church. For this purpose are church-books, with "obligate" prayers for the orthodox Czar, furnished gra- tuitously from Russia, tp both priests and parishes, and with the same object pecuniary assistance is secretly afforded to the clergy. The most insignificant priest in Albania, Corfu, Zante, and Cephalonia receives a little yearly income from the ecclesiastical treasury at Nischnei-Novgorod. 2 Even amongst the Slavonians of Austria, the Wallachians in Hungary and Transylvania, the Russian influence is actively maintained. 3 To plant this Emperor-worship in the minds of the young, 1 KOPITAR, in the " Wiener Jahrb. d. Lit.," vol. xxviii. p. 247. * ' Allg.-Zeitung," 29th Febr., 1860, p. 983. 1 DE GERONDO, "La Transylvanie," Paris, 1845, recounts this fact : " An Hungarian officer pointed to a troop of Wallachian soldiers that he commanded, and said, ' Ces homines m'aiment, ils m'obeissent aveuglement, mais le Pope s'est laisse gagner par les moines Russes ; qu'un seul cosaque paraisse a la frontiere, et ils me passeront sur le corps pour aller oil le pretre les conduira.' " IMPERIAL SUPREMACY IN THE CHURCH. 139 and to cherish and strengthen it in those of the old, is, according to their views of the government and the Synod, the main business of the Russian clergy. The power of the Emperor, according to their catechism, comes immediately from God ; the veneration due to him must be expressed by the most complete submission in words, bearing, and actions; the obedience must in every respect be unlimited and passive. 1 The police-like character, the mechanical constraint of a church system degraded into a mere machine of government, strikes the observer everywhere in Russia. Even for con- fessions and absolutions a fee is fixed by Imperial ordon- nance. Every Russian is bound to confess and communicate once a-year, and get a certificate made out for him to that effect. Without this confession and communion certificate he can neither take an oath nor bear witness. It is required for everything, and is, therefore, frequently bought, so that a regular trade is carried on in these documents. It is gene- o ~ rally maintained that priests are instructed to report to the governmental authorities anything that may appear of political significance from the confessional, and that in general they have no scruple in obeying this instruction. The Civil Code, "the Swod," prescribes that people are not to change their places in church, and so forth. The Emperor reserves to himself the decision concerning divorces, 2 and the canonization of saints takes place by Imperial ukase. The greater part of the Russian clergy do not, neverthe- less, feel the imperial supremacy as a burden and a deformity in the Church. They have grown up in this view, and know no other the Bible and the history of the Church are sealed books to them ; and they feel like the Russian populace, who take a pride in the fact that the Czar is the sole lord and ruler in the empire, and who find their nationality involved in it. " If we were to unite ourselves to Rome," said a Russian priest to a Frenchman a short time ago, " our Emperor would no longer be the sole ruler in his States. He 1 " Protest. Kirchen-Zeitung," 1854, p. 354. 2 ' Allg.-Zeitung," 1858, 12th Deer., p. 5607. 140 SECTS AND SEPARATIST COMMUNITIES. would have to be accountable to a foreign sovereign, and that would be humiliating. We cannot understand how you Frenchmen, who usually possess a pretty good share of national pride, should allow your bishops to receive the con- firmation of their appointments from Rome I" 1 Churches are, like individuals, punished by that wherein they have sinned. How carefully did this Church cherish the bad heritage it had received from the spiritually im- poverished Byzantium, a mechanical ritualism ; and how care- fully did it exclude itself from every breath of spiritual religion and of deeper feeling ! How it has allowed its clergy to sink into a mass of rude, mindless machines ; how it has left its people, -without the spiritual nourishment of the tidings of salvation, to languish and perish in the dreary monotony of a barren ceremonial and empty religious etiquette ! Amidst endless crossings and prostrations, and genuflexions, the body is kept so hard at work, and so con- stantly occupied in the Church, that the mind has not a moment for thought. 2 Only in Russia could sects arise, founded on a difference as to whether the sign of the Cross was to be made with two fingers or three, or whether a fast was to be kept on Wednesday or Friday, if either of these days should happen to be a holiday. Russia is the true home of a sect which would consider its salvation endangered O by a revision of the faulty text of the liturgical books, or by a variation of images from the ancient pattern. The temporalization of the Church by the supremacy of the Czar has, on the whole, had a great part in the forma- tion of the numerous sects and Separatist communities, which form in Russia an evil not to be remedied by ecclesiastical means, and appear to threaten danger to the State, since they only need skilful leaders to give them a politically re- volutionary direction. On the other hand, however, the existence of these sects has been put forward as a reason why 1 " Correspondant," May, 1861, p. 189. * See LtiouzoN LE Due's " La Russie Contemporaine." Paris, 1854, p. 228. RUSSIAN SECTS. 141 the supreme power of the Emperor over the entire ecclesi- astical territory must be maintained unaltered. 1 The RaskolnikeS) or Apostates, as they are called by the State Church, or the Staroverzes (old Believers, as they call themselves) are very widely spread among the lower orders. They represent old Russia, as it was before Peter L, and ostensibly protest against the alterations made in the Church books by the Patriarch Nikon, but really also against the dominion of the Czar over the Church. This sect is extend- ing every year more and more ; and, according to a recent statement, it has increased, since 1840, from nine millions 2 to thirteen millions. Throughout Siberia, the Ural moun- tains, among the Cossack tribes, and in Northern Russia, the population belongs chiefly to the Staroverzes. The Govern- ment will not consent to tolerate them ; but they know how to manage with the Government officers; 3 whilst the bishops and Popes of the State Church, who are sent by the Synod to Siberia, are regarded very much in the same light as the Protestant clergymen of Ireland in purely Catholic districts. 4 Through a bishop of their own Church, who, since 1845, has taken up his residence in a Galician village, they have been arranged into six large dioceses, and have obtained bishops and ordained priests of their own. Besides these Separatists, a considerable number of heretical sects have issued from the fruitful womb of the State Church. One of the youngest of these sects is that of the Molokaner, who profess to be strictly Biblical in their faith ; but it is according to an arbitrary and mystical interpretation of the Bible. They have already spread throughout Russia, and number a million of disciples. 5 To this increasing estrangement of the lower classes may be now added the complete indifference of the educated and higher orders. 6 " There is perhaps no country in the world," 1 See the Russian Memorial in "The Rambler," Nov., 1857, p. 313-55. 2 GOLOWINE, " Autocratie Russe," Leip., 1860. DOLGOROUKOW shows (p. 366) what a lucrative branch of income the Staroverzes form for the venal police. 4 MESSNER'S "K Ev. Kirchen-Zeitung," 1860, p. 367. "N. Preuss.-Zeitung," 21st Dec., 1859. " La Russie sera-t-elle Catholique ? " p. 66. 142 ADMINISTRATION OF BAPTISM. says Gagarin, " that counts so many Voltairians as Russia." The Russian Church maintains that in its creed and administration of the Sacraments, it is completely in har- mony with the Church of Constantinople ; but this, in reality, is not the case on the contrary, a very striking difference has lately appeared. Both Churches namely, the Russian and the Greek are accustomed to administer baptism by three complete immersions ; whilst the Catholic Church and the Protestants (Baptists exceptetl) content themselves with pouring water on the head of a person to be baptized ; or, as in England and elsewhere, with a mere sprinkling of water. The form of baptism, by pouring on the head, was declared by the Greek Church, in a Synod assembled at Constantinople in the year 1484, and with consent of the four Patriarchs, to be effectual ; and the same thing was done for Russia by a mixed Synod of Greek and Russian bishops in the year 1667; but in the year 1756, the Greeks, in a Constitution signed by three Patriarchs, overthrew the former decisions, 1 and resolved that, for the future, all proselytes from any one of the Western Churches should be immersed. This custom has since continued in all the churches belong- ing to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and is now de- clared by the Hellenic Church to be indispensable. The Russian Church, however, with its comprehensive projects for obtaining Catholic and Lutheran converts, rightfully considered that the necessity for a new baptism might prove a stumbling-block to such proselytes, and would, therefore, not accept this new decision ; so that, in the eyes of the Greeks, not only the Russian Empresses, but many of the priests, and a considerable number of laymen, are not baptized at all. From 150,000 to 180,000 of the latter, for example, of Lutherans of the Baltic provinces, who have become " orthodox," and the thousands of converts received every year, and for all of whom the anointing with the Chrism has been thought sufficient. 2 Such a profound difference 1 As a pretext, the incorrect assertion was made, that the Latins bap- tized by mere sprinkling pairio-/ioc. * The Patriarch of that time, Cyrillus of Constantinople, approved, THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 143 would certainly, under other circumstances, have led to a complete dissolution of ecclesiastical association ; but in the Turkish East, as well as in Hellas, there are the most press- ing reasons for keeping up a good understanding with the Czar and the Czar's Church ; and it has therefore been resolved, with very cautious "prudence," to pass over in silence the crime of which, according to Anatolian prin- ciples, the Russian Church has been guilty, by admitting whole troops of unbaptized persons to all Christian rights and means of salvation, and by having also allowed the whole Church to be ruled by (Catherine II.) an unbaptized Empress. THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND AND THE DISSENTERS. The Church of England cannot properly be called a National Church, since at least the half in fact, a much larger number of the population, do not belong to the Anglican Church. The Catholics of England (without reckoning Scotland and Ireland) amount to a million and a half; the Dissenters of various denominations are much more numerous ; and there is a mass of the poor population, factory workers and others, who are, for the most part, attached to no Church at all, and about whom the Anglican Church does not trouble itself and partly for this reason, that in its stiff and narrow organization, and all want of pastoral elasticity, it feels itself powerless against the masses ; whilst they, on their side, never think of reckoning themselves members of the Church, or asking from it any assistance. The Anglican, however, is still the State Church ; it is the only one politically-privileged ; its Bishops sit in Parlia- ment, though only in the Upper House whilst in the Lower House, which is the real centre of power and government, and made public, in the year 1756, the book of EUSTRATIUS ARGENTES, 2r?j\trfi;en'e rov 'PajmdjuoS, which is intended to show that the whole of Western Christendom is unbaptized. See also the detailed discussion of this subject by WILLIAM PALMER, in his " Dissertations on subjects relating to the Orthodox, or Eastern Catholic Communion." London, 1853, p. 163-203. 144 THE CLEKGY. the Church is only casually represented by some few mem- bers, especially regarded as friends of the Church. It is most closely connected with the civil power ; the King or Queen is its head in the fullest sense, and the State provides before all things for the Church and its wants. The intel- lectual classes belong almost exclusively to the State Church, and it scarcely ever happens that a man of eminence pro- fesses himself a member of any Dissenting body. 1 In Eng- land the upper ranks of society are in so far religious, that scarcely one of them would acknowledge himself an unbe- liever, and the majority attend Divine service on a Sunday. It is, then, the rich and distinguished who go to Church, the poor and low who remain away. The clergy of the Episcopal Church themselves proceed from the higher classes, and are by relationship or marriage intimately connected with them ; it is only very seldom that clergymen of the Church havesprung from the lower orders ; and whoever does not belong by birth and connection to the privileged classes, generally finds the door of ecclesiastical preferment closed against him. The patronage is mostly in the hands of the nobility and gentry, who regard the Church as a means of provision for their younger suns, sons-in-law, and cousins. Its patronage partly belongs to the Crown, the bishops, and the universities, who also usually provide for their own. Besides the rich beneficed clergy, however, there is a subordinate poor class of clergy- men (an auxiliary clergy), the curates, who perform service for the more numerous classes of sinecurists and pluralists, and very commonly do this for very slender emoluments. The son of a family of the lower order might perhaps attain to the position of a curate, but there is no Christian country where the poor and humble are so much excluded from the higher schools and educational establishments and thereby of c,ourse from the Church and the service of the State as in England. Nowhere else is the chasm between the rich and the poor so great nowhere else so little intercourse between these classes, so little community of thought and feeling, as in 1 The celebrated chemist, Faraday, seems a rare exception. THE CHURCH OF THE ARISTOCRACY. 145 England. The aristocratically born and educated clergy of the State Church belong to the higher orders they under- stand them, and are understood by them they think and feel with them and from the people they are separated by a chasm that their pastoral zeal is seldom able to bridge over. 1 The Anglican Church clergyman does not preach he reads a speech or an essay ; he reads the lengthy Sunday liturgy, and he visits the boys' school; but the people are not specially fond of these lectures in the churches; and, with the prevail- ing system of hired seats and pews, they cannot even find room inside the churches. Of the confessional, which, in the Catholic, the Greek, and the Russian churches, brings the priest into immediate communication with the individual, there is of course no question. The liturgy directs indeed that the sick man, if he feels confession necessary for the easing of his conscience, may resort to it ; but no practical use is ever made of this permission, since persons who have never confessed in their whole lives do not think of it when on a sick bed. The English clergyman is therefore a lec- turer, and in general nothing more; whilst to the lower classes his manners and his modes of expression are strange, unin- telligible, and repulsive. There is no Church that is so completely and thoroughly as the Anglican the product and expression of the wants and wishes, the modes of thought and cast of character, not of a certain nationality, but of a fragment of a nation, namely, the rich, fashionable, and cultivated classes. It is the religion of deportment, of gentility, of clerical reserve. Religion and the Church are then required to be, above all things, not troublesome, not intrusive, not presuming, not importunate. What specially recommends it is its freedom from pretension that it claims no high authority, is no inconvenient disturber of the conscience, but keeps within the limits of general morality ; and whilst retaining some Christian doctrines, sel- dom wounds the hearts of the hearers by an application of 1 LYITON BCLWER has made some excellent remarks on this "cause of weakness in the Established Church" in his "England and the English." Paris, 1833, p. 210. L 146 PECULIAR CHARACTER OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH. the,m. As to what it once possessed of positive ecclesiastical tenets, it has gradually allowed them to become obsolete. It is content with taking up just so much space in life as com- merce, the enjoyment of riches, and the habitude of a class, desirous before all things of " comfort," may have left to it. Of the numerous pious practices by which formerly the lives of Englishmen, during their whole course, were attached to the Christian faith, there are few that this Church has not broken, or allowed to be broken; and the few that remain are those which possess the smallest restraining power. The Con- fession of sins, Fasting, everything that falls within the limits of the ascetic, the average Englishman reckons as " super- stition," an idea that is for him a very comprehensive one. His Church, and it is that for which he specially admires it, requires of him nothing "superstitious." Its insulated character, also, its separation from every other Christian community, suits the national taste, and is a popular feature of the Anglican Church. The Englishman, especially of the higher ranks, finds it quite in the proper order of things that he should have a Church exclusively to himself, in which no other nation has any share ; a Church, too, which, while it has all the accommodating spirit, the reserve, and the exclusiveness of Continental Protestantism, on the other assumes, by means of its episcopacy and its more liturgical character, an aspect of more dignity and importance. 1 1 It is necessary to have been in England, to see, and to observe, this self-complacent feeling with regard to the National Church, before one can have anything like an exact idea of its strength, intensity, and peculiarity. In Catholic countries the case does not occur ; since Catholics except those who live scattered amongst nations of other creeds are little, if at all, aware of the contrast between their own Church and that of others. From their youth upwards they have heard only of one Universal Church they have breathed only its air they have moved only within the circle of its ideas and they know that their nation is only one among many one branch of the great tree of the Church, and has no peculiar advantage over any other branch. The English- man, on the contrary, has sucked in, with his mother's milk, the idea of an English religion, an English Church, to which all others stand related only as degenerate as bastard Churches as superstition does to faith and he enjoys the agreeable conviction of belonging to the chosen ITS UXACCEPTABILITY TO THE POOR. 147 The Episcopal State Church has, since the Revolution of 1688, and especially since 1770, suffered enormous losses. In the year 1676, that is, only seventeen years after its re-es- tablishment, it was calculated that Catholics and Dissenters together only made up a twentieth part of the population. At present, at least one-half of the nation is estranged from it. What makes it pleasing and acceptable to the higher classes repels the lower. They see in the Anglican clergy- man only the elegant gentleman, who has no mission to them ; he is not a friend, not a messenger of God, and, what is worse, he has no fixed doctrine to proclaim to them, for the Church he serves has none. What he teaches is only the opinions of the party or school to which he belongs, by the accidents of birth, of education, or of society. It may be conceived that a great part of the people prefer belonging to one of the sects which have a definite form of doctrine, and leave little or nothing to the whim of a preacher. Clergymen of the Established Church assert 1 that, since the Reformation, the Church has never been so much the religion of the people, has never been able to win so much of their confidence, as their Catholic predecessor. But as the Church of the richest country in the world, and of the richest classes in that country, it has the disposal of larger pecuniary means than any other; and, during the last thirty years, it has done more in the way of the restoration of old, and the people of a new Church the modern favourite of the Godhead ! It is this very Jewish mode of thought that has also found so much satisfac- tion in the Jew-like observance of the Sabbath. The one true Church, thinks the average English'rnan, is physically and morally an Insular Church. Where the firm British soil ceases, and the sea begins, there ceases also the firm ground, ecclesiastical outside of it are the heaving billows of superstition, and of false or defective Churches. Admirably, and from the very hearts of his countrymen, has the " Saturday Review" (1859, ii. 104) portrayed this state of feeling. " There is no feeling so pleasant as the assurance that you are yourself right, and everybody else wrong that your Church and nation are the very perfection of Churches and nations and that, by implication, you are yourself the most perfect specimen of both temporal and spiritual society." 1 " Christian Remembrancer," vol. xxvii. (1854), p. 385. L 2 148 SPOLIATION OF THE POOR. building of handsome new churches, than had previously been done in the present century. There is little prospect, nevertheless, that it will ever succeed in becoming what its Catholic predecessor was, or in doing what that effected; that is, of becoming the Church of the lower classes and of the poor, and winning both their confidence and their attachment. Every one who observes the effects that the change of religion has had upon this portion of the population, and the relation in which the present Estab- lished Church stands with respect to the poor, will admit that, as regards both, there can be little room for doubt. The depression, detriment, and spoliation of the lower classes, have everywhere followed on the revolution- ary change called "The Reformation." In England, the robbery of the Catholic Church the transference of its property, in enormous masses, into the hands of the laity left thousands of the poor destitute, and transformed thousands of peasant proprietors into helpless paupers. Expenditure upon the poor, in Catholic times, ceased at the Reformation, with the marriages of the clergy, and the enrichment of the nobility, from the property of the Church. "In places where formerly twenty pounds sterling were given away to the poor every year," says a contemporary, "the poor do not now get so much as a handful of meal." 1 The churches and monasteries, as well as the parish priests, had hitherto chiefly provided for the poor : they had on their lands a dense population of farmers and tenants. Leslie and Kennett 2 describe the conduct of the Catholic clergy to the poor. They did not, it is said, merely give them alms ; they procured work for them ; they put their children to trades and handicrafts ; the poor, when they were travelling^ found shelter in the monasteries and parsonages, and the pastors kept lists of the poor, that they might give alms to those who most needed them. 3 But by the sudden abolition of the monasteries, and by the 1 SELDEX'S Works, iii. 1339. * " Divine Right of Tithes," Works, ii. 873. * " Lease of Impropriations," 1704, p. 16. ORIGIN OF ENGLISH PAUPERISM. 149 bestowal of the Church and monastic estates on the courtiers and nobles, not only were countless numbers of the people rendered all at once destitute, but the new proprietors found it advantageous to turn fields into pastures, and so depopu- late large tracts of land, on which, hitherto, an agricultural population had lived under the protection of the Church; so that at last " the sheep devoured men." l It appears (under Edward VI.), says Burnet, 2 to have been the general intention and plan of the nobility to press down the country people into the same state of degradation and slavery in which they languished in other countries. Thus, with the very first steps that Edward's government made towards the introduction of Calvinism into England, a regular state of slavery was established by law. Such pitiless and un- Christian severity of legislation as was now adopted (after 1548) had never, hitherto, been heard of. Idle persons (and for confirmation of the fact of idleness, it was sufficient to show that they had not been at work for three days) as well as vagrant beggars, were to be branded on the breast, and to be made slaves to be fed on nothing but bread and water, thrown into irons, put to forced labour, and attempts to escape were to be punished with death. 3 Thus a helpless 1 This was said in a political work that appeared in 1581. ( u A Com- pendious or Briefe Examination of Certayne Ordinary Complaints," f. 5.") "The sheep are to blame for all this mischief: they have driven agriculture from the country," &c., &c., ap. EDEN, p. 115. HARRISON'S " Description of England," p. 206, speaks of whole hamlets, or towns, that have been pulled down, and the ground turned into pastures. BECON, SANDYS, and other reformers, theologians, and Protestant bishops, of the time of Edward and Elizabeth, speak of cold covetous- ness, and rude, pitiless oppression of the poor, as prevailing characteristics of the titled and opulent classes, and confess that in the Catholic times they were much more charitable and merciful. Another Protestant theologian traces this change to the doctrines of Faith and Justification. STUBBES, " Motives to Good Works." London, 1596, p. 42. 2 " History of the Reformation," fol. ed., ii. 114. 3 Sir FRED. M. EDEN, " State of the Poor." London, 1797, i. 100-101. PASHLEY, " Pauperism and Poor Laws." London, 1852, p. 180. This writer calls it " a statute characterized by a barbarous and ruthless severity, wholly unworthy of the legislation of any Christian people." 150 POOR-RATES. pauper population was first created for England was not at that time an industrial country ; and its poor were treated worse than the beasts of burden. Under Elizabeth these laws were renewed, and even boys of fourteen or fifteen years old were to be branded if they begged for alms. 1 If they were beyond eighteen, they might, on being arrested for the second time, be put to death. 2 In the year 1597, severe whipping, or condemnation to the galleys, was substituted for branding. At the same time, however, under Elizabeth, the burden of the poor-rates was first imposed, by which free Christian charity was degraded into a legal obligation, and a compulsory oppressive tax substituted for a willing gift. 3 In more recent times, the poor, or workhouses have been added, whose arrangements, by the separation of husband and wife, parents and children, are completely un-Christian, and even, according to English judgment, in their present state a disgrace to the country, 4 since there is nothing like them to be found throughout the rest of Europe. In England at an expense of six millions sterling a-year this much is attained, that the working classes will endure the greatest privation, and live in the most disgusting filth, rather than go voluntarily into " the workhouse." It is the Reformation, as it is now ac- knowledged, that has brought upon the English people, as its permanent consequence, a legally existing and officially established pauperism. 5 By the abolition of the Catholic holidays, and the trans- formation of the Christian Sunday into a Jewish Sabbath, 1 STOWE'S " Chronicles of England." London, 1630, ad. an. 1564, 1568, 1572. 2 EDEN, p. 128. * See the remarks of the " Edinburgh Review," vol. xc., 507. " The Poor Law," it is said, " poisons the springs of Christian love to our neighbour, by making, on the one side an irresistible claim, and on the other a tax, from which there is no escape," &c. At the beginning of the last century, LESLIE represented the heavy Poor-Rates (ii. 873) as a just punishment for having " robbed God, the Church, and the poor of their patrimony." 4 PASHLEY, p. 364. 5 ' Dublin Review," xx. 208. ABOLITION OF CATHOLIC HOLIDAYS. 151 a further oppressive yoke has been laid on the poor. All the cheerin" 1 and enlivening Church festivals that had been O O allowed to the people in Catholic times processions, rustic fetes, pilgrimages, dramatic representations and ceremonies were, as a matter of course, abolished, and nothing remained but the sermon, read out of a book the Liturgy, read out of a book and with this the grim Calvinistic suppression of every social sport, and every public amusement, on the Sunday. By these means the whole character of the English people was changed. 1 Formerly known throughout Europe as a people full of genial humour as cheerful " merry Eng- land" they assumed, after the Reformation, a sullen, dis- contented aspect ! 2 Music and dancing, once the favourite amusements of the 1 Literally thus (LORD JOHN MANNERS in his u Pleas for National Holidays ;" London, 1843, p. 7), " The English people, who were of yore, famous all over Europe for their love of manly sports and their sturdy good humour, have, year after year, been losing that cheerful character, and acquiring habits of discontent and moroseness." The extensive spread of drinking among the lower classes is certainly con- nected with this ; and experience everywhere shows that when individuals are dissatisfied with their lot, and their lives are gloomy, they become disposed to fall into intemperance. It is only after the middle of the sixteenth cei^ury that this immoderate drinking is mentioned. In the old Catholic times the English people were so free from this vice that their country was regarded as the most sober of all the northern nations. It was entirely changed under Elizabeth, according to the report of two contemporaries, the historian CAMDEN (" Annals of Queen Elizabeth," p. 263), and Bishop GODFREY GOODMAN (" The Fall of Man ;" London, 1616, p. 366). The military men, who returned home from the wars of the Netherlands, are said to have specially contributed to the spread of this vice, and the first laws against it were made under James, in 1606. At present, the working classes of Great Britain drink every year, in brandy and spirits, as much as the revenue of the kingdom, namely (counting also what is spent on tobacco), more than fifty-three millions sterling. PORTER, " On the Self-imposed Taxation of the Working Classes," vol. xiii. of the "Journal of the Statistical Society." * The English proverb, " All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," is specially true of the working classes in England. They are overburdened with work, and the Church does nothing for them. Lord John is perfectly right in designating their general condition as the " all work and no play system." 152 EFFECTS OF PURITANICAL BIGOTRY. people, have disappeared. An Englishman of the humbler ranks is unmusical, and neither will nor can dance. All the enjoyments of life, all the means of making the Puritan mo- notony of an English sabbath more tolerable, are reserved to the higher classes. To the working classes nothing is left but drink ! Since the authority and intervention of the Church, which protected all classes equally in the enjoyment of their holidays, has been abolished, the people cannot any longer allow themselves any time for rest ; for amidst a general breathless competition, days of rest nay, hours of rest would be the forerunners of want, misery, and death. At the aspect of such a state of things, even so ardent a Pro- testant as Robert Southey could not refrain from casting longing glances on Catholic countries like Spain, where re- ligion favours and consecrates the innocent pleasures of the people. He complained of the Calvinism of his country, which, with its gloomy, joyless sanctimoniousness, its Jewish observance of the Sabbath, and its suppression of all holidays, had crushed down and brutalized the working classes. 1 English sovereigns have long recognised this evil. Charles I. wished to protect the freedom of the population against the Puritanism of the Parliament, but was defeated ; and the "keeping holy the Sabbath day" became an effective war- cry against the King, who was unfortunate even in his best- intended measures. 2 A hundred years later the first king of the House of Hanover had to content himself with the bar- ren wish, "that the amusements and games of which his people had been deprived by Puritanical bigotry, and pre- sumptuous latitudinarianism, might be restored to them." 3 But to do anything effectual in this direction is for the ex- isting shadow of monarchy impossible. 4 Down 'to the time of the Reformation, there were in almost every parish in England several chapels and oratories, 1 Espriella's " Letters." London, 1814, p. 147. J. DISRAELI'S " Commentaries on the Life of Charles I." London, 1839, ii. 29. 1 LORD JOHN MANNERS, p. 21. 4 See, amongst others, POLWHELE'S u Letter to the Bishop of Exeter." Truro, 1833, p. 23. THE POOR EXCLUDED FROM THE CHURCHES. 153 which were doubly desirable for the poorer classes and the country people, in a land were there were few actual villages, but so many of the rural population lived in scattered farms and cottages, and the parish church was at a great distance from a considerable part of the congregation. All these chapels and religious places Protestantism has destroyed, and left no more than the parish church. But even this was not thought enough. The church is the house of the poor, in which if it is anything more than a lecture-room they feel themselves happy, for this reason, that they find there what is wanting in their confined and mostly cheerless homes the adornment of pictures; symbols; ample space ; the solemn influence of architectural beauty and proportion ; tranquillity and silence inspiring devotion; an atmosphere and the example of prayer. Protestantism has not only robbed the churches it permitted to remain of every ornament, but it has even locked and bolted them up, so that during the week no one can pay a visit to the church. Before the Reformation no closed pews were allowed in the churches ; the space belonged to the whole congregation, and high and low were mingled together when they prayed. 1 With Protestantism, however, pews, or boxes, obtained an entrance pews furnished with all comforts, in which the rich and great can remain completely apart and separated from the common people. Thus all things have combined together to exclude the poor from the Churches of England, or induce them volun- tarily to keep away : the listless form of a service consisting almost wholly of readings ; the space taken up by the pews of the rich, the feelings of the humbler as to the wretchedness of their attire ' by the side of the elegant costumes of the opulent ; and then the widening separation and estrangement between these different classes. To the Dissenting sects the utterly poor cannot turn, since these sects are supported entirely by the payments of their members ; and the consequence is, that the masses have sunk 1 This is remarked by Bishop KENNETT in his u Parochial Antiquities," new ed., by Bandford. Oxford, 1818, ii. 282. 154 POVERTY AND DEPRAVITY. into such a state of complete religious and moral barbarism, that a "numerous nation.of heathens" has grown up in the country, 1 or rather, according to the confession of one of the bishops, something worse than heathenism, for a fierce hatred against the Christian faith rages in many parts of England. 2 According to a statistical statement, only a fifth part of the population of London, and that even of the opulent classes, goes to church. " The poor," says one of the city missionaries, " ab- sent themselves almost wholly from religious worship." 3 He found that in the parish of Clerkenwell, containing 50,000 souls, only one in fifty goes occasionally to church. 4 The consequences have not failed to follow ; Worsley, a clergy- man of the Established Church, maintains that among the poor in the manufacturing towns the last remains of modesty between the sexes have almost disappeared ; and, what is still more significant, that even in the country villages chastity and continence have almost entirely disappeared from among the labouring classes. 5 Along with the churches the schools also were abstracted 1 An expression of PUSEY'S, in his sermon, " Christ the Source and Rule of Christian Love," pp. 5, 11. * u Charge of the Bishop of Exeter," p. 56. German observers also certify to this fact. " The poor in England find no other way of avoid- ing complete religious and moral destitution than that of going to Borne. It is not, alas ! to be doubted, that the great majority of the poor who, in the widest extent of the word, may be called the mass of the lower orders of the people, have passed away without having had any part in its moral and religious life." B. A. HCBER, " Hengstenberg Kirchen- Zeitung," 1858, p. 345. VANDER KISTE, u Notes and Narrations of a Six Years' Mission, principally among the Dens ot London," 1853. He says, (p. 14), " Heathenism is the poor man's religion in the metropolis." * According to the Census of 1851, it appears, that if we take the number of persons capable of attending Church at fifty-eight per cent, of the population, six and a half millions belong to the Established Church, six millions to the Free communities, Catholics and Dissenters, and five and a half millions to no Church at all. In the towns the num- ber of Established Church people is less than that of the Dissenters, and in Wales and Monmouth not one third of the population belongs to the Established Church. " Prize Essay on Juvenile Depravity." London, p. 68-82. EXCLUSION OF THE POOR FROM SCHOOLS. 155 from the poor. In the year 1563, the Speaker of the Lower House declared that, in consequence of the robbery and plundering of the foundations at the Reformation, the edu- cation of youth had been prevented, and a fresh supply of teachers cut off. That there were a hundred less schools now than had formerly existed, and that many of those that re- mained were very poorly attended. This was the cause of a glaring diminution in the number of learned men. 1 Several grammar-schools were afterwards founded, but the poor were excluded from these also, and the case was the same at the two universities. Among the numerous colleges several had been founded in Catholic times expressly for poor students, but after the Reformation these also were made aristocratic. Even an organ of the Established Church cannot help con- fessing, in the face of these facts, that the Reformation in its results was, without doubt, a triumph of the rich over the poor, and of money over the rights of labour. 2 The laws from the time of the three Tudors, Henry, Ed- ward, and Elizabeth, declare the supremacy over the Church to be an inalienable prerogative of the Crown. These statutes still exist in full force. The king or the reigning queen is in possession of the Church ecclesiastical power, and that of the bishops is only an emanation of the royal autho- rity. The wearer of the crown is consequently in one re- spect the most uufree person in his dominions ; for if he were to enter into communion with the Papal See, become a Ca- tholic, or even take a Catholic wife, he would thereby incur an abdication or loss of his throne. According to the statute of 1689, the nation would be in that case released from the oath of fealty and allegiance. 3 At the same time, he must 1 COLLIER'S " Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain," ii. 480 ; also HALLAM'S u Introduction to the Literature of Europe," ii. 39, Paris ed., mentions the poverty and insignificance of English literature in the time of Elizabeth, and remarks that Spain, at that time, stood higher than England in this respect. 2 " British Critic," vol. xxxiii., p. 419. * See upon this the remarks of PUSEY in " Patience and Confidence the Strength of the Church." Oxford, 1841, p. 30. He cites the words of the statute : " The people are, in such case, absolved from their allegi- 1-56 THE STATE CHURCH A CREATION OF THIS WORLD. be, in fact, by turns the religious head of two Churches, and of two opposite, and sometimes mutually hostile religions ; for in Scotland, Presbyterian Calvinistic Protestantism is the Established Church. The present Queen, therefore, is accustomed to be in win- ter an English Episcopalian, and in summer a Scotch Pres- byterian ; in winter she attends the Anglican Liturgy, and has the sacrament administered to her by the hand of a bishop, or an Episcopally ordained clergyman and during her summer residence in Balmoral, or any other part of Scotland, she hears a Calvinistic sermon, and receives the Communion from a clergyman who would not in England be admitted to a pulpit of the Establishment, and that a great part of the clergy and laity would not regard as a regularly ordained clergyman. Besides the Ministers and the Parliament, " the Privy Council," since 1833, exercises a supremacy over religion and the Church. It was appointed by Parliament to be the Supreme Court of Appeal in ecclesiastical disputes, whether concerning doctrine or discipline, and consists wholly or chiefly of laymen, who are in part not even members of the Established Church. A ministerial daily paper, the " Globe," published, a few years ago, a declaration upon the nature and position of the National Church, which even Bishop Wilberforce, of Oxford, publicly adduced as the expression of the views of the Government. " The State Church, by law established," it is stated, " is, in fact, a creation of this world ; it is a machine for the employment of the spiritual element in the variable public opinion of the day. Its government is managed by the Prime Minister ; its characteristics are passive immobility, persevering silence, an absolute nullity in its censures and, then, the thousands of its declared adherents, who laugh aloud, whenever its ministers overstep their humble sphere, as officers of a national institution all these things are signs and tokens of a servitude which the lowest sect of Jumpers would not subject itself to, but which, in our department of public worship, is both natural and appropriate." THE BISHOPS. 157 When, about the same time, a desire for a certain inde- pendent Sy nodical action arose, the "Times" said It ought to be considered that this Church, to which the Parliament had given its present form, " possesses every attribute, every advantage, and every disadvantage of a compromise. Her Articles and authorised formularies are so drawn as to admit within her pale persons differing as widely as it is possible for the professors of the Christian religion to differ from each other. Unity was neither sought nor obtained ; but comprehension was aimed at and accomplished. There- fore we have within the Church of England persons differing not merely in their particular tenets, but in the rule and ground of their belief the one party seeking religion in the Bible, with the help of the Spirit, the other in the Church, by the means of tradition. The same power of freely meet- ing and deliberating, of discussing and altering, which is essential to the existence of a voluntary Church, is destruc- tive to a compromise entered into and carried out under the sanction and authority of the state." 1 The Bishops are, on the whole, powerless concerning doctrine and discipline ; and, for fear of a long and expensive lawsuit, they seldom venture to proceed against a beneficed clergyman. They have greater power over the curates, who, also, are mostly very poor ; whilst Cathedral institutions have no place in the organization of the Church, and consist of sinecures. The numerous Ecclesiastical Courts have also a crowd of sinecure places attached to them. Of the 11,728 benefices of England and Wales, the Crown has the disposal of only 1,144, and private persons, 6,092, which they may give away by mere favour, without any conditions concerning examination to be passed, or years of service. The Bishops dispose of 1853 livings, with the widest opening for nepotism, which has become proverbial among them. Plurality, or the simultaneous possession of several benefices, and the consequent inevitable absenteeism, although somewhat re- strained by recent enactments, is still of frequent occur- 1 "Times," 5th August, 1852. The article may also be seen in the " Christian Remembrancer," vol. xxiv., p. 382. 158 MERCANTILE SPIRIT OF THE CHURCH. rence. In Ireland, in the year 1834, out of 1385 church livings, 157 had no divine service, and 339 no resident cler- gyman. Thus, according to the confession of serious and conscien- tious men in the English Church, it is an intensely worldly institution. The ecclesiastical offices have been, for 150 years, disposed of by the civil power, chiefly according to political views, and regarded and treated according to their lucrative value. The Bishoprics, and other rich preferments, have been employed to procure for the ministry the support of influential families. At present they are chiefly bestowed on men of the Evangelical party, as these are most agreeable to powerful dissenters, and to great numbers of similarly- disposed Anglicans of the middle class. The designation of a church benefice as a living is very characteristic. It is regarded entirely as a piece of private property as a mere ware, that may be bought, and sold, and bargained for, as one pleases. The most open simony is an everyday occur- rence in England, and meets with no remonstrance on the part of the Bishops. It creates no surprise when the next presentation to a living is publicly offered for sale ; and it is quite usual for a father to buy for one of his sons a commission in the army; and for the other, the next presen- tation to a church living. 1 And yet, every clergyman, upon entering on his living, has to take an oath that he has not obtained it through simony ! A thoroughly mercantile spirit has taken possession of this part of the Church system. The office of preacher to a church or chapel, built on speculation, is publicly advertised, with the remark, that a free and complete " preaching of the Gospel (that is, according to the con- venient Calvinistic doctrine of Justification) is expected." Not unfrequently clergymen offer themselves, and mention their recommendations their powerful voice, their impressive manner, their pure Protestant principles, or their attachment to the " moderate and liberal" views of the Establishment. 2 1 " British Critic," vol. xxx., p. 281. 2 A great number of such tenders of their services are to be found in the " Ecclesiastical Gazette." THE PURCHASE OF LIVINGS. 159 Others profess " decidedly Evangelical principles," and very generally " extreme religious views are disclaimed," and moderation and sobriety announced. Others, again, state that they have '" Anglo-Catholic principles," or an agreement with the theologians of the seventeenth century. There is probably no Church journal in the world in which there is so much talk of "views," and such a choice of opinions to suit every taste, as the publication in which the clergy of the Established Church, so to speak, sit in the market, and offer themselves for hire. In a country like England, one would suppose that nothing would be more intolerable to the freeborn Briton, usually so great a stickler for his rights, than the state of so many congregations the being obliged to allow themselves to be sold to the first purchaser who may present himself. "There is nothing," said the "Times" lately, "to prevent any one from going into the market, and buying a living for any silly, fanatical, extravagant, or incapable booby of a son, and installing him forthwith as the spiritual mediator between the Almighty and one or two thousand of his creatures." 1 And yet there has never yet been, as far as I know, any agitation against this enor- mous abuse, which can hardly be equalled out of Tur- key. The inextricable contradiction between the 39 Articles, which are essentially Calvinistic, and the strongly Catho- licized Liturgy, originated in the circumstance of the age of the Reformation. The Articles were to be the dogmatic fetters, binding the clergy to Calvinism, and were only laid before them for signature. But the Liturgy, with its prayers and sacramental forms, was intended to prove to the people, who were still more Catholic than Protestant, and who had to be threatened with pecuniary fines before they would attend the service, that their religion had not been essen- tially altered, and that the old Catholic Church still really existed. 2 The Anglican Church is, therefore, distinguished from all 1 See " Weekly Register," May llth, 1861. 7 This must be openly admitted even on the Protestant side. See 160 CONTRADICTIONS IN DOCTRINE. other Protestant Churches in this, that they possess in their symbolic books at least the possibility of unity of doctrine, and a corresponding ecclesiastical life as, for example, the Lutherans, by keeping seriously and closely to their Concor- dian-Book, might effect a unity of life and doctrine, provided they got rid of theology. But the English Church has the germ of discord and ecclesiastical dissolution in its normal condition, and in its Confessions of Faith. It is a collection of heterogeneous theological propositions, tied together by the Act of Uniformity ; but which, in a logical mind, cannot exist by the side of one another, and whose effect upon the English Churchman is, that he finds himself involved in con- tinual contradictions and disingenuousness, and can only escape the painful consciousness by sophistical reasoning. Each of the two great parties in the Church cast on each other an aspersion of hypocrisy and disingenuousness, with equal right : for the one cannot sign the Calvinistic articles with inward conviction ; and the others can only accept the li- turgy, to which they have an antipathy,for the sake of the bene- fices they receive, and are obliged to wrest the meaning of liturgical forms in the most violent manner. Many feel the contradiction involved in the rule that the doctrinal articles are to be binding on the conscience, whilst there is no authority to be found that might guarantee the truth of these articles. No such authority is, in fact, recognised. One of the articles declares, indeed, that the Church has authority in matters of faith, but no one is able to say what and where this Church is. It cannot be the English State- Church, for this has no organ, and, since the Reformation, has never had one ; unless, indeed, it be the political supre- macy of the prime minister for the time being, and his privy- council of laymen. The present distracted state of the Established Church, in WILL. GOODE'S " Defence of the thirty-nine Articles." London, 1848, p. 10. The " Christian Remembrancer" (vol. xvi., p. 472) thinks, in- deed, that Mr. Goode has herein manifested an extremely presumptuous contempt of the Church, of which he is the servant. But the matter is familiar to every reader of history. RISE OF THE EVANGELICAL PARTY. 161 which there are not so many various Schools, as parties with extremely various and contradictory views, is the consequence of the measures adopted at the Reformation, and of its subsequent historical course. The old contrast between genuine Protestant, and old Church or Catholic views, has manifested itself from time to time, under various forms, in the bosom of the Church itself. After the Revolution of 1688, arose that class of theologians and clergymen who were the forerunners of rationalism the so-called Latitudinarians. Archbishop Wake said, in 1710j that " the English Church was only preserved from destruc- tion by her hands being bound (by the civil power), so that she could not destroy herself." 1 During the long period of perfect languor and indifference which followed, the contrast between the two parties died away. Towards the end of the last century, there arose the elder Evangelical school; and through its means, and the struggle with Methodism, some symptoms of life began to re-appear in the hitherto benumbed limbs of the English Church. This was a re-action against the spiritless mecha- nism and the half-veiled infidelity of the English Church ; a religious movement proceeding from the re-awakened Calvinism of the Church doctrine, which had been so long dormant. To this earlier generation of Evangelicals, the English owe the abolition of slavery, and the establishment of several useful societies, which are still, in fact, financially prosperous. But the present race of Evangelicals may, in comparison with the former, be called a declining one. As the party is at present constituted, it represents within the Established Church, continental Protestantism, but without any Lutheran feature ; on the contrary, with a prepondera- ting Calvinism for example, it has the Calvinist feature of a degradation of the sacraments into mere symbols. Its favourite doctrine, and most effective instrument, is the dogma of "Justification by imputation," which is so popular in England and America ; and, when proclaimed with fluent oratory, fills both chapels and churches. This party is 1 CALAMY'S " Life of Baxter," i. 405. M 162 THEIR CHARACTERISTICS. mostly deficient in university culture, and there is no question of theological science among its adherents ; their literature consists almost, wholly of sermons and writings " for edifica- tion;" they also occupy themselves and their hearers much with Apocalyptic and Chiliadic theories and prophecies ; with " the approaching fall of the Man of Sin," and " the Beast," or with " the discovery of the ten lost tribes," and so forth. A narrow understanding, a defective education, and un- acquaintance with the world are, according to Arnold's defini- tion, the signs of an Evangelical. The party is internally much nearer to the Methodists, the Congregationalists, and Baptists, than to the High Church and the " Tractarians," whom they fervently hate, though both belong to the same Church. Since this party is entirely deficient in everything that could be called theology, it is hard to say how the various fractions into which it has now fallen are to be distinguished one from another. Besides the characteristics above-men- tioned, their most prominent features are the rejection of the whole body of Church tradition the denial of the visible Church as a divine institution the treatment of the Bible according to a theory of literal inspiration which would make every theology impossible the transformation of the Chris- tian Sunday into a Jewish Sabbath, and in accordance with which the lower classes of the people are prohibited from all recreation, and even children are forbidden to laugh and play. The sacramental system is, in their eyes, only Popery in disguise. Of the decided Calvinist Record-party, Cony- beare 1 says, " The religion of many of its members seems to consist only of love to the Jews, and hatred of the Papists." On the whole, the Evangelicals may be regarded as sons and descendants of the old Puritans, but without their deep earnestness, or their hatred against the Episcopal constitu- tion of the Church ; which, indeed, in the absence of all authority, is but the shadow of a Hierarchical order. In the year 1660, when matters came to a rupture between the 1 In his description of the English Church parties in the " Edinburgh Review," vol. xcviii. p. 274, et seq. THE ANGLICAN OR HIGH CHURCH PARTY. 163 Puritans and the Episcopalians, the present Evangelicals would have left the Church, or been driven from it. It is at bottom only the Liturgy the Prayer Book to which they submit, though unwillingly. They scornfully call their opponents " Prayer-Book clergymen," but the State supre- macy they are not willing to part with, especially since the government has bestowed many bishoprics on men of their school. 1 The true Anglicans, or High-Church men, take a middle position between the Evangelicals and Tractarians. They reject, as a rule, the Protestant doctrine of Justification, and the Calvinistic degradation of baptism to a ceremony. They value the professed apostolic succession of the Anglican episcopacy they maintain the existence of a Church endowed with doctrinal authority; but they defend them- selves against every logical conclusion that must be drawn from such premises. The English Established Church is not only in their eyes the only true one, but it is the purest, the best constituted, the most free from all exaggerations. They are really the best sons and the truest representatives of this Church, and are most content with its existing state ; and since, also, they are by no means exacting in their claims on the Christian lives of their congregation?, they are much in favour with those classes which give the tone to society. That they should form so considerable a part of the English clergy, is only explicable with a nation to whose peculiarities it belongs, that, even according to the judgment 1 What motives often determine a clergyman to join the party of the Evangelicals, and how much their teaching is in favour with the circles of the rich and fashionable world, is strikingly exhibited in the " Tales by a Barrister." London, 1844, iii. 174-183. The clergyman, above all things, finds that the Anglo-Saxon School requires too much devotion to the Church, and provides too little for the interest and personal import- ance of the individual He remarks that the position of the " Evan- gelical" preacher is a far more favourable one. And then the doctrine is so admirably adapted to the taste of the polite world. Such consolatory views of the utter depravity of our nature ! such sweet assurance deduced from the tranquillizing doctrines of Election and Grace ! &c., &c. M 2 164 TRACTARIANISM. of Englishmen themselves, they do not see the logical con- sequences of their own doctrines. 1 As these Anglicans formerly found the continual profanation of the Lord's Supper, in consequence of the Test Act, to be quite a matter of course; so they now feel no repugnance at the Burial Service ; 2 and the clergy of the Established Church, Evangelicals, and High-Church men, are certainly the only clergy in the world who "give every deceased person to the grave," let him have lived how he may let him be even a Catholic or a Dissenter in the "sure and certain hope of a blessed resurrection." 3 There can hardly be a more distinct declaration that, after all, belonging to the Church, taking part in her services, and using her means of salvation, can be a matter of no consequence. Public opinion has borne so much the harder for this reason on the Tractarians. This school arose thirty years ago at Oxford, chiefly in the view of awakening the Church from its lethargic slumber, when its safety seemed endan- gered by the suppression of ten Irish bishoprics ; and it then attempted to revive the theology and the Church prin- ciples of the Carolan age (that is, from 1625 to 1680), and to inspire them with new vigour. But the experience of a few years rendered it evident that the re-establishment of a 1 "The peculiar incapacity of the English mind for perceiving the sequence of doctrine," is the observation of the " Christian Remem- brancer," vol. xxxvi., p. 247. 2 And yet I find that in the year 1852, 4000 clergymen did present to the Archbishop of Canterbury, a remonstrance against the compulsory use of the " Burial Service." The Archbishop, with a number of his bishops, considered the matter ; but decided that every attempt at an alteration would meet with insuperable difficulties. "Christian Remem- brancer," vol. xxiv., p. 254. 3 " Every Dissenter who is to be buried in a parish graveyard must be committed to the grave with the Church Service, and by an Estab- lished Church clergyman : that is to say, he must, as the phrase is, return at his death into the bosom of the Established Church. In the April of the present year, Sir M. Peto moved, in the Lower House, ' That Dis- senters be allowed to bury their dead in the parish churchyards, accord- ing to the forms of their own confessional ritual,' but the bill was thrown out by a majority of eighty-one ""Allg.-Zeitung," May 1, 1861, p. 1976. RECOGNITION OF CATHOLIC DOCTRINE. 165 theological and ecclesiastical position that had long since passed away was a sheer impossibility, and that the frag- ments of a system which, in the seventeenth century, was a mere arbitrary one, intended to meet a peculiar condition of circumstances, could not be made to suffice for the nine- teenth. Men still believed, indeed, and not without reason, that in the Prayer Book they possessed a memorial and a guarantee of old-church, anti-Protestant views; but the greater part of the members of the Established Church had come to a tacit agreement to regard these things as a mere dead letter. The originators of the movement, and the men of most note, of the same way of thinking, entered the Catholic Church ; whilst many others, when they were made aware, by this event, of the consequences of their own prin- ciples, turned back, and, from being "Anglo-Catholics," became again mere ordinary Anglicans. Many have remained true to their principles, and have therefore necessarily been carried further in fact, to the extreme limits of the Established Church, or even over them, into the Catholic territory. They are those (the nutnber of the clergy is estimated at 1,200) whose organ is the paper called the " Union." They belong, fundamentally, quite to the Catholic Church they recognize the necessity of an infallible authority in the Church, and they find it in the Catholic they remain for the present in the English Church, only in the hope of coming events. Catholic doctrines and modes of thought have, they flatter themselves, gained so firm a footing, and made, in silence, such progress, that the Catholicizing of the Established English Church is now only a question of time; 1 but then it must indeed cease to be in the sense in which it has hitherto been a State Institution. Events are not favourable to this view : the clergy and laity have the current of public opinion in the upper and middle classes against them ; and in the lower the influence of the Anglicans is very small. Finally, a school or party of the clergy has been distin- 1 See the declaration in the work called " Church Parties." London, 1857, p. 87. 1 66 THE " BROAD CHURCH." guished as the " Broad Church." The designation of " par- ty " is not quite appropriate, since those included in it have nothing positive in common. Their entity is in negation : they can only be described by saying, they are not Angli- cans, they are not Evangelicals, and so on. They are all under the influence of German literature and theology ; they are opponents of a fixed form of doctrine, and they endea- vour to make the contradictions of the Anglican Church formularies more tolerable, by'assigning to dogma in general only a relative and temporary value ; and declare a sort of general Christianity, levelled and smoothed on rationalistic principles, to be all that is essential; 1 though they are well content with the Established Church, or a decorous institu- tion the best embodiment of the national will in matters ecclesiastical, and well adapted to the real state of things. For the more serious Anglo-Catholics, or Tractarians, " the yoke " of the State Supremacy may in truth be named one of "iron." All the powers are against them public opinion is altogether hostile to them ; the higher and middle classes are decidedly Protestant, that is, they are opposed to all that is Catholic in doctrine, rites, and discipline. Every attempt to introduce or re-animate an old-church element in the Establishment has been frustrated by the resistance of the government, the bishops, and of the people every ques- tion has been decided to their disadvantage. They have been defeated in the struggle with theological rationalism in the Hampden controversy ; they have suffered in the Gorham dispute a two-fold defeat first, that the question has been decided according to the opinion, and in favour of the Calvinists ; 2 and that lay state officials, acting in the name of the Queen, have been recognised by almost the whole clergy, and of course by the people, as the highest 1 The "Semi-Infidelity of the Broad Church School" is_the expression of the " Union," Jan. 4, 1861. 2 The Church doctrine as to the effect of baptism was, nominally, not rejected ; but the Calvinistic was declared permissible ; and this, in fact, amounted to a declaration that the English Church has no doctrine con- cerning baptism, and that every one may think and teach what he pleases about it. ESTABLISHED CHURCHES OF BRITAIN. 167 tribunal, indeed the only organ of the otherwise completely dumb English Church an event to which there can be found no parallel in the whole history of the Church previous to 1517. At the same time, the first prelate of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, when publicly questioned by a clergyman on the subject, answered, that in such things he had no more power than any other man that everyone who could read, and who took the Bible into his hand, was as capable of deciding the question, and as much entitled to decide it, as he was. Every member of the Church must, therefore, be under the necessity of renouncing the hope of any authoritative decision of any announcement of doctrine on the part of the Church ; and however bitter it might be, they must adopt the view of the Evangelicals, that in England the Church is no more than a religious club, which the civil power superintends, and takes charge of and keeps in order: the same civil power which in England supports the Episcopal Church, and by which in Scotland and Ulster Presbyterians, in India Brahminism, in Ceylon Buddhism, are paid and supported. 1 In fact, if the validity of Church principles is to be really asserted, the Church standard must be applied, and the Establishment declared to be an institution, infected through and through with heretical principles, corrupt to the very core, and the Erastianism of which makes every attempt at cure almost hopeless. At every step the lay supremacy comes in the way. The Church would gladly, for example, restore the Eucharistic Sacrifice, in the Catholic sense, and make it a ceremony of divine service for the congregation ; but the ministry, or the Privy Council, has declared that no " altar " shall be erected in a church, but only a "communion-table" that no lights 1 How little fixed and secure are the prospects of the British Estab- lished Church will become clear, if we consider that in Scotland it in- cludes rather less than a third of the population, in Ireland a seventh, in Wales a tenth, in England the half. Since the English and Irish Church are legally joined as " the United Church of England and Ireland," it results that this exclusive Established Church includes only a third of the population of both countries. I 68 PARLIAMENT AND THE DIVORCE QUESTION. shall be burnt upon the altar during divine service, and so forth. 1 A new defeat for the seriously-disposed among the clergy is the law of 1858, which declared that marriages could be dis- solved, and at the same time erected a divorce court. Theques- tion had formerly been disputed in the Anglican Church. Bur- net relates that, as early as 1694, a division had taken place among the clergy concerning it that all the older bishops, those appointed under Charles II. and James II., declared themselves against the dissolution of marriage on account of adultery ; but the new ones, those appointed since the Revolu- tion, had pronounced in favour of second marriages in such cases. 2 At this time there were not even two parties amongst the Bishops. Not one of them declared himself decidedly for the indissolubility. Bishop Wilberforce, of Oxford, indeed, was inclined to do so, but contented himself with setting up a general claim for the Church to decide the question, and complained of the wrong done by a body like the Parliament, a great part of which did not even belong to the Church, arrogating to itself the power to decide upon God's law with respect to marriage. With the same right, he said, they might decide concerning baptism, the communion, and the confession of faith. The Bishop seems to have forgotten that this had already actually been done namely, in the Gorham case, where they did decide concerning baptism and confession of faith. Whether the Parliament or the Privy Council does this is a matter of indifference, since the Privy Council really only exists by the will of Parliament. To the question, whether a clergyman was bound to solemnise the marriage of a couple separated by a divorce, the Attorney-General declared that it was the duty of a clergyman, as a minister of the National Church, to do whatever the State ordered him. This the Bishop of Oxford found rather too hard. It gave the idea of a thoroughly degraded, demoralized, and, for religion, impotent Church its bitterest enemies could have 1 HENGSTENBERG'S " Kirchen-Zeitung," 1858, p. 791. " History of his own Times," ed. 1838, p. 601. ANOMALOUS POSITION OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH. 169 said nothing stronger upon its disgraceful condition. 1 At the same time, if we accept what the English Constitution says of the Supremacy of the State, it is impossible to arrive, logically and juridically, at a different conclusion from that of the Attorney-General. If the English clergy find this position dishonourable, it does but remind one of the fable of the watch-dog, who, in return for the comforts of his life, and the caresses of his master, had to allow himself to be chained. Lord Chatham said, in his time, that the English Church had Calvinistic Articles, a Papistical Service, and an Arminian clergy. The saying has become a general opinion, but the designation of the dogmatic sentiments of the clergy is only now in so far correct, that the great majority of the clergy agree with the Arminians in rejecting the favourite doctrines of the Reformation age "Justification by imputed right- eousness, 1 ' and Calvinistic " Predestination.". The fact, however, that the Established Church has not so much as the semblance of unity of doctrine and character, is well known to every educated Englishman, and appears as something quite natural, and as a matter of course. It has the effect that, even to the religious-minded Englishman, doctrine appears as something relatively unimportant and subordinate, which one need not be too exact about ; and it has also the further effect, that in questions of doctrine very little confidence is placed in clergymen of the Established Church, when it is seen that, with the most contradictory views, they are able to accommodate themselves to the same formularies. 2 From this circumstance we may explain the fact, that, in general, there reigns among the clergy a certain fear of theology, and a disinclination to theological studies. Pro- fessor Hussey, in his last discourse at Oxford, shortly before his death, complained that the study of theology was dying 1 See u Charge of the Bishop of Oxford," 1858." Christian Remem- brancer," vol. xxv., p. 258. * " The result is, that the preachers of truth, in their own place and office, are the very last persons in the nation to be believed ; that the pulpit is as little trusted for sincerity as that appointed resort of hired advocacy the bar." " Westminster Review," vol. liv., p. 485. 170 THEOLOGICAL STERILITY. out in England. 1 In a theological periodical it has lately been maintained that there were not now in Oxford six clergymen left who occupied themselves with the study of theology. 2 That is comprehensible. The most important theological works of recent times have been written by men who soon after became Catholics. 3 Since then, the works of the Germanized Rationalists, or Broad Church men, have been the theological writings most esteemed. 4 The Evan- gelicals are struck with sterility, and all the better intellects of the younger generation are turning with dislike and contempt from this degenerate school, whose average amount of culture does not attain to the degree of a good German schoolmaster. The Anglican, or High Church school, has never, even in its most flourishing time, produced a systematic and comprehensive theology. They furnish nothing more than essays and fragments ; and it is very characteristic, that the whole Anglican Church has not a single system or hand- book of doctrine to show. 5 This Church, as the excellent Alexander Knox has complained, is wanting in all settled dogmatic principles. 6 A theological system a dogmatic divinity presupposes a knowledge of what the Church really teaches j but in England no one knows that, or can know it not even the Prime Minister and his Privy Council. If, for example, a hand-book of Anglican Theology had been issued before the decision of the Gorham controversy, it must have been after that decision entirely remodelled, since the principle thereby disavowed, and the one thereby established, govern the entire organism of doctrine for the question that was answered in the negative by the celebrated decision of the Privy Council was, whether the dogma of the sacramental 1 " Christian Remembrancer," October, 1860, p. 325. 2 " Ecclesiastic and Theologian," December, 1860, p. 547. The article is entitled, " Intellectual Declension of the Clergy." * Newman, Wilberforce, Manning, William Palmer, Allier, and others. 4 Jowett, Maurice, the authors of " Essays and Reviews," &c. s PEARSON'S "Exposition of the Creed," which is given to the young as a book of instruction in doctrine, cannot satisfy even the scantiest requirements. 8 " Remains." London, 1837, iv. 233. LIFE OF THE ENGLISH CLERGY. 171 effect of baptism was a doctrine of the Anglican Church. The view of the Evangelicals, according to which baptism is a mere rite of consecration, has hereby obtained its franchise in the Anglican Church ; and that is, even according to the Lutheran theology, " a heresy which alone would make every union of the Lutherans and Calvinists for ever impos- sible." 1 It may be said of the English Church, that it is like an Indian idol, with many heads (and every one with different " views "), but very few hands. The want of freedom in the English Church its being bound to the chariot-wheels of the State, and dragged after it through thick and thin, acts so much the more injuriously, as it affords to the feebleness, slothfulness, and indecision of the English clergy a welcome pretext for doing nothing. A large portion of them are quite satisfied with their Sunday reading exercises, and pass the remainder of their time with their wives and children, or in paying visits ; 2 and in the meantime there exist in England millions of persons, who, according to the fiction of "a general national religion," are members of the Established Church, 1 KAHXIS "Die Sache der lutherischen Kirche gegeniiber der Union." Leipsig, 1854, p. 17. * Only a few months ago an Established Church periodical made the remark, " Perhaps no men in any other profession under the sun spend so much time with their wives and children." " Ecclesiastic and Theologian, "' Dec., 1859, p. 553. Thus there are in England two modern heresies, which have helped to bring about the deplorable state of the English Church. The first is, the u gentleman heresy," of which the deceased Froude so frequently complained that is, the idea that a clergyman must be and appear before all things a " gentleman." Edward Lytton Bulwer (in his " England and the English," p. 214) says : " The vulgar notion that clergymen must be gentlemen 6orw, is both an upstart and an insular opinion." In the second place, the " domestic heresy," in accord- ance with which, for the sake of family life, the congregation goes away empty. The marriage of the English clergy is, nevertheless, according to the remark of a celebrated English dignitary, the solid basis upon which the Church of England rests, and by which it is kept together. But for that, Englishmen, so accustomed to freedom and self-govern- ment, would not have borne so tamely and patiently the yoke of minis- terial supremacy. 1 72 SPIRITUAL IMPOTENCE OF THE CHURCH. but of whom no clergyman of this Church ever takes the slightest notice, and thousands of whom have never heard the name of the Saviour mentioned. The warmest adherents of the State Church complain of its want of influence on the people of its moral and spiritual impotence. Alexander Knox thinks that, interiorally, the English Church is the most excellent of all, but practically, indeed, the most inefficient. 1 " If the whole Episcopal constitution were done away with," says Hallam, " it would make no perceptible difference in the religion of the people.'" 2 The Catholic idea, that the Church is the guardian of divine truth, the divinely -appointed teacher, is foreign to the Englishman : " The true Church," says Carlyle, not un- fairly, " consists now of the publishers of those political news- papers, which preach to the people daily and weekly, with an authority formerly only possessed by the reformers or popes." 3 The Church of England declares pure doctrine, the right use of the Sacraments, and the maintenance of discipline to be the three signs of a true Church. The Church itself, however, has no fixed doctrine ; its formulas contradict each other; and what one part of its servants teach is rejected by the other as a soul-destroying error. It is also dumb, and incapable of making known, in any form, its true sentiments, even when it has them. Concerning the proper administra- tion of the Sacraments, there exist within its bosom the same contradictions as with respect to doctrine ; and as to dis- cipline, it has lost even the semblance of unity. How can there be even a talk of any correctional discipline in a Church that declares every one at his burial in a state of grace whatever chain of sin he may have dragged through his whole life, and without his ever having given any sign of repent- ance, and who has not even externally or nominally belonged to its communion ? How fatal is the effect of this general beatification at the grave prescribed by the Liturgy, and > " Remains." London, 1832, i. 51. * " Constitutional History of England," ii. 238. * " Miscellanies," ii. 165. ITS DISSOLUTION A QUESTION OF TIME. 173 into what false security it lulls the m ind, has been described by Englishmen themselves with terrible severity. 1 But even in this case* the Church is helpless, from the fear that any change in the liturgy would be used by the Evangelicals as a breach through which greater changes might be effected. On the whole, the entire existence of the Established Church is seriously threatened, and its dissolution only a question of time. It is completely in the power of the House of Commons, and of the Cabinet constituted by the majority of that House, which already counts among its members a considerable number of Dissenters, who are all enemies of the State Church, as well as Catholics, and, it is not necessary to mention, the Jews. In the proportion in which, through new Reform Bills, extending the suffrage, the democratically-disposed middle classes attain to dominion, the Church will be damaged by the combined hostility of the sectarians and of the professors of no religion, who are increasing every year in numbers and influence. Perhaps it will, like the Church of the Vaudois, be bound more and more closely in the bonds of State authority and the will of the majority. The dissolution of this ill-connected organism will then follow ; the profounder and more earnest minds will withdraw from a Church in which the double yoke of governmental authority and compulsory communion with a foreign doctrine will not allow them in honour and conscience any longer to remain. THE ENGLISH DISSENTING SECTS. The Protestant sects of England, taken as a whole, appear flourishing and vigorous. They have, in the course of 200 years, won for themselves a broad territory ; they have taken away millions of Englishmen from the State Church, and they afford a splendid proof of the power of association, of the gift of organization, instinctive in the Anglo-Saxon race. 1 See, for example, THORX'S " Fifty Tracts on the State Church." Tract xii. p. 3. 174 DISSENTING SECTS. They enjoy the most perfect freedom, they arrange their affairs quite as may seem good to themselves. The State does not ever exercise any superintendence over them, and they look down with no unjustifiable feeling of contempt on the helplessness and slavery of the Established Church, which, in its rent and divided condition, its want of fixed doctrine and ecclesiastical discipline in its incapability of manifesting an activity corresponding to the wants of the nation, and enlarging its sphere of action can hardly do otherwise than shun a comparison with a free religious com- munity. With some who have left the Church, the wish to do so has no doubt been influenced by the determination to be no longer members of an institution so humiliated, so shackled, and so trammeled in the fulfilment of the first and simplest duties of a Church. But there is usually another motive which has led the trading middle classes out of the Church to one of the Dissenting sects. The practical Englishman desires a doctrine that shall be accommodating, intelligible, consolatory, and tranquillizing, and which shall flatter his self-complacency and his prevailing tendencies. All this he finds in Calvinism, as it is conceived and taught by the Dissenting sects. A man is there taught that, by an act of mere imputation of the righteousness of another, one may pass into a state of perfect security and certainty of salvation. He believes as firmly as he can believe that he is " elect," that by being clothed with the merits of the Saviour, he may be received by God as righteous, though inwardly he is not so; and that he can never forfeit this state of grace this crown of everlasting glory. He knows no better than that all depends on his having a completely favourable opinion of his own state. This is the "Assurance" 1 that plays so im- 1 " Zuversicht." JONATHAN EDWARDS, the most renowned of the American theologians, remarks that he scarcely knew a single instance of a man who, in consequence of an easy and common self-delusion, had arrived at a false conviction of his own " state of grace,'' ever being unde- ceived. For with the natural tendency to self-flattery and self-exalta- tion, there was united in almost all the entire absence of due caution and fear of self-deception. WORKS, London, 1839, i. 257. THEIR INTERNAL HISTORY. 175 portant a part in the religious life of England and America. Preachers in public places, as well as in churches and chapels, announce to their hearers the immediate and certain forgiveness of all sins and assurance of salvation as the price of a momentary excitement and concentration of feel- ing. This is called "preaching the Gospel in its fulness and freedom." The internal history of these sects, therefore, turns essen- tially on the doctrine of "Justification" and what is con- nected with it; and it may be said that they cannot exist and flourish either without this doctrine or with it. Not without this doctrine for, were it renounced, the talisman would be broken by which men have been attracted to the sect and kept in it and the decay of the congregation, where the favourite doctrine was no longer heard or even of the whole denomination would soon follow. 1 But even with this doctrine the sects cannot prosper, for its moral and religious effect has always been very injurious. The crop of fancies which have been regularly brought forth by the preaching of the doctrine of "Justification" has been generally called in England by the name of Antinomianism; but the most, distinguished theologians Baxter, Williams, Bull, and others showed, as early as the seventeenth cen- tury, that what was so called was nothing else than genuine Calvinism, followed out into its clearest and most irrefragable consequences. In the history and literature of these Churches and sects, we accordingly meet with perpetually renewed complaints of the plague of Antinomianism, 2 or, what was in fact the same thing, of a Calvinism which hardens the conscience and lulls men into a false security. 3 The society of Baptists was, according to the strong expression of their 1 J. BOGUE and BENNETT'S " History of the Dissenters," iii. 318. 2 BOGUE and BENNETT, iv. 390. s Strong admissions are made on this subject by ROBERT HALL, the- most distinguished of the Baptist preachers. " Difference between Christian Baptism and that of John," p. 58 ; and also in his collected Works, 1839, iii. 123. 176 DOCTRINAL FLEXIBILITY preacher Fuller, very near becoming, with its Calvinism, a moral dunghill. 1 If we wish to understand rightly the nature of these made religions, we must study the English and American sects and dissenters. Christianity is a dough that in their hands is kneaded into the most convenient form. The first requisite is a doctrine easy to be understood ; and that may be com- pressed into a few ideas and feelings, which may be found pleasantly accommodating to the ruling inclinations and course of life among the middle classes to the trading and artisan community. Fixed and accurately expressed Con- fessions of Faith are regarded as a burdensome yoke, to which neither preachers nor congregations would like to submit. Of their own society, Dissenters in general have a poor opinion ; they are very far from regarding it as the Catholics do their Church as a divine institution, endowed with power and authority from above. They know very well lhat their sect, or church system, is only a very recent production, contrived for a specific purpose, 2 and they reserve the right of altering its arrangements as may seem good to them. That objective certainty, affording security against all error in doctrine, which the Church claims for herself, appears to the practical middle-class Englishman of no value. The only thing he is anxious about is his own subjective infallibility ; he requires a system that may afford him an easy certainty of his own election, justification, and salva- tion. If he has this, he is not very uneasy about dogmatic scruples and biblical obscurities. He has a decided aversion 1 MORRIS'S " Life of A. Fuller ;" London, 1816, p. 267. " Baptists would have become a perfect dunghill in society." * u What shop do you go to ? " (Welchen Kramladen besuchen sie ?) the middle-class Englishman will say, when he wishes to inquire to what Church or Dissenting community any one belongs. Of a preacher, they say, " He works that chapel," as they might say, " He works that factory." Churches and chapels are, indeed, frequently " shops." They are built upon speculation, and the proprietor is accustomed, when he finds that the preacher he has engaged does not possess sufficient power of attraction to fill the chapel properly, to dismiss him, and employ another. POSITION OF DISSENTING MINISTERS. 177 to religious practices, symbols, and exercises ; to the worship of God in humble prayer, and to kneeling. Almost every- thing in religion, which is not a sermon, falls, with him, under the general head of " superstition," and its empire is in his regard illimitable. But he likes to keep the " Sabbath ;" that is to say, he does not work on that day, and he listens to preaching ; and it suits him much better to sit in judgment upon the form and contents of the sermon, than to cast himself down in humble adoration before God. How little, on the whole, is done by the free or Dissenting congregations for the millions of poor, is evident from the remark made by Dr. Hume, before a Committee of the House of Lords " That when a district became impoverished, the Dissenting congregations generally moved off, and met else- where." 1 The preachers are, except among the Methodists, entirely dependent on the congregation ; they are mostly scantily paid, and in constant fear of losing a part even of their trifling income, through the discontent, or from the increased parsimony, of their congregations. The hearers of the preacher are his judges and his masters; they decide whether his sermons are, according to the standard of the sect, orthodox, evangelical, and edifying or not, and upon this decision depends^ his existence. Before all things, the congregation desires to hear repeated its favourite doctrine, that man need do nothing himself for his salva- tion, but only lay hold of the merits of Christ, and firmly believe in his own election and justification ; 2 that the little community is the elect, that it alone is in possession of the pure unadulterated Gospel, and is the most genuine and the best of all Churches. 3 Were the preacher incautious 1 " Christian Remembrancer," 1860, ii. 97. 2 See " British Critic," vii. 232. Spurgeon, the greatest favourite among the preachers of the day, proclaims the purest Calvinism, and is fond of telling his numerous hearers how infallibly certain he is of his salvation so that, in fact, there are only two things he need do sing hymns, and sleep. SPURGEON'S u Gems." London, 1859 ; and the " Saturday Review" thereupon, 1859, i. 340. * See the striking description of the position of a Dissenting preacher, in the u Christian Remembrancer," 1860, ii. 86. N 178 PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND. enough to touch on the failings and sins to which his con- gregation, especially the richer portion of it, might seem most liable, he would be ruined. (t As soon," says Thomas Scott, one of the most considerable theologians among the Evangelicals, " as a preacher begins to appeal in an earnest, practical manner to the consciences of his hearers, a party is formed against him to censure, intimidate, humiliate, resist, and finally eject him." ' But, even without having given any such offence, he must be prepared, after a few years, to receive a hint to resign, when he has preached himself out, or the congregation is tired of seeing the same man and hearing the same phrases ; or even if his wife or his daughter has displeased the feminine part of the congregation by dressing too well ; or if, at a political election, he has not voted for the candidate favoured by the majority of his hearers. The old Presbyterian community, once the most powerful and influential among non-episcopal connexions, has, in the course of the last century, fallen completely into decay in Eng- land, and therewith genuine Presby terianism has died out. The cause of this is to be found chiefly in the change of doctrine. The most distinguished theologians of the party Richard Baxter and Daniel Williams had demonstrated so clearly and convincingly the contradictions in the Calvinistic doc- trine of Justification, and its inevitable moral consequences, that most of the congregations renounced this doctrine, and became, according to the customary mode of expression, Arminian. 2 By that means, however, the spiritual bond which had held these communities together was loosened ; and in the latter part of the seventeenth, and the beginning of the eighteenth century, an internal dissolution of the Presbyterian congregations commenced. Several of them turned to Arianism, at that time recommended by some theologians even of the Established' Church, and they, in a short time, naturally passed into Socinianism. Thus have 1 JOHN SCOTT, " Life of the Rev. Thomas Scott ; " London, 1836, p. 13G. The whole description is instructive. * BOG UK and BENNETT, ii. 303. New ed. THE METHODISTS. 179 arisen the present Unitarian congregations, which, rejecting almost all the chief doctrines of Christianity, stand at some- thing like the same grade that is occupied in Germany by the " Free Congregations." Of the 229 Unitarian chapels which existed in the year 1851, 170 had been originally Presbyterian. The Presbyterians who remained Calvinists became amalgamated with " the Independents." There are at present, in England, 160 Presbyterian congregations with a Calvinistic doctrine ; but most of these are of Scottish origin, or consist of immigrant Scotchmen, and are con- nected with Scotch sects. 1 The Methodists, or Wesley ans, who have now subsisted for a hundred years, may promise themselves a longer life than was appointed to the Presbyterians. John Wesley, next to Baxter, certainly the most important man whom Protestant England has produced, did not really wish to establish a new religious community in addition to the Established Church, but only an auxiliary society. Under his successors, however, and especially by means of Bunting, who first gave the connexion its firm organization, the auxiliary became a rival, and the Wesleyans have now for twenty-five years called their " connexion" a Church, though they still constantly maintain that they are one in doctrine with the Establishment. In Wesley's community, also, the Justification doctrine forms the turning-point, and runs like the thread of destiny through the whole history of the sect. Wesley himself fell, with respect to this doctrine, into the most flagrant contra- dictions, and made great leaps from one dogma to its very opposite. For ten years, he said, he had been really a Papist without knowing it, and had taught Justification by Faith and Works, that most destructive of all the errors of Rome, in comparison with which the other errors of "the mother of all horrors" were mere insignificant trifles. 2 But his zeal for the favourite doctrine of Luther and Calvin did not last long. The experience of some years convinced him, 1 MANN'S " Census of Religious Worship," p. 1. Ixviii. * SOUTHEY'S " Life of Wesley," i. 287-288. 180 CALViNISTIC METHODISTS. as well as his brother and assistant, Charles Wesley, that Protestant Justification by Faith, and Calvinistic Predestina- tion, were the utter ruin of all serious religious life. Anti- nomianism, he said, had been a greater hindrance to the success of his work than all other obstacles together, and had destroyed the seed he had been scattering for many years. 1 " We must all fall," he wrote to his brother, " through Solifidianism, if we do not summon James to our help." 2 In the year 1770, John Wesley gave his community the signal for a doctrinal revolution ; and it shows strikingly the personal greatness of the man, and his wonderful gift for controlling the minds of his followers, that he could, without forfeiting anything of his authority, make so public and undisguised a confession of an error in a fundamental doc- trine of Christianity, and that he was able to make his whole sect alter their creed, and, from Calvinists, to become Arminians. 3 A hundred other founders of sects would have failed in such an attempt. He obtained an effective support in his friend Fletcher, of Madely, whose writings against the Pro- testant system are the most important that the theological literature of England has to show. It was the fear of Calvinistic infection that ultimately induced Wesley to take unwillingly the step he had so long delayed, and separate his community from the Established Church. 4 His success in this was, indeed, only partial a breach occurred, and Whitfield, who had hitherto been his friend, with a troop of Calvinistically-disposed members of the society, separated themselves from Wesley, and from those who had remained faithful to him. A Calvinistic community of Methodists was formed, whose prophet was Whitfield, and its mother in 1 SOCTHEY, ii. 318. * FLETCHER'S "Works." London, 1836, i. 105. * The proclamation (Minutes) of Wesley is given in Southey, ii. 3G6 ; and more completely in the work called u Life and Times of Selina, Countess of Huntingdon." London, 1841, ii. 236. 4 " Correspondence of J. Jebb and A. Knox," ed. by FORSTER. London, 1836, ii. 472. ORGANIZATION OF METHODISM. 181 the Church, the Countess of Huntingdon, a gifted woman, who considered it her appointed vocation to rule over the Church, and appointed and displaced at her pleasure the preachers of the "Connexion." 1 This sect, which in 1794 had 100,000 followers, had, in spite of its pure Calvinism, sunk down, in 1851, to 19,159, with about 109 chapels. The great body of the Wesleyans continued for some time in complete prosperity, and, until lately, in increasing growth, and such success they owe to their firm, well- calculated organisa- tion. But a Protestant community, with Arminian doctrines, and which has renounced the imputation doctrine, is not generally able, (as the example of the Remonstrants, in the Netherlands, shows,) to maintain itself long, at least in such a community as is desired by the mass of the people. The Methodists are gradually passing back to a conception of the process of conversion and justification more suited to Protestant ideas, and they are accustomed to place the essence of religion in the strongest possible excitement of feeling, and an imaginary certainty of grace and salvation. With this notion, Wesley's favourite doctrine of a perfect state of sanctification, to which it is possible to attain in this life, will not agree ; and, at the same time, the idea of immediate justification by feeling opens the door to the most dangerous illusions and self-flattery. This opening is still further widened by the institutions of the society. The members are divided into Bands and Classes, and in their meetings they have reciprocally to inquire into the state of each other's consciences; they are to question each other publicly as to their inward feelings and "experiences" a practice which has this inevitable result, that they confess not their sins, but their virtues, and their imaginary assurances of. grace ; and whilst they call themselves the most miserable sinners, always declare that they have the assurance of salvation. Probably no institution has ever been invented that makes it easier for spiritual pride to clothe itself in the garb of humility, and to induce persons to deceive first themselves, and then others. 1 MARSDEN'S " History of Christian Churches and Sects," ii. 8. 182 SECESSIONS FROM THE ORIGINAL BODY. It has been stated, to the honour of the Methodists, that they had a special gift for alarming, by their preaching, the consciences of hardened, unrepentant sinners. Their mode of preaching is, above all things, calculated to heat the imagination, and the bodily sensations it awakens are then regarded as inspirations and effects of the Spirit. They have, like certain physicians, only one medicine for all ages, sexes, and classes, without any distinction. Their uniform method is to frighten people, and agitate them to the brink of insanity to make them at first completely dis- consolate, as it is stated in their writings, and then to lead them to absolute certainty of being in a state of grace, for which one act of faith alone is sufficient. 1 A man is desired to feel that it is God who has justified him, and thence- forth he is justified. Whatever aversion Methodists may usually feel to the Calvinistic doctrine, on this point it comes very close to it. 2 The effect of it is such, that in districts where Methodism is very prevalent, an actual change takes place in the physiognomy of the people, and you meet an unusual number of hard, coarse, and gloomy faces. 3 The often-admired strength of the Methodist Church constitution has not been able to prevent continued sepa- rations, and a decay that is becoming more and more visible. The first separation (by Kilhatn) took place in 1796, and twenty years afterwards the introduction of an organ led to a second separation. In 1 835 came the third great secession, and the new association of Warren was founded. In the meantime, discontent was increasing at the boundless and arbitrary power of the Conference, which was self-renewing, and had the entire direction of the society's affairs. This oligarchy of preachers was accused of permitting itself to be ruled by a clique, so that in 1850 1 It is " a distinct and indubitable internal witness which tells the be- liever of his certain acceptance." "British Critic," xvi. 12. * Thus it was remarked lately (1857) that in Cornwall Methodism was altogether An tinomian, that is to say, deeply Calvinistic in its colour." " Quarterly Review," vol. cii., p. 323. * "Quarterly Review," iv. 503. CONG REG ATIONALISTS. 183 violent internal disputes broke out, and the whole society was- thrown into a state of confusion and raging insurrection. The Reformers wished to render the constitution of the society more democratic, and give the lay element more influence. The Conference resisted with unyielding rigidity, and the result was, that within three or four years there was a further separation of 100,000 members, that is to say, nearly one-third of the entire society. After the Methodists, the sect of Cougregationalists, or Independents, is the most influential from its numbers, and the opulence of its members. It has in England 1401 preachers, and some hundreds of congregations without preachers. They separated themselves from the Presbyterians in the seventeenth century, on the principle of complete indepen- dence of individual congregations, and to carry out the plan of a mere association among themselves. Formerly they were strictly Calvinistic in doctrine, and were, there- fore, strengthened by the accession of the followers of Whitfield, 1 who felt more nearly related to them than to the Arminian Wesleyans ; whilst in Wales, the Calvinistic Methodists form an independent and tolerably numerous sect. The Independents, in 1833, published a Confession of Faith, 2 which is wide enough, and vague enough, to admit of very different views, and, moreover, all authority and binding power are expressly renounced. It is, therefore, signed by no one, and there cannot be, consequently, any question of a definite doctrine among the Congregationalists. The preachers are, therefore, free to preach this or that doctrine at their pleasure ; or, rather, they have to accom- modate their preaching to the views and expectations of their congregations, and especially of the more opulent and influential members. In order to maintain their position they must continually keep their finger on the mental pul^e of their hearers, and see that their lectures are in harmony with it. 1 MARSDAN, ii. 22. 2 It is to be found in MANN'S " Causes of Religious Worship," 1853, p. liv. 184 BAPTISTS, QUAKERS, ETC. The Baptists also are, in general, decided Calvinists in their views of the dogmas of Election and Justification ; they are distinguished, from the other parties of the same way of thinking, by their principle of performing baptism only on adults, and by complete immersion, since any other form is, in their opinion, no baptism at all. They arose in England about the year 1608, but never formed any connec- tion with the Mennonites of Holland and Germany, and did not attain to any importance till 1688. Towards the end of the last century, their Calvinism, or Antinomianism, was so fully developed, that most of their preachers would only speak of and to the elect, and would have nothing to do with sinners in their congregations. 1 The absence of a con- fession of faith, laxity of Church constitution, and the complete dependence of the preachers on the congregations, belong to their character as a sect. From the chief party, called "Particular Baptists," five smaller sects have diverged, partly from aversion to Calvinism, partly on account of certain differences. In 1851, the Particular Baptists num- bered 1947 congregations. The Quakers, or Friends, who, being convinced that the immediate inspiration of the Holy Ghost is attainable by everyone, have neither sacraments nor ordained preachers, but edify themselves by the discourses of spiritually-awak- ened men and women. These are now a declining sect, and, since the beginning of this century, have decreased consider- ably in England. The Moravian Brethren vegetate in Eng- land, with their little community of thirty-two chapels, as a quiescent, scarcely noticeable little household ; and the Swe- denborgian Church of the New Jerusalem, since its doctrines have no especial comfort in them, cannot infuse any greater animation into their fifty congregations; for such was the number in 1851. More sensation has been caused by the still young Irvingites. Agreeing with the Plymouth Bre- thren, that immediately after the Apostles the Church began to decline, they have undertaken, by means of a new 1 This is mentioned by OLINTHUS GREGORY, in the Biography of the celebrated Baptist Preacher, Robert Hall. See MARSDEN, i. 83. IRVINGITES AND PLYMOUTH BRETHREN. 185 gift of the Holy Ghost to them, to re-establish the true Church (long since fallen into fragments and ruins) with its four essential offices those of Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, and Shepherds. They reject entirely Protestantism, with its assumption of sovereign judgment for every individual in matters of faith its revolutionary method of proceeding "from below upward" and in the Justification doctrine; whilst in the Sacraments, and in the sacrificial character of their service, they approach nearly to the Catholic Church. The personal visible appearance of the Saviour, the first resurrection, and the commencement of the Millennium, are expected speedily. But the community of the Apostolic Church has nothing especially attractive to the English ; its doctrine is not, like that of other sects, consoling and flatter- ing to self-love it is wanting in the talisman of the Imputa- tion dogma, and the cheap certainty of salvation it has too much that is Catholic, Liturgical, and Sacramental. It has, therefore, only a few small congregations in England, and has no prospect of increasing them. On the other hand, Mormonism, with its Christian mask, which has been intro- duced from America, has obtained within a few years nearly 20,000 adherents. The Plymouth Brethren, or Darbyites, as they are called, from their still living founder, may be said to exist on the real or assumed decrease of all other Churches. For in consequence of an apostacy of the first Church, which took place, they say, in the Apostolic time itself, there is no true Church nor any spiritual office any more existent, but all Churches are under the Divine curse. No one must presume to build up again this fallen Church ; but the Holy Spirit, with its gifts, has re- mained to the faithful, and the Brethren edify one another by means of these gifts present among them. The sect is a re- juvenated and modified Quakerdom : it is distinguished chiefly by negations ; it will have no confession-formula no liturgy, no church organisation, no sabbath according to the English fashion, no sacraments, and only two symbols or testimonies baptism and the breaking of bread. This, like most English sects, occupies itself much with the expecta- 186 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND. tion of the approaching thousand years of Christ's kingdom. In the year 1851 it& places of meeting amounted to 132. l THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND. In Scotland, John Knox, Calvin's most devoted son, triumph- antly succeeded in establishing the Calvinistic-Presbyterian doctrine and church form, after the pattern of Geneva. The people have become completely imbued with this system. Under Charles II. Presbyterianism was indeed defeated ; four hundred preachers had to withdraw, and the Episcopal Constitution appeared to be victorious. The Cameronians alone maintained themselves in remote districts. The change was nevertheless merely external. Doctrine, Church customs and observances, were not touched, and Calvinism continued to be in accordance with the general mode of thought. In this Ions: struggle of the Scotch Church, and its resistance against the Royal power, the opposition of the Scotch was strengthened by the republican constitution of their Church, which associated together both clergy and laity in one com- mon action. The result has been, that this Church, among all Protestant communities, became distinguished by its in- dependence and freedom, and for its never having sunk into the notorious servitude of the English Church. With the Revolution of 1688, and the elevation of William (himself a Calvinist and Presbyterian), there commenced a complete and absolute change of circumstances. The " par- sons," so were the Episcopal clergy called, were in a popular insurrection ill-treated, plundered, and driven away, and " ministers " (for the Scotch will not hear of " parsons, 1 ' or "priests," or "clergymen," but only " servants,") and these, the "ministers," immediately placed themselves in possession of the parsonages and churches. The Presbyterian National Church, being now also favoured by the Government, pre- sented itself as the sole established Church of the country, and was able to plant its foot on the neck of its enemy, the Episcopalian Church. It is, in truth, one of the most extra- 1 REUTER'S " Repertorium," vol. 1., p. 276, and vol. li., p. 82. DEBASING INFLUENCE OF CALVINISM. 187 ordinary but significant facts in the history of Protestantism, that after the last rising of the Highlanders in favour of the Stuarts, in 1745, the British Parliament which at that time, of the 526 members in the Lower House, could count 513 as belonging to the Episcopalian Church should yet have passed a series of Penal Laws against the self-same Church, on the other side of the Tweed laws which threw its clergy completely within the power of their bitter enemies the Presbyterians, 1 and brought down upon them a harsh perse- cution. Upon the whole, Calvinism, after a rule of one hundred and fifty years, exercised no favourable influence on the social condition of the Scotch nation. The Scotch patriot, Andrew Fletcher, of Saltoun, describes its situation at the close of the seventeenth century in the gloomiest colours : " One-fifth of the population then consisted of wandering beggars, and many of these were dying of starvation ; there were one hundred thousand vagabonds living by theft and robbery in the country, and one-half of the whole landed property was in the hands of an idle, worthless, violent gang of robbers." 2 Fletcher knew of no other remedy to be pro- posed for such a state of barbarism than the introduction of slavery ! It is a very significant fact, that the Scotch people, who on many occasions exhibited a fiery zeal for Calvinism, and who could be easily roused by their preachers to a religious insurrection, should yet, for centuries together, have done nothing as regards their churches. The Reformation had nowhere awakened a more wild desire for destruction than in Scotland ; it had left only a few ruins of the beautiful and spacious churches of the country in the times of Catholicity. Since then the people made shift with wretched hovels, with damp unhealthy cabins, which often had more the appearance of stalls for cattle than God's houses ; and during the whole of the eighteenth century not one single church had been 1 STEFHENS'S "History of the Church of Scotland." London, 1848, iv. 327. * TYTLEB'S " Memoir of Lord Kames." Edinburgh, 1814, ii. 227. 188 PURITANISM AND INTEMPERANCE. built by a people who regarded themselves as the most reli- gious in Europe. Many parishes had no church at all, and the people listened to their preachers in the open air. 1 As regards the present time, what surprises one at the first glance is, that the people who are regarded by Englishmen as the most theological amongst all European nations, should be also persons with whom there is a universal passion for drink. "It is a fact," says the "Saturday Review," 2 "that Scot- land presents the spectacle of the most Puritanized and most drunken community on the face of the earth. New York is about the most profligate city in the world. In Geneva, re- ligion is all but unknown ; and in Glasgow the sons of the Covenanters are the most drunken population on the face of the earth." 3 If the Church of the Netherlands and of Scotland are compared with one another, the contrast is striking. Both Churches have, in the main, a like faith, and the one doc- trine, founded on the fifth Dordrecht article ; they have, too, a similar Constitution ; and yet, how great is the difference between them ! Whilst Protestantism in the Netherlands has produced so abundantly a theological literature, Scotch Calvinism although, by similarity of language, brought under the operation of rich English literature has yet remained sterile ; and has, in its spiritual poverty and lethargy, contented itself with very few, and very poor, pro- ductions a fact the more surprising, when occurring amongst a people so intellectually gifted. Gross ignorance in theolo- 1 CUNNINGHAM'S " Church History of Scotland." Edinburgh, 1860, ii. 586-587. 2 October 8, 1859, p. 421. 3 " Scotland is now, by its increased consumption of spirits, the country most given to drink in all Europe. Since 1825, the consumption of spirits has quintupled. In a similar proportion have crime, diseases, and deaths increased." " Neue Preuss. Ztg.," 21st Feb., 1854. The Scotch- man LAING ( u Observations on the Social and Political state of the European People," London, 1850, p. 284,) says, that his countrymen must not boast of their morality, so long as, according to statistical re- turns, they exceed England in their enormous consumption of spirits, and drink about four times as much as Ireland. THEOLOGICAL STERILITY OF CALVINISM. 189 gical matters had always been a striking feature of the Scotch preachers. Burnet, even in his time, makes the remark. 1 Since the Reformation, Scotland has had, in fact, only two important theologians Robert Leighton and Forbes; and both belonged to the Episcopal Church, and were themselves bishops. Theological instruction has been very negligently carried on : " the students were for the greatest portion or, at the least partly a very large portion of each year dis- charged from the strictly scientific course," and, in the inter- mediate time, occupied themselves with the teaching of children. 2 If we put aside a period of prevailing moderatisrn, but which was merely scepticism as to dogma, 3 we find that original thought, and variety in opinion and teaching, were unheard of in Scotland among the clergy, as well as the laity, although the official Catechism makes it the duty of every Scotch Christian to examine what he has heard in sermons by the Holy Scriptures. 4 Had this " duty" really been performed, by only a small number, ecclesiastical divi- sions would naturally have become much greater than they have been. The spirit of the nation remained bound up in the Calvinistic system. Only questions of Church constitu- tion, and, before all things, that of patronage, have agitated the Scotch. The sect-system did not originate in the Scotch soil, but was rather dragged in upon it from England. The great secession of the preceding century took place, not on account of doctrines, but by reason of the constitution and position of the civil power. A glance at the dogma of the Scotch Church, as it has found expression in the Westminster Confession, and which still passes as its valid confession of faith, enables us to learn what is the chief cause of the Scotch dislike to theology. 1 " History of his own Time," p. 103. ' KOSTLIN in " Der deutschen Zeitschrift fur Christl. Wissenschaft," i. 190. * To this time and disposition belongs the only important Exegist the Scotch Church has produced MACKNIGHT who, however, according to the standard of the Westminster Confession, was very heterodox. " Confession of Faith," &c., p. 318. 190 THE CALVINISTIC SYSTEM OF FAITH. There is, in fact, a solid chain of belief, with which the Calvinistic system, as it is fixed in the Westminster Con- fession, has encircled the minds of men. Ever since the people have been taught to measure the value of a religion according to the amount of confidence it affords, it is but O natural that the Calvinist should be still more firmly con- vinced of the excellence of his dogma than the Lutheran, since the problem as to which affords the higher degree of tranquillizing confidence is here solved. Man so this system teaches receives, by the hearing of preaching, the soul- saving faith that he is, from all eternity, one of the elect ; and that God will attribute to him, as if he himself had yielded it, the obedience of Christ. This faith, and the un- failing assurance of his election, of his state of grace, or his righteousness, and his future salvation, are never again lost by him, although a transitory doubt or obscurity may intrude upon him. 1 He now knows that he is under the irresistible power of the grace of God ; and that all that he does, or ne- glects doing, is in accordance with God's will, and by God's grace. If he sins, he remains, nevertheless, one of the elect, and irrevocably in a state of grace ; and he knows this will be his state, even though, like David, he commit murder and adultery. By such sins, the certainty of salvation may, in- deed, be shaken, diminished, obscured, says the Confession ; but the seed of God, and the life of faith, are never quite lost to the believer. And since, according to the doctrine of the Confession, he is unfree, and a merely passive instrument of the Divine Will and that the best deed has in it a mix- ture of evil, so that the good in it is the action of God, through man, but the evil man's own addition to it so per- sons can pretty well tranquillize themselves, even concerning sins that are, according to human judgment, heavy and grievous. 2 1 "The Confession of Faith, &c., of Public Authority in the Church of Scotland." Glasgow, 1756, p. 98. * Concerning the practical effects which this system produces, there is an article in the u Quarterly Review," vol. Ixxxix., p. 307, entitled " Puritanism in the Highlands." The writer observes : " It is held that THE STUDY OF CHRISTIAN MORALS RENOUNCED. 191 With such a doctrine, it is easily explained, as Kostlin re- marks, why there is so little mention, in their sermons, of the Revelation of the Son of God in the flesh, and the human history of the Saviour ; and that " Scotch theology possesses no system of pure Christian ethics." 1 He adds, further, that in this system the real meaning of Evangelical faith never comes to light. What Kostlin here remarks of the Scotch Church, is also shown, elsewhere, as the natural consequence of the Pro- testant doctrine of " Justification." It was not possible to bring a tolerable scientific moral theology into harmony with this doctrine; and, therefore, so long as the mastership of the system built upon " Imputation" lasted, there too was renounced the study of Christian morals. This has been already remarked by Staudlin 2 that, in consequence of the Lutheran doctrine of faith, no one, during the whole of the sixteenth century (and up to 1634), in the whole German Evangelical Church, had ever thought of treating " Christian morals" as a special science, or even in their dogmatic system entering into its doctrine in any detail. The first who undertook to do so was Calixtus, but he immediately departed from the Lutheran dogma. The historians of the NetherJand Church, Ypey and Dermout, confirmed this fact with respect to the Calvinistic theo- logy. Theological, Biblical ethics had, neither in the uni- versity lectures nor in literature, any place. Every one feared an inevitable collision with the dogma, and dreaded a person of great faith, according to his own account, and of extraordi- nary attainments, as his neighbours believe, in praying and prophesying, and generally of high devotional repute, may indulge in various sins without endangering his everlasting safety, or, of course, weakening his position as a man," (so are called here those deemed especially sacred and pious). I have been assured in Scotland, that the example of David was regarded by the people as particularly consolatory and tranquillizing. The writer of the above-quoted article remarks (p. 325), that the preachers frequently cherish such notions, and according to the Westminster Con- fession they are justified in doing so. 1 " Deutsche Zeitschrift," i. 187-8. 2 " Geschichte der Christl. Moral." Gottingen, 1808, p. 235. 192 MODERATISM. that he might get into bad odour as " a law-teacher." 1 All the later Protestant moral theologians, therefore men like Baxter, Hammond, Taylor, Maastricht, La Placette, and Ar- nold were decided opponents to the Protestant doctrine of "Justification."" But wherever that doctrine has remained predominant, there also has there been no moral theology. The fear of the morally destructive effects of the Calvinistic system, and a perception of the actual consequences following from it, essentially contributed, about the middle of the last century, to create what is called Moderatism a mode of thought corresponding to German "Rationalism"; 2 although here again, as almost always in Scotland, ecclesiastical an- tagonism, between patronage and congregational election, became most prominent. According to their theological tendencies, the most of the Moderatist preachers were " Pe- lagian," or even " Socinian," in their views; but yet they did not usually attack the received doctrine : they endea- voured, by confining their pre<aching to moral subjects only, to avoid it and so made the yoke of the Calvinistic confes- sion light for themselves. The leaders of this school passed for unbelievers amongst the people, and at their divine service scarcely a tenth of the congregation were accustomed to be present. 3 Against this long-predominant Moderatism arose, in the present century, the reaction of "the Evangelical party," whose spiritual leader was Thomas Chalmers. This party has passed into the Free Church. But the genuine old Dor- drecht Calvinism is now no longer preached by the majority of the clergy of both Churches the State Church and the Free Church. Only among the " reformed " and st United Presbyterian " does it still reign. 4 According to the state- ment of Maurice, the mechanical, fatalistic doctrine of the 1 " Geschiedenes van de hervonnde Kerk in Nederland." Breda, 1822, ii. 409. 7 KOSTLIN in " Herzogs Encyklop.," xiii. 720. 1 See the picture given of them in " Hamilton's Autobiography " in the " Quarterly Review," vol. xcviii., p. 362. See the newspaper, the " Union," 7th June, 1861, p. 356. JUDAICAL OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH. 193 American, Jonathan Edwards (a doctrine which relegates all human freedom and self-determination to the sole will of God as affecting all things), has gained great influence in Scotland. This influence, according to Maurice, is connected with Materialism, which is very widely spread in that country. That the old Calvinistic faith is, however, lost to the Scotch Church, is, according to his testimony, the view of every intelligent man in the country. 1 In such a state of things a scientific theology in Scotland is not to be thought of. With it the most irreconcileable contradictions would come to light immediately ; and the preachers would forfeit all authority among a people so watchful over all things Connected with the Church. It is only by an entire absence of theology that the three Presbyterian communities can maintain their existence. In a Jewish rigidity of the observance of the Sabbath, the Scotch Calvinists endeavour to surpass even their English co-religionists so much so, that even a little walk for recrea- tion on the Sunday is not permissible. And so, on the other hand, there is on that day a much greater consumption of spirituous liquors. In their churches there is no organ, no altar, no cross, no pictures, no light. 2 In God's service no symbol, no liturgical action. Calvinism has nowhere and certainly not in Scotland been able to produce a religious poetry. Of devout hymns that might be sung in church, no one has ever even mentioned them, for a psalm is the only thing that can be sung there. That there had been a defi- ciency of religious compositions suitable for popular perusal was a want already felt in England ; whilst, as regards Scotland, such a deficiency is strikingly apparent. Hence it is that they are so much the more dependent upon the words of their preachers for by them alone are the people pro- vided with religious ideas and feelings. The complete pre- ponderance of the sermon in a divine service, stripped of every liturgical element, the people are well content with, since this passivity of mere hearing and receiving, instead of 1 " Kingdom of Christ." London, 1842, i. 157-60. 2 " Hengstenberg's Kirchen-Zeitung," vol. xlix., p. 962. O 194 PRESBYTERIAN CARICATURE OF PRAYER. the religious activity which is calculated upon in the Catho- lic worship, agrees with their mode of thought. For the same interest of convenience and passivity are the long prayers (commonly lasting for half-an-hour), introduced into every service by the clergyman, and into which he huddles all the notions that occur to him. Ever since there have been Christians, the complete spiritual dependence of the laity upon the clergy and their religious tutorship has never been carried so far as it now is in Scotland. Instead of speaking to God himself, from his own personal position and character, the Scotchman willingly leaves it to the preacher to tell him, for half-an hour together, how he can, or should, pray. This plan is, at least, according to the feeling of all educated persons, so much the more perverse, since the clergyman, in the absolute absence of the confes- sional, has very little precise knowledge of the state of the soul and spiritual wants of the laity. A very animated and well-written work of a celebrated and seriously religious Scotch lawyer, Home, Lord Kames, 1 presents a picture of the endless abuses, absurdities, and blasphemies connected with this practice. The necessity of the long public prayer natu- rally causes this prayer to be frequently nothing more than a sermon a sermon disguised as being addressed to God or it degenerates into empty gossip and hollow phrases ; or the preacher may intrude his own petty passions and prejudices upon his hearers in the form of a prayer. The Duke of Argyle has, in his defence of Scotch Presbyterianism, ad- mitted that it is a great defect of this Church system that the entire devotion of the congregation is dependent upon the will of the preacher. 2 The consequences of such a system have not failed to follow it. The Presbyterian Churches are losing more and more the higher and educated o o classes of the country. The whole of the nobility, with the exception of two families, have gradually passed to the Episcopal Church, which, as well as the Catholic, is continu- 1 " A Letter from a Blacksmith to the Ministers and Elders of the Church of Scotland." Dublin, 1757. * " Presbytery Examined." London, 1848, p. 302. RITUAL POVERTY OF THE SCOTCH CHURCH. 195 ally increasing. A great number, too, of the educated classes, though they have not formally left the State Church, yet rent seats in the Episcopal Chapel, in order that they may attend on the Sunday to the dignified forms of an Episcopal liturgy, instead of listening to declamation offen- sive to every refined feeling, and phrases (purporting to be prayers) of an uneducated, or half-educated, clerical speaker. 1 Further, it is to be observed that the unfrequent and undignified celebration of Communion is felt as a repulsive evil. It is converted into a theatrical display-piece of per- formance, in which a long preparation, when several clergy- men speak in turns one after another, is the main-piece of action. The crowding of the guests, the coming and going of those who are to sit at the long tables, whilst bread and wine are handed about in dishes and goblets the numerous lookers-on filling the church ; the noise and confusion that prevail are all circumstances portrayed by Lord Kames in harsh colours. The low notion which the Scotch as well as English Calvinists are accustomed to entertain respecting the purport of Communion compels them to supply the meagreness of the ceremony by high-flown pathos on the part of preachers, in their raging excitement, trying to out- top one another. The mode of burial, also, in Scotland, manifests a ritual poverty and disdain of everything symbolical. The Duke of Argyle complains of this. When Wesley was in Scotland he was greatly struck by the contrast between the English and the Scotch mode of interment. When, he said, the coffin was shovelled into the earth without a single word being spoken, it reminded him of the words of Scripture concerning " the ass's burial" of Jehoakim. 2 The Free Church, the separation of which from the State Church began in the year 1843, and that now comprise one-third of the population, has developed a wonderful 1 See, upon this subject, an article, " John Knox's Liturgy," in the " Edinburgh Review, 1 ' vol. xcv., p. 477, et seq. 2 SOUTHEY'S " Life of Wesley," ii. 248. 02 196 THE SCOTCH EPISCOPAL CHURCH. amount of strength and activity. It has, in seventeen years, built above 800 churches, and a corresponding number of parsonages and schools, out of voluntary contributions ; and it has, too, assigned to its preachers a considerable income. The former Secessionists have, for the most part, united among themselves, so that there are now three Presbyterian Churches the State Church, the Free Church, and the United, subsisting by the side of one another. To these are to be added the Independents, who have about 100, although mostly small congregations. In narrower dimensions exist Baptists, Methodists of two descriptions, Glassites, Unita- rians, and Quakers. Lately, there has been rather a widely diffused sect the Morisonians which, in opposition to Calvinism, teaches the universality of the Redemption. 1 Thus, then, is Scotland, ecclesiastically the most divided nation in Europe, and in this respect only surpassed by another country. America. The Episcopal has, it will be thus seen, favourable prospects in Scotland. Formerly, it and its service passed for nothing better than a " modified idolatry ;" and, in order that they might exterminate it by the sword, the Scotch set up their Covenant. When negotiations were going on for the political union of Scotland with England, the Scotch Church addressed a petition to the Parliament in Edinburgh, declaring it would bring down heavy guilt upon itself and the nation, if it consented that the constitution and cere- monies of the Church of England should obtain a legal foot- ing in England itself; 2 and still less could it, of course, endure the thought of a toleration of that Church on Scottish soil. Upon the news of the death of Queen Anne, in 1714, the Episcopal Chapel in Glasgow was, on the instant, de- stroyed. Since then, this Church has obtained perfect freedom, and has, of late years, by the erection of some good schools, and the college of Glenalmond, as well as by the building of the cathedral of Perth, given signs of its vigour. But lately, however, party spirit, dogmatic contradictions, 1 " Union," 14th Dec., 1860, p. 188. * " Edinburgh Review," vol. xxvi. p. 55. THE CHURCHES IN HOLLAND. 197 and discord have broken out in its bosom, so that now, as a periodical recently said, persons in this Church are engaged, with all their means and all their strength, in tearing down what they ought to build up. 1 Lord Clarendon said in his time (1660) of the Scotch: " that their whole religion consisted in a hatred of Popery." 2 That " the Pope is the Antichrist, the Man of Sin", and the Child of Perdition;" and that, consequently, all who attach themselves to him are lost has always been, where genuine Calvinism prevailed, received as an article of faith, and it stands as such in the Westminster Confession. All classes and authorities, ecclesiastical as well as temporal, have, since the victory of the Reformation, always zealously co-operated to destroy the Catholic religion. But in this they have not succeeded. In the year 1700, every priest who returned from banishment was condemned to death ; and old men of seventy years of age, who had ventured to give their religious services to poor Catholic Highlanders, lan- guished away their lives in pestiferous dungeons. 3 The old Church stands, nevertheless ; and it has in recent times namely, through Irish immigration considerably increased, and its churches and chapels have arisen from 87 in the year 1848, up to 183 in the year 1859. THE CHURCHES IN HOLLAND. The reformed Church in Holland comprehends about one-half of the population. It counted in the year 1856, 1,668,443 members. (The total population, in the year 1859, amounted to 3,348,747 souls.) After this comes the Catholic Church, with 1,164,142 souls. Then there are the Lutherans, about 600,000 (divided into two sects) ; and then the Mennonites, 38,000; Separatists, 42,000; and 5,000 Remonstrants. Thus two-fifths of the population are Catho- 1 " Ecclesiastic," February, 1860, p. 50. 2 The Oxford edition has modified this expression into " a great part of their religion." See " Edinburgh Review," vol. xliv. p. 38. 3 CHAMBERS'S " Domestic Annals of Scotland," iii. 205. 198 THE REFORMED CHURCH. lie. Two out of the eleven provinces are almost entirely Catholic, and three almost wholly Protestant. In the mean- time, Calvinism retains the tradition of its former domina- tion. And although the Calvinist dogma, the Dordrecht orthodoxy, has vanished from the minds of the great ma- jority, still the Calvinist antipathy to the Catholic Church has maintained itself so that the two creeds are thus more sharply separated, and more inimically opposed to each other, than is the case in Germany. The new organization of the Reformed Church, in the year 1816, had (in contradiction to the old Calvinist doctrine) principles introduced by the King, which allowed to the State great influence, and, according to the views of many persons, much too great influence in Church affairs. But, by the Constitution of 18.52, the greatest freedom and independence of movement has been secured to the Reformed Church. The chief power rests with the freely- elected Synod, and its decisions are subject to no royal placet. The only thing, almost, that there can be found to object to is, that the Professors of Theology are nomi- nated by the Government, without the co-operation of the Church. 1 Calvinism, in Holland, has the advantage of being inti- mately interwoven with historical recollections, of which the Netherlanders are especially very proud. The struggle against the Spanish dominion was, at the same time, a struggle for the Protestant cause ; and with the establishment of the Dutch Republic also ensued the establishment of the Reformed Church. Holland was, for a long time, the classic land of genuine Calvinism. The struggle between Lutherauism and Cal- vinism in Germany exercised little or no influence upon the internal development of the Reformed Churches; but the ejection of Arminianism, and the decision and fixing of the Calvinist doctrine, as to Grace, Election, and Justification, through that dispute, is to be regarded as the most important 1 " Expose Historique de Tetat de TEglise ref. des Pays-bas." Amster- dam, 1855, p. 2^. THE GRONINGER SCHOOL. 190 event in the whole early history of Reformed Protestantism. The Dordrecht Synod is the culminating point in this his- tory, and it is in the bosom .of the Dutch Church, and with its forces, that those battles were fought and those posses- sions won. 1 But from this height of Calviuistic renown the Dutch Church has long since descended. In England, Scotland, and North America, there are still adherents to the Five Articles ; but in their native home, the race of Dordrecht confessors among the clergy, if it has not entirely died out, has certainly shrunk up into a very small party. Three or four sections may be distinguished amongst the clergy ; and every one of them, in its views of Christianity, widely differs from the others. The Groninger school, whose theological head is Hofstede de Groot, was a short time ago the most numerous. It might be named, according to the German designation, " Rationalist," only that the title of Rationalist would pass in Holland as an offensive expression. 2 With this school, Christ is but a mere potential Socrates, Who wisely adapted Himself to existing ideas, and can make no claim to absolute truth in His doctrine. All the chief doctrines of Chris- tianity are, therefore, resolved into the transitory ideas of the time. A Church with a settled doctrine, binding on the clergy, is to this party a horror. 3 For the present, however, the Leyden school, with Pro- fessor Scholten at its head, is the one which has the greatest preponderance among the clergy, or promises to retain it. With that section most of the younger theologians may be 1 So lately, MERLE D'AUBIGNE. " Quand est-ce que 1'Eglise de Hol- lande a ete triomphante et glorieuse ? Quand a-t-elle marche a la tete de toutes les eglises de la Chretiente ? C'est lorsqu'il lui fut donne de porter dans les murs de Dordrecht le plus complet, le plus magninque temoinage, qu'ait jamais ete permis aux homines de rendre a la grace de Jesus -Christ." Compare GROEX DE PRINSTERER, "Le Parti Anti- revol. et Confessionnel," p. 18. 2 Messner's " Kirchen-Zeitung," 1861, p. 163. * CHANTEPIE DE LA SAUSSAYE in the German " Zeitschrift fur Christl. Wissenschaft," 1855, p. 200. 200 THE THEOLOGIANS OF UTRECHT. reckoned. Many deem its spirit as much more injurious than that of the Groninger theology : because the veiled rational- ism and heathenism of the Leyden school assumes the autho- rity of being a deeper speculative establishment of the Cal- vinistic system of unconditional predestination ; whilst, in point of fact, the whole theology of this same school leads ultimately to a dispersion and dissolution of individual personality Divine as well as human. Of the theologians of Utrecht, and their disciples, it is said, to their honour, that if they are not Calvinistically or- thodox, they are more Christianly conservative than the two other schools. The religious party under Groen van Prinsterer, and not represented in the universities, calls itself the "Christian Historical," and personifies the genuine Calvin- ism that is so intimately interwoven with the history of the country. It desires of the civil power that it will maintain by compulsion the old creed ; and of the Church authorities, that they will tolerate no variation from it in preachers ; but at the same time it complains of its weakness, and of the failure of all attempts that have been recently made, and of the falling off of friends, and dispiritingly admits that it is, at all events for the present, impossible to discover a cure for the confusion now prevailing amongst Protestants. 1 What Groen will not, but which others, nevertheless, see clearly enough is, that the dogmatic Calvinism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has in Holland, as elsewhere, died of theology, and that every attempt at its reanimation must begin with the suppression of theology. The Netherlands clergy have therefrom made the yoke of their Confessional Declarations as light as possible. The most important announcement on this subject is that which is stated at the conclusion of the General Synod in 1854 : " Since it is impossible, even in the shortest Confession of Faith, to unite all opinions and desires, so the Church allows variations from the symbolical writings, only excepting what is essential, namely, veneration for the Holy Scriptures, and 1 GROEN, "Le Parti Anti-revol.," p. 108. Compare Preface, p. 1. PASTORAL FREEDOM. 201 faith in the Redeemer of sinners. These must be held fast." 1 With this, then, excellent care has been taken of the free- dom of the pastors to teach as they please ; but the freedom of congregations, on the other hand, not to allow any unbe- lieving or erroneous-believing preacher to be forced upon them, is absolutely illusory ; and in cases occurring within the last few years, in which congregations have preferred a protest against the pastor, the latter has always conquered. 2 " The congregations," says Chantepie, " were treated as if they were sheep ; " and this tyranny is complete ! Besides this, the obligation, until recently in force, to preach upon the Heidelberg Catechism has been done away with by the Synod, and so has the last confessional ligature been torn to pieces. "At present," says Molenaar, "everyone preaches and teaches what he likes." At the same time the Synod, in its yearly meetings, and the Synodal Commission, speak of " the doctrine of our Church;" whilst the general Synod gives to all questions, concerning the doctrine of the Church and the confession of faith, evasive or equivocatory answers. 3 The unity of the Netherlands Church consists, according to Groen's expression, only in this, that all its preachers are paid out of the same treasury ; and " this chaos," he adds, " should not any longer be called a Church." 4 Dissatisfaction with the existing Church, its want of a creed, its general falling off from the doctrines of the age of the Reformation, and its entire absence of discipline, have led, since the year 1838, to the formation of a separate Church, under the guidance of the preachers Cock and Scholte. It is scattered in small congregations over the whole country. In the year 1853 its number was estimated 1 " Berl. protest. Kirchen-Zeitung." 1854, p. 846. : CHANTEPIE DE LA SAUSSAYE, " Le Crise relig. en Hollande." Leyden, 1860, p. 67. 3 "Beknopte Opgaaf van de verschillen Gevoelens." Gravenhage, 1856, pp. 88-92. 4 u Le Parti Anti-revolutionnaire," p. 106. 202 DIVINE SERVICE. at 42,000; but even amongst these a division has already taken place, concerning a prime Calvinistic doctrine, upon "the perfect consciousness of one's own faith, as an essential sign of election." 1 Other differences also prevail amongst them. Apart from the "Cockyanys" (Coccianern) as they are called, as well as from the State Church, there exists a little religious community of perhaps thirty, called " Congrega- tions under the Cross." In Holland, also, almost the whole of the Divine service consists in exceedingly long sermons, which are very fre- quently read. The Communion is, as in other Calvinist Churches, administered only four times in the year; and the religious instruction of youth is, through the idleness of the preachers, left to "catechism-masters," persons who are also accustomed to carry on a trade. As in Scotland, so is it in the Netherlands, at least in several of the provinces burial is not a religious act, so that cases of death are not even no- tified to the clergyman. 2 The custom of hiring seats in the church has also here had, as in other places, the effect of ex- cluding the poor from the church, but so much the more here because the number of churches is strikingly small. Rot- terdam, for example, with 104,000 inhabitants, has only four churches. If, in these circumstances, a want of reli- gious feeling is manifested, still, on the other hand, Protestant consciousness, on its negative side, is so much the more lively and vigorous. Even the English Bishop Burnet had re- marked it in his time : " The chief thing which the preachers in Holland inculcate upon their people is a detestation against Arminianism. They seem much more anxious about this than about other most important subjects." 3 At present the Arminians have shrunk up into a small, weak group, whilst the great majority of the clergy of the Reformed Church think Arminian, but in some respects go far beyond the old Arminianism. The very numerous Catholics who, after their long depression, have been placed on a level with 1 REUTER'S " Repertorium," vol. Ixxxvi. p. 147. * GOBEL'S " Ref. Kirchen-Zeitung," 1855, p. 266. * " History of his own Time," fol. ed., i. 689. PROSPECTS OF THE REFORMED CHURCH. 203 the Protestants, are, however, the object of most attacks. Niebuhr had already remarked that au " orthodox " Calviuist, in his conviction of his own personal election (and of the rejec- tion of those of a different opinion), was a most irreconcile- able enemy. " One does not," he says, in the year 1808, '* so much as mention the great poet Vondel, the only poet who does honour to the nation, and, indeed, immortal honour ; but he must not be spoken of, because he had become a Catholic." 1 Since then this aversion has naturally increased espe- cially since the organization of the Catholic Episcopacy, in the year 1853, which, in the same manner as in England, two years previously, had evoked a storm of indignation, that was sedulously cherished from the pulpits, and before which the ministry had to give way ; and Groen and his followers flattered themselves with a great Protestant revival in the country. Ultimately, however, nothing was effected beyond the formation of five societies, partly to convert the Catholics to Protestantism, and partly to keep them down as much as possible, both as citizens and sub- jects. The religious life of Protestantism has derived no advantage from the great agitation, and the rent in its Church is as wide as it had previously been. Thus, then, the opinion entertained concerning the present state and future prospects of the Reformed Church in Holland, must be gloomy and disconsolate enough. Of its 1500 preachers, it was a short time since publicly mentioned that 1400 were Unitarians or Socinians. 2 "If the present state of things continues," says the preacher, Chantepie, " it is impossible for the Reformed Church to fulfil its mission (that of being the chief dam against revolutionary principles), for being itself in a state of dissolution, it must leave a free course to decomposing and destructive forces.'" 3 Not less gloomy is the most recent description given of this state of things, which closes with these words : " The death-waters 1 " Nachgelassene Schriften," p. 289. See his startling description of Dutch fanaticism, p. 266. * Messner's " Kirchen-Zeitung," 1860, p. 541. 1 " Deutsche Zeitschrift," 1855, p. ^06. 204 PROTESTANT CHURCHES IN FRANCE. of Unbelief, Rationalism, Pantheism, and Materialism are in Holland, as in Germany, filtering through, and wasting away those protecting dykes the Family, the State, and the Church. 1 No one knows what advice to offer, nor what aid to give. The disease has its seat even more in the clergy than the people. The bond of a common faith, and of a fixed doctrine, is wanting, and we may sum up the state of affairs in three short sentences : 1. Without a code of doctrine laid down in authoritative Confessions of Faith, a Church cannot long endure. 2. The old confessional writings cannot be maintained, O * and are universally given up. 3. To make a new Confession of Faith is impossible. PROTESTANT CHURCHES IN FRANCE. The Reformed, and (according to its origin) Calvinistic Church, in France, enjoys important advantages. In every thing which concerns its doctrine and ecclesiastical life, it moves with the most complete freedom that can be wished for; and it enjoys, too, the prestige of nearly one hundred years' endurance of oppression (down to the time of Louis XVI.), and of a severe and sometimes bloody persecution. By the Revolution of 1789, it was much less injured than the Catholic Church, which, for a long time, did not recover the heavy blows inflicted on it, or rather, it may be said that it is still bleeding from some of the wounds it then received. In comparison with it, Protestantism was treated very for- bearingly at the Revolution, and sometimes favoured as an ally. With a community so small, so scattered, and so inun- dated by a great mass of Catholicity, one point has been always vigilantly attended to, namely : that exclusively Protestant ideas, and a sharp contest against all that is Catholic in doctrine and in practice, should be a principle of existence in this Church, which, if not firmly adhered to, the small religion must, inevitably, be absorbed in the greater. 1 In MESSNER'S " Kirchen-Zeitung," 1861, 16th March. WANT OF INTERNAL UNITY. 20,5 That the "French" spirit is a "Catholic" one, is said in France even by Protestants themselves. " The feeling that it is so, prevails in the Evangelical Church of France, 1 ' writes a German correspondent, from Paris ; " it feels itself to be an exception to the general rule." 1 But so much the more certainly might one expect all that is Protestant to gather around its banner, and close together its ranks, not merely maintaining a negative position, but advancing with a positive creed against the Catholic Church. The natural consequences of this position are, in so far, not to be mistaken, that among the French Protestants there is not to be found the slightest trace of an approximation towards Catholic doctrine, ideas, institutions, or observances there is not a single French theologian, or preacher, has ever, so far as I know, fallen under the suspicion of having his thoughts turned in the same direction as numbers of the Tractarians and Anglo- Catholics in England. In France, they all are, in this sense, "extremely good and staunch Protestants." The variation in tendencies, and the manifold conflicts within the heart of their own community, have not the slightest effect in preventing them from making war, with all their combined forces, upon their Catholic rivals. To no Protestant, believing in Christ, if he is a preacher, has the thought ever occurred that the believing Catholic stands nearer to him than the unbelieving or rationalistic member of his own Church. Internal want of unity, and distraction, among French Protestants are, at the same time, strikingly great ; whilst a common dogmatic position, and a settled doctrine, are here as little to be looked for as in Holland. The causes for this state of things are, for the most part, to be found in the precedent history of this Church. Among all Protestant communities, Calvinistic as well as Lutheran of the English Church we do not here speak the French was the first in which the process of decomposition in the chief Protestant doctrines was completed. Previous even to 1685, and, therefore, before the great Protestant emigration commenced, 1 HENGSTEMBERG'S u Kirchen-Zeitung," 1851, p. 866. 206 MODERN FRENCH PROTESTANTS. the most important theologians, men like Cameron, Drelin- court, Mestrezat, Daille, Testard, Amyrault, Leblanc de Beaulieu, Jurieu, La Placette, had given up the old doctrine of " Justification," and the Dordrecht Articles (which had been at first accepted by their Church), as untenable ; and, in Holland also, where, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, many of them had found an asylum, they con- tributed essentially to the undermining the Calvinism there existing. Thus the old Calvinist tradition of French Protest- antism was broken through towards the end of the seventeenth century, and never has there taken place any re-animation of original Calvinism. The more modern French Protestantism, as it has shaped itself within the last fifty years, has never attempted any dogmatic alliance with the historical past ; and Adolf Monod, who was removed on the complaint of his consistory at Lyons, remained the only one who maintained the permanent validity of the old Confession of La Rochelle. The great majority of the clergy declared, in the year 1849, against this Confession, and would have, in fact, no Confes- sion, as the whole Reformed Church of France has no theology. The works of the older theologians are quite forgotten a new theological literature has not been formed, and the theological writings of German Protestants have only obtained a very small influence. Since the year 1819, a "revival" has taken place; but it did not spring up in French soil it was introduced from England and Switzerland, and partly by Methodist mission- aries by these called " the awakened " Methodists, and to whom, in French Switzerland, is given the designation of the " Momiers." The Methodism which has found its way into the French Protestant Church, through the "awaken- ing," is described as being the chief cause of the weakness and wretched state of this Church. It is a dogma-destroy- ing sect. Under the pretext that a Church confession-of- faith is a mere form, which genuine Christianity ought to do without, it has abolished Confessions, it has set aside holidays, it has degraded the Communion into a mere love- feast, and it has cut out a pattern for "a new faith," in RATIONALISM. 207 accordance with the history of each person's individual con- version. Methodism undermines all the bonds of political ag well as social life in the community. 1 Such are the accusa- tions which the friends of French Protestantism are found to prefer against " the Evangelical party," as it likes to call itself. Since then the French Reformers have fallen into two unequal divisions: those of "the believers," or "the awakened," and the unbelieving, or the "indifferent." The preachers are educated in some one of the three theological schools at Geneva, Strasburg, and Montauban ; of these, the two first are chiefly Rationalists, and the latter is so mixed that almost every professor represents a different opinion. There is, however, an older and a younger Rationalism in France, to be distinguished from one another. The older, whose representative may be taken to be Athanasius Coquerel in Paris, leaves to the Holy Scriptures the import- ance of being a Divine revelation, but breaks down or denies particular dogmas, and, before all things, will allow no settled, binding doctrine to be established. It will either not meddle with decided dogmas, or it places them altogether within the territory of individual selection. The negation of all authority is, with it, the essence of Protestantism. The more modern Rationalism is, on the other hand, essen- tially the historic-critical of the German school ; or, as the believing Protestan,ts say " the destructive which has obtained its entrance into France through the theological faculty of Strasburg." This particular division of Rational- ism is represented by the periodical published by Colani and Scherer, and is the only real theological periodical of French Protestantism. It is stated that in general a sceptical tendency is gaining more and more adherents among the younger clergy. 2 Even Grandpierre waa compelled to con- fess, before the Berlin Assembly, that the Rationalistic or 1 PRESSEL, " Zustande des Protestantismus in Frankreich." Tubingen, 1848, p. 66, et seq. 2 MESSNER'S " Kirchen-Zeitung," 1860, p. 48. 208 WANT OF ANY COMMON DOCTRINE. latitudinarian element prevailed above the orthodox, and that most of the pastors and their congregations are going to sleep. 1 In the circle of " the awakened " a dissidence has gradu- ally grown up, and especially since 1848. This separa- tion of a number of preachers with their congregations has not had any origin in the relations that exist between the State Church and the power of the State. Freedom with respect to the State is certainly not wanting to the French Reformed Church. Its freedom is rather more complete than that of the Scotch Church. The ground of separation lay in the dogmatic inclifferentism or latitudinarianism of the great majority of clergy and laymen. This came to light in a very striking manner, when the Protestants, immediately after the February Revolution of 1848, met together in a Synod, without the assent, and also without any prohibition from the government. They there found that a community which desired to lay claim to the name of a Church, must, before all things, possess a common doctrine, or be able to show a document of Confession of Faith. At the same time, the result of the debate was that the whole assembly ac- knowledged the impossibility of putting forth a Confession, and were obliged to come to the humiliating admission that their Church had, in fact, no common doctrine any more."* The old confessional declarations were abandoned, and the putting forth of a new form was evaded with the phrase u that they would not diminish the liberty of the children of God by setting up any other authority than that of God's own words." This appeared to several preachers and laymen, amongst whom the Count Gasparin was distinguished, as an intolera- ble state of things, and they determined to leave the State Church, and to erect a "Free Evangelical" Church. Three and twenty small congregations now form " the Union of the 1 " Verhandlung der Versammlung Evangelischer Christen." Berlin, 1857, p. 123. 2 See the detailed report in HEXGSTEXBERG'S " K.-Z.," 1849, p. 98, et seq- UNION OF THE EVANGELICAL CHURCH. 209 Evangelical Church of France." 1 These dissidents, who are, altogether, about three thousand, or a little more, are sup- plied with pecuniary means from England and Switzerland. They have nothing in common with one another but a dislike to the State Church, and a belief which assumes various colours and forms; and they are in so far inclined towards the Baptists, that they allow children to be left unchristened at the will of the parents, whilst declared Baptists are willingly received amongst them. It stands with this " Union " very much as with the Evangelical Alliance. They are kept together although an organization comprehending within it each individual does not substantially exist yet they are united, not by what is positive, nor by one common Confes- sion, but by that which is negative. Since, however, the State bears the cost of the Reform Church, and pays the clergy of the State Church, the Secession which is limited to foreign resources is very weak in its supplies, as English and Swiss donors care much more for having their money laid out in the purchase of Catholic proselytes than in the forma- tion of Dissenting congregations. It has almost excited astonishment that Adolf Monod, who, according to Vinet, is the most important man belong- ing to French Protestantism, 2 should have declared, notwith- standing his Calvinism, the intention of remaining in the Established Church. He has, indeed, animadverted severely on the " organized chaos " of this Church, in which, under the pretext of toleration, and freedom of thinking, not only the obligation, but even the very existence, of a positive doctrine is denied. 3 By the new Constitution which Napoleon III. gave to the Protestant Church of the Empire, the Reformers obtained their wished-for Presbyterian Council, and the Consistories emanating from it at the same time, however, a Central 1 They are enumerated in the " Annuaire Protestant." Paris, 1858, p. 107. 2 That is, if we omit the statesman, M. Guizot. 3 See the pamphlet, " Pourquoi je demeure dans Teglise etablie." Paris, 1849. P 210 UNSETTLED STATE OF PROTESTANTISM. Council as the chief authority was established, that which was not desired by the majority. Again, since then, as formerly, a desire has arisen for a General Synod, from which they promise themselves great things. But the influential Protestants of Paris are exerting themselves to prevent the calling of a Synod ; for, they say, the Consistories already disagree, 1 and in a General Assembly discord would at once flame out amongst them ; and all that would be done would be to present to Catholics the scandalous spectacle of a multiplicity and variety in Protestant opinions, whilst not a single important question would obtain a satisfactory deter- mination by an imposing majority. It is natural that such circumstances should provoke the bitterest complaints from seriously disposed men. In the most recent times it has been said, " That the present state of things has become intolerable 2 that there exists no authority which might watch over clergymen, so that they should not preach unchristian doctrines." It is admitted, "That the community of the Reformers in France, in its entire want of a Confession of Faith, and of every kind of discipline, is, in fact, no Church, but only 'an Institution for the edification of non-Catholic Christians, founded by the first Napoleon.' " "The Church," says an organ of still-believing Protestants, 3 u is on the path to individualism it is all breaking and crumbling up into the opinions and views of individuals." Every Consistory ordains preachers as it pleases, 4 and the person to be ordained is not even obliged to signify his agreement with the doctrines of the Church, for the Church has no doctrines ; but he presents to the Con- sistory a Confession drawn up by himself, and so, if the authorities approve of this Confession, he is ordained." Of the Consistories themselves Link had heard that only one fourth of them were Christian, since wherever there was an 1 LINK, p. 14. 2 MESSNER'S "Kirchen-Zeitung," 1860, p. 48. See also HENGSTEX- BERO'S "Kirch.-Ztg.," 1851, p. 984. ' The u Esperance," edited by GRANDPIERRE. 4 LINK, " Kirkliche Skizzen aus dein Evangelischen Frankreich." Gottingen, 1855, p. 22. A CHURCH WITHOUT CONFESSION OR DISCIPLINE. 211 unbelieving pastor, the elders all joined him. 1 And every Consistory forms a Church of its own, completely indepen- dent of others it is, in fact, " keeping house " for itself. 2 Thus, then, it may be seen that State pay and the negation of Catholicity are the strongest bands that hold together the Reformed Church in France. This Church has no doctrine, no confession, no theology, no discipline ; and its divine service is a cold performance, limited to a sermon, to some prelections by a clerk, and a psalm. 3 No one can be excluded from it. No one can specify what are the principles by which it is governed, or how it governs itself. A German observer of these circumstances remarks concerning them : " It is, alas ! but too true the reproach which the enemies of our Church are incessantly making with respect to it, viz., that there is nothing active in it but the spirit of dissension, and of individual caprice ; and no other links than those of Pro- 1 At the " Alliance" meeting in Berlin, in 1857, the preacher Grand- pierre, of Paris, endeavoured to give the most favourable possible repre- sentation, and he declared, " One may certainly maintain that of the thousand Protestant pastors in France, of which there are 600 Reformed, 300 Lutherans, 100 Independents, at least from 500 to 600 were orthodox" (the words are, of course, to be taken in the sense of the Alliance). But the official (and by the Protestant authorities themselves published) " Annuaire" of the year 1858, contained a very different state- ment from the above. According to this authority there are 530 Reformed, 253 Lutherans, and about 23 Independent preachers altogether 806 preachers. According to this may be judged whether the official statistics are correct. The last census gives the following numbers of the popula- tion: 480,507 Reformed, 267,825 Lutherans, making altogether 748,332 Protestants. KOLB (" Handbuch der vergl. Statistik;" 2 Edit., p. 51) thinks that this statement is, by more than one-half, too small, and "is inclined" to give the numbers as 1,300,000 Reformed, and 700,000 Lutherans. That would be, on the average, more than 2,000 souls to each preacher, whilst in France it is notorious that a great number of the congregations do not, at the utmost, count more than from 200 to 800 members. The " Annuaire," whose publisher, from the completeness of its statistical notices, must be well informed as to the number of his co-religionists, is silent, and therefore confirms the accuracy of the Government returns. * PRESSEL, p. 36. 3 KIENLEN, in " Herzogs Encyclopadie," iv. 561. P2 212 SWISS PROTESTANTISM. test and Negation cement together this mass of 'malcon- tents.' ' n Since then two other phenomena have occurred, which indicate the continuation of the process of decom- position. The Darbyite sect, which rejects every eccle- siastical office, and every remnant of Church order, and be- lieves in nothing but the private edification of the individual, or of a fe\v, has found entrance among the French Pro- testants. In the South, and in Cevennes as Gelzer had already perceived a fragmentary sectarian spirit had gained the upper hand. Quakers, Wesleyans, " Inspired," or the so- called " Convertites," or " Strict Predestinarians," and other sects, had found followers. In the congregational "con- genies," for example, near Nismes, there were reckoned, a few years since, six sects. " If," said a German reporter, " we look steadily at the matter, as regards the future of the Church, the aspect of the French Protestant Church is such that it is as difficult to obtain a clear idea of it, as it is not to allow every hope respecting it to be depressed. 2 THE PROTESTANT CHURCHES IN SWITZERLAND. In Switzerland the Protestant population stands in about the same relation to the Catholic as in the Netherlands. To about one million of Catholics there are about one million and a half of Protestants (in the year 1850, 1,417,916). Lutheranism is here unknown. The whole of Protestant Switzerland is " reformed" it is, or was at least, Calvinist ; its confession of faith, and standard of doctrine, were of the Helvetic Confession of the Heidelberg Catechism, the Dor- drecht Decisions, and the Consensus-formula altogether genuine Calvinist documents. Berne, with 403,000; Zurich, with 243,000; Vaud, with 192,000 Protestants, 3 must, when attention is devoted to ecclesiastical circumstances, come most into consideration. With the advantage of having given existence to the second chief form of Protestantism 1 PRESSEL, p. 35. 2 " Protestantische Briefe aus Siidfrankreich und Italien." Zurich, 1852, p. 51. 1 According to the calculation for 1850, in FIXSLER'S " Kirch. Statistik der. ref. Schweiz." Zurich, 1854, p. 1. STATE DOMINATION. 213 of having shaped it out, and afforded it a dwelling-place, Switzerland ranks next to Germany as the classic ground and home of Protestantism. Berne and Zurich are, in respect to religion, as important as Wittenberg. From the plague of princely domination, which is so frequently to be regarded as the chief source of ecclesiastical corruption, the Swiss Church has, of course, remained free. It has had, in its political relations, only to do with republican, and, for- merly, with aristocratic authorities chiefly. Notwithstanding the similarity of doctrine, no attempt has ever been made to establish a collective Protestant Church in Switzerland. The clergy and the people felt no impulse to pass, in Church affairs, beyond the cantonal frontier limits, and the several governments did not like to have their ecclesiastical sove- reignty diminished. As elsewhere, so too in Switzerland, the Reformation placed the new Church under the control of the civil power. The Government seated themselves in the chairs of the Bishops. Zwinglius himself had given the administration of the Church to the Council of Zurich. In Berne the State domination over the Church was completely carried out. It was regarded as a branch of the public service; and the Bernese senators decided upon doctrine and rites, and deter- mined theological disputes, according to their own good pleasure, even though they did previously have the advice of theologians. Of a defined legal position of the Church towards the State there was no question j 1 and so early as the year 1837, the Professor Zyro, in Berne, made the accusation against the State : " That it had temporalized, and almost annihilated, the Church ; and that the clergy had become the servants of the rich and the powerful. 2 Thus, domination over the Church was inherited by the new governments that arose out of the storms of the year of revolutions. Frequently, under the influence of radicalism, so powerful in Switzerland, they maintained, in the most 1 ROMANO, in " Gelzers Mon.-Blattern," v. 90. 4 "Die Evangelisch ref. Kirche," besonders im Kanton Bern., 1837, pp. 81-82. 214 DECLINE OF CALVINISM IN GENEVA. favourable circumstances, an attitude of indifference towards the Church, which they treated as a police institution. Geneva, the old metropolis of Calvinism, would now be scarcely recognized by Calvin himself. It is becoming more and more a Catholic city. 1 " The faith of our fathers," said, lately, Merle d'Aubigne, "now counts but a small group of adherents amongst us." Calvin's Church, with its definite doctrine and constitution, exists no more : it fell in the political revolutions of 1841 and 1846; and the new one is governed by a lay consistory, elected by an absolute majority of all Protestants. Confessions of Faith are abolished, 2 and the Church "grounds its belief on the Bible, and allows to every one the right of free inquiry." 3 Among the clergy " prevails the most absolute confusion with respect to doc- trine." 4 Under the influence of Methodism, which has found its way hence from England, Geneva has established, since 1816, an "Evangelical Sect," and out of this a "Free Church," which rejoices in the consciousness of being a little band of " the elect," in the midst of a universal decadence. Still more serious have been the proceedings in the Canton de Vaud. Here, where the Government has always been, since the Reformation, and through it, in possession of a complete domination over the Church, the majority of the clergy, when power passed into democratic hands, found the yoke quite too oppressive ; and especially so when the State Council, at one and the same moment, dispossessed forty- three preachers. Encouraged by Vinet, 180 clergymen, out of about 250, left the State Church. They were replaced by others, and the secessionists erected a "Free Church," which is inimically regarded by the population, and in twenty years has only obtained about 3,000 members, divided into forty little congregations. 1 Of the 83,845 inhabitants of the Canton of Geneva, there are now 42,355 Catholics, and 42,266 Protestants. In the year 1850 there were 64,146 inhabitants, of whom 34,412 were Protestants, and 29,764 Catholics. * MESSNER'S " K.-Ztg.," 1861, p. 202. * GENF'S " Kirkliche und Christliche Zustande," in u Der Deutschen Zeitschrift," i. 248. Ibid., i. 253. ABOLITION OF CONFESSIONS. 215 The Heidelberg Catechism, with its eighty questions, has always been so carefully inculcated upon the Bernese people, that, according to the testimony of Romang, the pastor, " There is scarcely anywhere so decidedly an anti-Catholic people as the Bernese;" 1 and so much the easier was it, therefore, in the year 1847, to inflame the agitation against the Catholic " Sonderbund" into a religious war. The object was attained. The Sonderbund has been annihilated ; but the re-action had not been well calculated upon. It struck their own Church. Romang describes the immediate con- sequences : " Zeller's call ; the increased indifference of the people towards religion ; the falling off in attendance upon the churches ; the impotency of the clergy, without corporate strength or authority, and whose main thought is to provide for themselves and their families; and then, the great evil, beyond all others the entire want of an ecclesiastical authority, which formerly its Governments, and they only, exercised, but which the present Democratic Government neither can claim, nor has claimed." Adherents to the Calvinistic doctrine no longer exist among the clergy of German Switzerland ; and even amongst the French they form, at the most, nothing more than a little clique. Of Confessional writings, or of a doctrine in accord- ance with them, there is no longer a word said. A Swiss theologian boastingly declares that " even believers now ask very little about a confession of faith, and seldom trouble themselves concerning the institutes of the Church." 2 In the Cantons of Zurich, Glarus, St. Gall, Aargau, Geneva, Vaud, Thurgau, Appenzell, Basle, and Neuenburg, there is not a single old Protestant creed any longer in force. In the Canton of Vaud the abolition of the Helvetic Confession, in 1839, was the inevitable consequence of a decision, by which it was shown that only 9,000 citizens wished to retain it, whilst 12,000 desired its abolition. In Berne, the Grisons, and Schaft'hausen, the clergy are under an obligation to regulate themselves according to the principles, or funda- 1 GELZER'S "M.-B1.," v. 194. 2 GUDER, in Gelzer's " Monats-Blattern," vi. 121. 216 MALADIES OF THE SWISS PROTESTANT CHURCH. mental doctrine, contained in the Helvetic Confession ; and by it their freedom of teaching is very little limited. In St. Gall they promise to preach according to the Bible, in the spirit of the Reformed Church. It is, however, only in the city of Basle that the obligation is really acted upon. The two theological faculties in Zurich and Berne follow chiefly a creedless and destructive tendency. The school at Basle alone possesses, and still teaches, a positive theology ; but it is, according to the estimate of it in Wette's and Hagen- bach's writings, nothing better than an " accommodating theology." The position of the Swiss Protestant Church is worse than that of other countries. It suffers from two severe maladies from Radicalism in the people, and from the un- belief, the spiritual unsteadfastness and shattered condition of the preachers. Among the clergy the influence of German literature and theology, and a decomposing process of Church doctrine, with its consequences, have become complete, so that every preacher is accustomed to preach what pleases himself, or what may be pleasing to his congregation. The more ancient Nationalism is no longer in possession of authority; 1 and as to old positive Protestantism, it can only find a place for itself amongst " a knot of the congre- gation." 2 The majority of the clergy naturally keep to what had been taught to themselves in Berne, or Zurich, or Basle. In the canton of Berne most of the clergy and of the Church authorities have openly taken part with the unbelieving Faculty. In the synod and other assemblies the believing clergy generally find themselves in a minority. 3 On the other hand, Radicalism, which, for thirty years past, had sometimes by starts, through revolutions, and sometimes silently and gradually, by the diffusion of its destructive principles, obtained the mastery, has, beyond all other things, used and exercised its power in laying waste the 1 PFEIFFER, " Ueber die Zukunft der evangelischen Kirche in der Schweiz." St. Gall, 1854, p. 21. 2 " Gemeindlein in der Gemeinde." Ibid., p. 23. 3 HENGSTEKBEHG'S u Kirch-Ztg.," 1856, pp. 598-599. REPORT OF THE BERNE SYNOD. 217 Church territory. It has made itself felt in the desolation of Churches, in the alienation of schools, in the extinction of the influence formerly possessed by the clergy. Unbelief has penetrated so deeply amongst the population, that, ac- cording to the report of the elders of a congregation in the town of Berne, " of every ten householders there is scarcely to be met one who now believes in God and Christ, or makes any use of the Scriptures." 1 "It is only a Church with a Catholic organization (unless by some extraordinary descent of the Holy Ghost J that could," says the preacher Glider, " maintain itself against the attacks which Radicalism and a Radical Democracy have made upon it since they entered the lists to encounter it upon a soil that was already rotten." 2 In the general report of the Berne Synod of the year 1854, it is said : "We cannot any longer conceal from our- selves that some great thing is wanting to our public Divine service to meet the indispensable requirements of the present generation." To recognise "this great something which is wanting," there is no need, as the Report considers, of " an- other new Pentecost." It suffices to look steadily at the picture which another Swiss preacher has drawn of Divine service in that country. " Our worship," he says, " is that of a mere teaching school our churches are lecture-halls, with naked walls, and destitute of a sanctuary ; and these churches are constantly closed, with the exception of a few hours on the Sundays; and yet they are the only public memorials still left us of our religion ! Preaching is, in fine, O O / ' the one thing, and everything in our Divine service. The rest has been abbreviated as much as possible, and limited to a few verses of a hymn and some formal prayers. It is from the pulpit only that the clergyman can speak before or to his congregation. There he remains during the whole of the Divine service ; and the congregation are always sitting or standing, but never kneeling : they have nothing to do but to listen, and allow themselves to be talked to." 3 1 GELZER'S "Mon.-Bl.," iv. 149. 2 GELZER'S "Mon.-Bl.," iv. 124. 3 VOGELIN, u Welche Veranderungen und Verbesserungen sollten in unserm Cultus vorgenommen werden ?" Frauenfeld, 1837, p. 34, et seq. 218 CONFESSIONS OF THE CLERGY. This picture is completed by another of the same class and country. " The clergy," he says, " are mostly mere orators in the pulpit, and not shepherds in the midst of their congregation. The weekly Divine service is dying out. In many districts not one-eighth, and sometimes not a tenth of the population any longer go to Church." 1 It must be ad- mitted that for some time back it has been with the Church and religion "all down hill," (" bergab"). And yet, so early as the year 1837, a distinguished theologian and public teacher pronounced upon the clergy of his country this judg- ment : " The clergy appear to present in themselves the image of our Protestant Church, the image of a predominant, one-sided, selfish capacity, which only rejoices in itself, will alone know itself, and solely seeks for what is its own self- interest," &c.' 2 When the Swiss clergy in their meetings have expressed their opinions respecting the state of their Church, they have done so in a tone not alone disconsolate, but also accusatory against the Church itself. Thus Glider confesses, at the Paris Assembly of the Evangelical Alliance in the year 1856: " Our religious position is very humiliating, and very well suited to urge us to repentance. 3 The pastor Meyer declares in his Report made at the meeting of " the Preachers' Society," at St. Gall, in 1859: "The tendency of the time is no longer towards the Church, but to pass by the Church; and the fault of this lies on the Church, and upon its own contradictory conduct. To-day, for example, it contends against the Baptists, and to-morrovv it will offer them its hand in the ' Alliance.' The Protestant Church is so great, and the Protestant spirit is so small." 4 In the year 1849, Professor Ebrard, who had been engaged several years in Switzerland, wrote concerning this country: " The state of the Church in Switzerland is a melancholy one; it is a Cassaro-Popedom of the sovereign people, who 1 GELZEK'S " Monats-Blatter," iv. 1GO. 2 ZYKO, "Die Kirche im Canton Bern.," p. 102. 3 " Conference de Chretiens Evang." Paris, 1856, p. 300. 4 HEXGSTEJJBERG'S " Kirchen-Zeitung," 1859, p. 917. PROTESTANTISM IN AMERICA. 219 will have their religion made just what pleases them. In the Vaudois there are oppression and persecution of the Free Church a total corruption of the State-Preaching Esta- blishment. In the other cantons, as a young Christian friend lately wrote to me, "there are merely two trifling things wanting to the Free Church flocks and shepherds ; of dogs and wolves there is a superfluity." 1 The position of the clergy of Protestant Switzerland, French as well as German, is, in such a state of affairs, not enviable. To religious indifference and the materialistic tendency of mind in the people, is added the plague of sects. New Baptists, New Believers, or Bohmists, Antonians, for whom there is no law and no sin any more, Mormonites, Irvingites, Darby ites have found entrance; and yet the character of the people, and the prevailing tendency, is not favourable to sects. It is so much the worse for the clergy, that in some cantons the clergy hold their appointment only during pleasure; or they must, after a few years, subject themselves to a new election; so that, like the Dissenting preachers, they are wholly dependent on the favour of the more influential members of the congregation. There are also complaints of a continual deterioration in their worldly position, which is so bad, that lately in the daily papers the question was discussed whether it was proper that clergy- men's daughters should be publicly advertised for as house- maids. 2 PROTESTANT DENOMINATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. No State or National Church, and nevertheless a general profession of Christianity. Such is the first fact that strikes us with reference to religion in the Eastern States of North America. No one would in that country venture openly to proclaim himself an infidel. It belongs, among the higher and middle classes, to the tone of good society, and to the de- 1 SCHAFF'S " Deutscher Kirchenfreund." Mercersburg, 1849, p. 272. s ' Protestantische Kirchen-Zeitung," 1856, p. 138. 220 ADHERENTS OF THE "BIG CHURCH." corous conduct of life, to be a Christian. There does not, therefore or there did not till very lately exist such a thing as a literature of Atheism, Pantheism, or Materialism. A religious atmosphere is diffused over the whole country, from which no one can venture to withdraw himself; and this ma- nifests itself especially in the strict observance of the Sun- day, in the extraordinary number of churches' and meeting- houses, and in a diligent attendance at them ; in the ener- getic, emulous activity of the various religious parties, in their efforts for missions, and in the number of religious periodicals. Irreligion, or contempt of religion, is there only displayed by the Germans, and contributes much to the con- temptuous manner in which the Anglo-American looks down upon Germans. In the West, indeed, over which the great stream of emi- gration from Europe and the Eastern States is pouring itself in a full flood, the case is quite different. There are, in the West, regions where nine-tenths of the population belong to no Church at all, who are not even christened, and do not get their children baptized or instructed in the Christian re- ligion. 2 Many there will answer to the question, as to what Church they belong to, by saying, "I belong to the big Church," that is to say, " I, as a free American, believe as much or as little as I like ; and I can get on very well my- self with my Bible, and do not need the crutches of any re- ligious society, nor the sectarian coloured glasses through, which they compel their readers to read it." For, as a rule, every American holds the Bible in respect, and in the West, also, the Germans are the only prophets of unbelief. The name of the "big Church" is indeed Legion, for, in a popu- lation of twenty-nine millions, the number of recognisable Christians, who, by taking part in the Communion, show themselves to be really members of a Church, can be esti- mated at the utmost at not more than five millions. 3 1 Which, indeed, according to LOHEK, all look like private chapels. * RAUSCHENBUSCH, u Die Nacht des Westens." Barmen, 1847, p. 45. * SCHAFF'S " Bericht in den Verhandlungen der Versammlung- Evang." Christen, in Berlin, 1857, p. 234. CONSEQUENCES OF THE VOLUNTARY PRINCIPLE. 221 Each of the larger sects is divided, namely, into two classes into the majority, who outwardly profess to belong to it or, as it is said there " stand under its influence," and who attend divine service regularly, or tolerably so and into the minority, who are really full members. If we subtract from these the Catholics, of 2,400,000 souls, there remain about 2,600,000 Protestants, of about seventy sects and denomina- tions, who make full use of the means of religion offered by their respective sects. 1 According to this there are about twenty-four millions, a part of whom are entirely without religion, and a part who attend the meetings of a sect regularly or occasionally. Of these, many are not christened, and all naturally refrain from Communion, which they may do much the more easily that the views of Zwinglius respecting it prevail over the whole of Protestant America. It has been calculated, indeed, that there is one preacher for every thousand persons, but the proportion is quite differently arranged ; most of the preachers have very small congregations; 1239 congrega- tions of Old Presbyterians have not above fifty members each 1907 between 50 and 100, and only 736 above 100. Of the Congregationalists, 696 have fifty, 1219 up to 100, and 750 above 100, and that in the great towns. 2 The consequence of this is, great poverty of the preachers and their families; and the complaint that the clergy are worse paid in America than in any other country, cannot excite any surprise. How great is the number of those who keep aloof from every religious exercise may be gathered from the fact, that in all the churches of New York only 205,580 persons find room, and 638,131 are excluded. 3 The most moderate estimate is, that above the half of all the poorer people in America belong to no religious community. 4 1 The author has corrected this statement He mentions, in a note to his Introduction, that, misled by an estimate in SCHAFF'S book upon " North America," he had calculated the church-going members of the different Protestant sects much below what they must be ; and is, upon reflection, disposed to double the number which he had, at first, supposed them to be. 2 KRAUSE'S u Kirchen-Zeitung," 1856, p. 430. 3 MESSNER'S " Kirchen-Zeitung," 1861, p. 238. 4 MARSHALL'S " Notes on the Episcopal Polity," London, 1844, p. 501. 22 WANT OF A PEOPLE'S CHURCH. These are the consequences of "the voluntary principle;" thus does the want of a National Church avenge itself. This is and must be the result of the rule of the sectarian system ; for if millions receive the impression that they may choose their Church and their religion freely, out of a variegated crowd of denominations, some will allow their choice to be deter- mined by some one accidental circumstance. The majority, however, will put an end to the painful condition of uncertain hesitation by indifferent neutrality, and tranquillize their conscience with the reflection that among so many assumed brides there is really no lawful spouse ; that they are, in fact, all only concubines, who can make no real claim to the fidel- ity and devotion of a free man. 1 The state of Christianity in America is an awful and serious warning, and will in future become still more so. The want of a people's Church which receives everyone in his infancy, incorporates him with itself by baptism, and draws him into one common life-giving atmosphere, is a want that cannot be supplied by anything el^e. The condition which Europe would not like to realise for herself she has transplanted to America; for America has become the rendezvous of all the sects and divisions of Protestant Europe. One of the worst consequences of this want is seen in the American school system, from which every kind of religious instruction is excluded. The Bible may be used as a reading 1 Thus H. SEYMOUR TREMENHEERE, in his " Notes on Public Subjects made during a Tour in the United States" (London, 1852, p. 51), relates, on the authority of the Protestant clergyman, Edson, at Lowell : ' The young people who stream into Lowell, as workers from the neighbouring States, are usually without the slightest knowledge of Christian doc- trine, and utterly indifferent as to what sect they shall belong to, since they think all religions really pretty much alike. In other respects they are gene- rally well instructed, though very lax in their ideas of morals and duty. Among the children who had received some religious instruction, Edson found that there was seldom any point inculcated as resting on authority ; but that all doctrines were treated rather as the results of individual views, and to a great extent left to the child to decide. It is evident that the Americans have a faculty for logic." Edson adds, however, that this want of all authority in the education of children is now universally acknowledged to be a great evil. GODLESS SYSTEM OF EDUCATION. 223, book, but no word of explanation added to it by the teacher and no prayer be uttered. 1 If Sectarianism had brought on America no other curse than such a school system, which accustoms the youth of thecountryto regard lifeand knowledge on the one side, and religion on the other, as two completely separate and independent territories such teaching must suf- fice to render it one of the greatest calamities of the New World. The bitter discovery is now being made in America, that an education destitute of a Christian spirit is not merely defec- tive ; it is positively injurious, and trains up men to make them cold, calculating scoundrels. 2 The Sunday schools that have been introduced are no sufficient substitutes for the ab- sence of Christian parish schools. May Europe be terrified by the melancholy fruits that this system has borne in Ame- rica, and which it will at a future time bring forth yet more abundantly, by following in the same path. The separation of Church and State was really effected by the unbelieving Jefferson and his followers, who coincided with his views ; and it was effected by a man who flattered himself that in the course of another generation all America would be Unitarian. By this separation it is forbidden to the Government and its officers to interfere in any way in the affairs of religious communities. They have gone further, however. The constitution pro- 1 Religious-minded Americans express the greatest dissatisfaction and indignation at this godless system of education. The '-Mercersburg Review" calls it " Our ten-times helpless, wretched, and ruinous Common School system" (v., p. 41). A work by COLWEIX on the subject, u The Position of Christianity in the United States" (Philadelphia, 1854, p. 98) says. " The exclusion of Christianity from the public education of this country is a suicidal arrangement the worst enemy of humanity could think of nothing more destructive to the Republican institutions of the country," &c., &c. The same arrangement, as it is well known, exists in Holland, and is there also most bitterly complained of; for example, by the Baron v. Lynden, at the meeting of the Evangelical Alliance at Berlin, 1857. As long, however, as in both countries the same cause, namely, excessive Church dissensions exists, complaints and mutual recriminations will remain fruitless. * See the energetic words of an American theological periodical, the Presbyterian " Bibliotheca Sacra,'' 1851, p. 763. 224 SEPARATION OF CHUKCH AND STATE. vides, that no profession of religious faith shall be made by any candidate for a public office ;* that the Congress shall make no law respecting the protection of any religion, 2 or to prohibit the free exercise of any. The whole document ignores the existence of Christianity. Story, the American Blackstone, states it as his opinion, in his Commentary, that it is doubtless the duty of every government to cherish and encourage Christianity by all means ; but that by those re- gulations it was intended to prevent all rivalry between Christian sects, and the rise of a national Church which should turn the patronage of the Government to the ex- clusive benefit of its hierarchy. 3 On the other hand, in in- dividual States for instance in Pennsylvania the Bible and the Sabbath are placed formally under the protection of the law, and people may be brought before a magistrate for using blasphemous expressions. In Massachusetts it has even been decided by a court of justice that, according to the laws, the murder of an unbeliever (an infidel) was no crime. 4 All are of the religious parties and communities of England that, since the seventeenth century, have taken root here partly to escape oppression at home, and partly in the natural progress of colonisation. As the Anglo-Saxon race is the prevailing one, so is also the Anglo-Saxon religious system, the product of the long mutual struggle and contest be- tween Calvinism and Episcopalianism between the Associa- tion Church and the State Church; and it is the preponderating element which has extended its influence over the other im- migrant nationalities, and the forms of faith and church dis- cipline they brought with them. One only the Catholic Church has kept itself aloof from all such influence, in so far as it might have suffered any change from it. All Churches, or religious communities, have, therefore, complete equal rights. Every person can join any sect he pleases, or belong to none, or found a new sect for himself. 1 " Mercersburg Review," iii. 329. 2 u Respecting an establishment of Religion " 3 " Mercersburg Review," iii. 331. 4 " Atlantiische Studien," iii. 65. COMPETITION OF SECTS. 225 - As in politics, in trade, and in all other occupations, so also in the domain of religion, the freest competition prevails, and produces energetic action and elasticity of Church organism, combined, however, with an indecorous grasping at, and hunting after, proselytes, which forcibly contrasts with the passive tranquillity and stagnation of State Church bodies. For their practical skill in spreading these nets, and drawing on the masses, the Methodists appear to excel all others ; but so much the more nre the others obliged to concentrate their forces, keep their followers together, and endeavour to procure new proselytes. The mere prospect of being supported in case of falling into distress, brings in troops of converts. The art of getting money for religious purposes is here care- fully cultivated ; and for their talent in making money out of everything, and therefore also out of religion, the Americans certainly surpass all other nations. By exercising a kind of moral pressure that gives no offence, and leaves the appear- ance of voluntary action, they know how to incite crowds of people to bestow religious contributions these, too, being persons who, if left to themselves, would give nothing. Their success in this way is truly extraordinary. Upon everything that is Christianly is laid a blessing, which, in its integrity and entirety, never is utterly lost, and never can be perverted into a curse. No matter how defec- tive may be its form, nor with what manifold errors disfigured, nor how much by human passion and perversity deformed and degraded, still that which is Christian will accomplish an incalculable amount of good. Tocqueville has eloquently re- marked how much America owes to the serious sense of religion, and the Church discipline, which the Puritans brought with them from England and naturalized in their new home. This was the merit of the three great Puritan parties Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Baptists which, towards the end of the last century, had the spiritual control of North America. Since then the Methodists are to be added to the others ; and as they have addressed themselves to the lowest and most forlorn of the community, have attained considerable success. These four chief forms of American Q 226 AMERICAN IDEA OF SECTARIANISM. Protestantism and beside them the Episcopal Church, which has, in the most recent time, greatly increased in strength are, accordingly, the main supports of the religious feeling which still exists among native Americans. Those chief parties themselves are, indeed, split up into a greater number of sects, though certain common features and tendencies have remained among them. The swarm of other sects, however (a short time ago a list, amounting to above seventy names, was made out of those in New York alone 1 ), possesses small positive influence at least among the higher and middle classes whilst it must be considered as weighing heavily in the scale, when its effect is to weaken faith in one firm Christian truth, and to aid in the generation and nourishment of sceptical indifferentism. The prevalent opinion in America is not unfavourable to sectarianism on the contrary, it is regarded rather as an advantage. The idea of a Church, of belonging to a Church, or the duty of belonging to a Church, does not exist for the American. He knows that he is one of a sect, a member of a denomination, which does not exist any- where else in the whole world unless perhaps in England or Scotland. As a rule, he entertains the firm conviction that the Anglo-Saxon race is the chosen one of modern times the conservator of true religion, appointed by God. Of the past history of Christianity, if he ever thinks of it all, he has the idea that there have always existed & great num- ber of sects, a variegated assortment of ecclesiastical bodies ; and that, therefore, a Church established by Christ either never existed, or has long since been dispersed into various sects. He thinks, therefore, naturally, that, in the absence of the whole still unbroken vessel, we must content ourselves with fragments ; and that one of these pieces is not much better or much worse than another, but that every particle has still something of the original vase left in it ; or Christianity is supposed to be like a forest, in which many different kinds of trees stand near to one another, and receive alike light and life. 1 " Darmstadter K.-Zeitung," 1857, p. 1150. CONDEMNATION OF THE SYSTEM. 227 According to the prevailing view, therefore, the govern- ment ought not to favour one religious Confession and dis- courage another ; it must maintain an equally neutral and indifferent attitude with reference to all religious com- munities, as long as they do and teach nothing contrary to the laws of the country. In the eyes of politicians, advocates, and literary men, the chief advantage of the present state of affairs consists in this, that " the sects, by their mutual jealousy, keep one another in check," as the " New York Observer" remarks. It ap- pears to them a great gain that there is in America no National Church, and no religious authority. True religious freedom to which belongs, before all things, the freedom to do altogether without religion is, they think, best secured by the existence of many different sects. In the meantime, there are still Bible readers in the country, and they happen sometimes to hit upon those passages in which Christ speaks so clearly and energetically of the one visible Church, and of the unity of his disciples ; and the conse- quence is 1 that the formal justification of the sectarian system, such as used to be promulgated in former years, is now seldom heard. On the contrary, the most distinguished theologians and Christians agree in their condemnation of the sectarian system, and in the opinion that it is a disease which all ought to be anxious to cure. The sectarian system, says one of the best of American periodicals, is, in its very innermost nature, a horror. The whole world knows that the relation of our sects to each other is much more one of rivalry, opposition, and jealosuy than of brotherly love and harmonious co-operation. It was said of the primitive Christians, " See how they love one another ;" but of the modern American sects it might be said, " See how they hate one another." 2 And the worst is, that even those who con- demn this disunion, are compelled by circumstances, and by 1 SCHAFF'S " Deutscher Kirchenfreund fur die Amerikanisch-deutsclien Kirchen." Mercersburg, 1848, p. 141-47. 2 " Mercersburg Review," v. 584. Q2 228 DENOMINATIONAL DIVISIONS. the law of self-preservation, to identify themselves more or less with the denominational and sectarian spirit. " All depends upon sect there," says a German observer, "and a preacher can only make way as a sectarian. The enlargement of one's own sect is the grand business to which every other must give way. 1 A man will pay 500 dollars a year for the maintenance of his sect, which consists of five members and a preacher." 2 A travelling preacher, who has been converted in the Methodist fashion, will preach to the congregations in his circuit, against ether preachers, who have not been converted in the same fashion. 3 Even the peace- loving Quakers, who continue united in England, are in Ame- rica split up into parties. It seems as if in this country, of the freest political movement, men found it indispensable to have their religious feelings compressed into the tightest possible sectarian stays and as if they inhaled the spirit of re- ligious dispute in the very air. Scarcely has a German congre- gation been formed among a body of newProtestant emigrants, than they begin to wrangle and quarrel among themselves. 4 The conviction has forced itself even on Protestant clergy- men of America, that " the land of freedom " is, in fact, the most intolerant country of the world that it is the spirit of intolerance that has multiplied divisions like a plague of locusts. 5 The religious history of our country, says Colton, " is characterised by a constant boasting of religious free- dom, and an untiring effort to crush it." A solid scientific theology is impossible for America in its present state. Every theologian, or every one who might have a vocation for the cultivation of theology, belongs to some special sect, and finds himself more or less subject to the tyranny, or at least to the influence, of his denomination. His sect is a kind of make-shift hovel, hammered together, by narrow-minded men, out of fragments of doctrine, and it will afford him neither space, nor light, nor air for a theological 1 BUTTNER " Die Vereinigten Staaten,'' i. 247-346. * BUTTNER, i. 283. * BUTTXER, i. 341. 4 BUTTJTER, i. 357. 4 COLTON'S " Thoughts on the Religious State of the Country," pp. 204-5. ASSERTIONS OF BIBLICAL PURISM. 229 flight. Nevin, the only living American theologian of any importance, confesses that American theology, with all its pretentious and pious-sounding phrases, is, for the most part, mere school-boy pedantry compared with the German. 1 The only man, besides Nevin, who had in him the material and the vocation to make an eminent theologian, was O / William Ellery Channing, a preacher of Boston. But his profound aversion to the Calvinistic system, that " libel on his Heavenly Father," as he called it, and the destructive effects of which he saw everywhere around him, filled him (who had had no opportunity of becoming acquainted with a better theology) with a hatred to the theology of his own time, and made him a Unitarian. 2 A work on the religious parties of America, which appeared in 1844 (and was considerably amplified in 1848), gives an outline of each of the sects, drawn up by one of themselves. 3 It appears from these, that almost all, however narrow may be the enclosure within which they have hedged themselves, however deplorably small their fraction of Christianity, still each declares that the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible, is the source and standard of its doctrine and institutions. Every one boasts of having kept conscien- tiously to the New Testament, and carefully endeavoured to puff" away from its garment every particle of Church tradition. This Biblical purism, then, whose first axiom is the absolute clearness and transparency of the Scriptures, and that can quote chapter and verse for every article of its sectarian faith, has already produced in America more than fifty different sects ! And since, almost every year, one or more new "Churches" arise, their partisans always know how to point precisely to this or that Bible text, which makes it impossible for conscientious Christians to join any one of the fifty or sixty already existing " Churches," and renders it 1 " Mercersburg Review," ii. 165. 2 See the expressions used in the 2nd vol. of " Memoirs of W. E. Channing," and particularly pp. 134-135. London, 1850. * D. RUPP, " Original History of the Religious Denominations." Harrisburg, 1848, 2nd edition. 230 THE BIGHT OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT. imperatively necessary to found a new one. Creeds, sym- bolic books, are either entirely rejected, since with the Bible they are superfluous, and they do not well agree with it, as the "Campbell Baptists" say; or they must, as the Congrega- tionalists declare, be themselves measured by the Bible. 1 Several of the modern sects proclaim that they have been founded for the express purpose of re-establishing the original unity of the Church, an object which can only be attained by raising the Bible to be the sole standard. Each one of the sister sects had, indeed, proposed to keep closely to the Bible, but had not, it is said, remained true to its principles. The new one alone is the one that is to do so in earnest. As often as a new party branches off from the old ? the separation takes place according to their assurance ; because the old sect, notwithstanding its exclusive devotion to the Bible, has submitted to unbiblical " traditions," and so has afforded an opportunity for inaccurate interpretations. We find, therefore, in so far, an agreement among the Ame- rican sects, that each one starts with the same proposition as to the all-sufficiency of the words of the Bible, and the denial of any ecclesiastical authority and continuity. Each one has inscribed upon its banner the motto, " The open Bible, and the sovereignty of private judgment." The Bible this is the universal theory is perfectly clear to every human being endowed with common understanding; special studies and previous knowledge are not necessary ; a person reads, and he may and must believe that the sense he finds is the only true one, and that he has perceived it by help of the Holy Ghost. This right of private judgment is declared to be the Palladium of the Gospel, the only alternative if we do not wish to submit to an infallible authority. 2 In reality, however, no single one of these sects permits the individual to make use of this right. Every sect has its own system, and compels the Bible text to express its views ; every one of them rejects from its bosom at least, according to theory any member who should prefer his own judgment on a passage 1 RCPP, p. 224, 281. 2 See, for instance, " Cumberland Presbyterians." RUPP, p. 512. NEGLECT OF SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGT. 231 of the Bible, to the interpretation accepted by the community to which he belongs. Several of the American sects maintain that they have separated themselves from the older denomination, to escape the " scourge of a human Confession of Faith." In fact, however, these sects are all prisons of the mind ; every one has its own mostly very meagre and narrow-minded tradi- tion and observances. A sect is, by its nature, the instinctive enemy of every scientific theology. It is conscious of being short-lived, of having no connecting current with the great river-stream of the Church, which has been pouring down through centuries of time ; and the sect is, therefore, filled with aversion to the entire ecclesiastical past. Thus, for instance, the Baptists of six principles say, " A true member of their community does not trouble himself as to whether its doctrines are found to have existed in the various ages of the Church : it is sufficient for him that Christ has announced them." 1 The chief sect of Baptists even takes a pride in not troubling itself about the ancient doctrines of the Church. With respect to ecclesiastical tradition, the sects are accustomed to keep to these principles : that a tradition is so much the more worthless as it is older and more generally diffused and worth so much the more as it is younger, and most peculiar to their sect. The brief past of their own sectarian life, with its inventions and arrangements of yesterday, becomes thencefor- ward a chain that binds every one under penalty of expulsion. Another feature common to the more modern sects is, rejection of infant baptism. Some, like the Baptists of the Seventh Day, have discovered that the New Testament con- tains nothing about a transference of the Sabbath to the Sunday, and, therefore, regard the observance of the Saturday as a Sabbath as absolutely necessary. 2 They and others see, also, in " the foot-washing," a sacrament appointed by Christ. Further, the sacraments are, with almost all American sects, not vehicles or operative means of grace, and pledges of what God bestows on us; but they are 1 RUPP, p. 88. 2 RUPP, p. 121. 232 UNANIMITY IN ONE ARTICLE OF FAITH. lowered into symbols of what passes in man, or they are mere signs, intended to remind men of a certain event, or to awaken in them a certain feeling. Germanism (that is German theology) and Popery are in general the two powers especially dreaded, and alike hated, by the American sects. 1 About twelve sects profess to be established, not merely on the basis of the Bible, but also on that of the Westminster Confession so that this Confession, although the most com- plete and theologically definite among the Calvinistic creeds one, too, that far excels, for instance, the Augsburg Con- fession, in point of clearness and plain speaking, has neverthe- less not been able to prevent a number of subdivisions taking place, even within the narrow circle of American Calvinism. In one article there is still very general unanimity. " Jus- tification by Faith alone" has been inscribed on the banner of all the " Evangelical " sects. Thus, the Campbellites, for instance, declare that the one great condition of admission to their community is a "perfect trust in the merits of Christ alone for justification." Their sect has been estab- lished on the two fundamental doctrines of the Reformation rejection of all tradition, and a reliance on faith alone. 2 With this solifidianism, by which the righteousness of Christ is placed quite externally to the account of believers, another proposition is connected, extremely important to sectarian life, and on which rests the whole theory of " Revivals." The man who is justified by mere faith, and the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, is conscious of this fact with infallible certainty. He has an " experience " of his conver- sion, or of being taken into a state of grace, and can point out the precise moment of his passage from death to life. The Americans have, therefore, arranged their "conversions" in a very business-like manner. Several preachers and laymen enter into an association, and begin to operate upon an assembly of persons, who desire to be converted. By long- continued exciting preaching, by stormy addresses to indi- viduals, by hymns with lively rattling airs, by threats, with dreadful descriptions of the torments of hell, by entreaties, 1 " Mercersburg Review," i. 517. 2 RUPP, p. 225. MACHINERY OF REVIVALS. 233 supplications, and passionate apostrophes, men and women are so agitated and wrought upon that they are eventually broken down. The mental and bodily exhaustion to which men, and especially women, are reduced by such means, produces a passive state, in which they feel everything they are desired to feel. Attacks of bodily illness, involuntary exclamations, pass for pledges of grace, and certain signs of victory over " the old man." The state of complete relaxation and weakness which naturally follows these stormy emotions and spasmodic convulsions is considered as " peace of mind from assurance of salvation." When any one has been so far worked upon a? to be induced to seat himself on the " peniten- tial bench," the matter is decided ; he has yielded himself up to grace, and immediately after that he must, according to the prescribed rule, feel himself completely and wonderfully refreshed and relieved ; and he is then entered as a convert, and as a member of the society in the lists of the sect. The " penitential bench " is the sacrament at the revivals the infallible means of new birth. As the whole machinery is really a strictly logical application of the old Protestant doctrine of justification, all the "evangelical" communities even the German Lutherans and Calvinists have intro- duced " Revivals ;" and they are regarded in America as the most important and beneficial religious discovery of modern times. Besides the town revivals, there are also the Camp- meetings, specially set on foot, by the Methodists, as the great lever of American religion. Even the sects of a Socinian character, which deny the Trinity and the Godhead of Jesus Christ such as the Campbellites make use of this plan of revivals with the greatest success, 1 and have, by means of 1 FLAVEL S. MINES, " A Presbyterian Clergyman looking for the Church." New York, 1855, p. 81. The Rev. J. Marsden, Methodist missionary, who had attended several of the American camp meetings, and who expresses his strong approval of them, gives the following evidence as to the results produced by " a powerful spirit of prayer and exhortation" : u I have not unfrequently seen three or four persons lying on the ground, crying for mercy, or motionless, without any apparent signs of life, except pulsation." MARSDEN'S " Narrative of a Mission to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick," quoted in EVANS'S " Sketch of the Denominations of the Christian World." London, 1827, pp. 211, 212. 234 BAPTISTS. them, considerably increased their numbers during the last thirty years though it is true that the congregations speedily got together by revivals are apt to melt away again just as rapidly as they were collected ; and troops of those who have been so regenerated, are liable, in a very short time, to forget all about their regeneration. Two circumstances have contributed powerfully to the importance of " Revivals " in America : first, the character of the Americans themselves, which, under the influence of the climate of the country, and the monotony of lives entirely devoted to business and money-getting, requires, from time to time, some excitement, and seeks it if not in gaming or drink in religion ;* secondly, the meagre, cold, Puritanical service, which, abolishing all that is liturgical or symbolical, consists merely in preaching, and long prayers, spoken by the minister, and affords so much the more ready entrance and favourable reception for a theatrical method of conversion, producing literally the most striking effects, and overpowering the strongest nerves. If we observe the present state of the chief religious parties of America, we shall find that, next to the Methodists, the Baptists, the youngest of the great communities, 2 now subdivided into seven sects, are the most numerous of all the Protestant denominations of America. Only the Methodists can dispute with them this precedence. From the year 1792 to 1852, their churches had risen from 1000 to 9584; and in 1856, they numbered 1,322,469 communicating members. They have no representation, no organization, and no con- fessions. According to their theory, all church government and church offices are an evil. Every congregation is a complete independent body. The particular Baptist sects are separated from each other by very strong differences of doctrine. The American Baptist, or Socinian Campbellite, has, with the exception of his practice in baptism, little in common with a Calvinist Baptist. 1 OTTO, " Nordwestliche Bilder." Schwerin, 1854, p. 22. The first Baptist congregation was formed in Xew York in 1762. See GORRIE'S " Churches and Sects of the United States." New York, I860, p. 134. PRESBYTERIANS. 235 The fact that the Baptists form so numerous Indeed the most numerous of all religious parties of North America, deserves much attention. They would be still more numerous, if it were not that the rites of Baptism and the Lord's Sup- per, in their sacramental signification, are regarded by the whole Calvinistically-disposed world as such subordinate matters, that the question as to their original form appears to many a matter of such indifference that no one needs trouble himself much about it. The Baptists are, in fact, from the Protestant point of view, unassailable, since they have the Bible text in favour of the practice of baptism by " immer- sion ;" whilst the authority of the Church and her testimony will be recognised neither by the one party nor the other. 1 More important, in a spiritual point of view, is the influence of the Presbyterians, who, with the Congregationalists, are the descendants and heirs of the old Puritans, " the Pilgrim Fathers," the founders of New England. They are the originators and curators of American theology, as far as it can be said to exist. They carried the most genuine Calvin- ism with them from their English home, and for a long time clung firmly to a system that had cost them so many sacri- fices. Their preachers were inexhaustible in their way of working out their theory of Predestination, and in descriptions of the damnation to which God had pre-ordained the majority of little children. Fatalism and Antinomianism bore their fruits in the moral and intellectual decline of their congrega- tions. Edwards endeavoured to prop up Calvinism by means of Locke's philosophy ; but Dwight, Lyman, Beecher, and Barnes have, in modern times, broken down the sway of the Calvinistic doctrine and the Westminster Confession. Here- 1 Not even a Baptist translation of the Bible can therefore be used by the other parties. An English missionary of the Congregationalists writes from Calcutta: " The Baptists take the first place in translations into the Bengalee. We here mostly make use of the translation of Yates (Baptist), but since the Baptist Society, whose property the translation is, insist on translating fiairT&uv, only by l to immerse,' 'to dip under,' all friends of Infant Baptism, as well as the Calcutta Bible Society, feel the want of a new translation." REUTER'S " Repertoriuin," vol. liii., p. 70. This is saying, in fact, " We must translate the Bible falsely, in order that the heathens, to be converted, may not discover our weak points." 236 COXGREGATIONALISTS. upon there followed, in 1838, a complete division. Barnes, and 500 preachers, with about 60,000 laymen, were ejected by the General Assembly on account of heterodoxy ; and they formed immediately the Presbyterian Church of the " New School." 1 The genuine Puritans or Congregation alists, who are found principally in New England, have undergone much alteration in America. The old organic connexion, by which the indi- vidual congregations were subordinate to a superior assembly a Convocation or Association has been dissolved. Their Church has, in consequence of Unitarian and Universalist movements, become more democratic. There is no common symbol any more, but each congregation has its own. The clergyman is merely the dependent servant of the congrega- tion, called and elected by them. 2 The Presbyterians have followed an opposite course of development. With them the subordination of the congregation to the elders, Presbyteries, and Synods has been confirmed and increased and the result is that the two religious communities, which had been previously approaching at many points, are now mutually repugnant to one another. The whole bearing of the Puritanical sects, with their "Revivals," has had the effect of leading to numerous secessions among the clergy, and especially among those of the Pres- byterian parties, who are more theologically instructed than the Baptists and Methodists, the latter being generally very ignorant persons. Within a few years up to 1855 300 Presbyterian clergymen have gone over to the Episcopalian Church, which rejects Revivals, resists Calvinism, and allows to individuals the liberty at least to inculcate notions respect- ing justification and grace in an anti-Calvinistic sense. 3 One of these clergymen, Colton, formerly the panegyrist of Revivals, 4 in which he saw "a new Dispensation, des- tined to be diffused over the whole world," has gradually, in 1 See " History of the Division of the Presbyterian Churches, by a Com- mittee of the Synod," &c. New York, 1855. a KRAUSK'S " Kirch. -Zeitung," 1856, p. 129. * MINKS, " Looking for the Church," p. 11. 4 In his Essay, "History and Character of American Revivals." London, 1832. PROTESTANTISM IN THE CONFESSIONAL. 237 consequence of the experience he has had of them, been brought to the decided rejection of the whole institution. " The mind," he says, " is enslaved by them, a false con- science is created and encouraged, and the whole intellectual and moral character of the people destroyed." ' There is still more clear and emphatic evidence concerning the root of all this evil. What Protestant theologians of former times, Lutherans as well as the Reformed, report con- cerning the destructive consequences of the Justification doctrine, as it was moulded by the Reformation, is now confirmed in America, where the doctrine is still in high repute, and proclaimed from innumerable pulpits. The writings of American theologians contain remarkable con- fessions concerning it. The preacher Flavel S. Mines says that " After a long and careful examination of the matter, it is his conviction that the doctrine of Justification by Faith, as it is preached, separate from sanctity of life, and consisting merely in a feeling, a reflective act of the soul (the certainty of being in a state of grace), is the most soul-destroying heresy of the age. 2 Nevin, the most thorough and profound of all living American theologians, maintains also that the doctrine leads, in America, to fearful delusions, and does indescribable mischief. 3 The general depreciation of the Sacraments, and the Cal- vinistic dogma of " Election," have had the effect of inducing the Presbyterians and Congregationalisms very frequently to leave their children unbaptized. The parents consider it unnecessary to get them baptized and the preachers on their side will frequently, on account of the religious position of the parents, not admit the children to baptism ; and since, also, the Baptists of all denominations reject Infant Baptism, 1 COLTON'S " Thoughts on the Religions State of the Country." New York, 1836, p. 178. * " Looking for the Church," p. 492. 3 " Mercersburg Review," iv. 615. Some years later (1858, " Mercers- burg Review," x. 395) the same theologian remarks: u That in its cus- tomary Puritanical acceptation, this doctrine of Justification by Faith has been turned into a fiction which contradicts the Apostolic teaching, and gives to the Christian religion a form altogether different." 238 SECTARIAN LAXITY OF OPINION. many thousands grow up, and many thousands of Presby- terians and Baptists die unbaptized. 1 In the history of Sects which are not sunk into an inert state of vegetation, it is common to find them proceeding by fits and starts from one extreme to the other : and it happens inevitably that the emanations of mere caprice, groping in the dark or of individual narrow-mindedness have to serve as substitutes for the necessary results of organic institutions. Thus it has happened that the two main branches of the American Puritans the Presbyterians and Congrega- tionalists being dissatisfied with their Westminster Confes- sion, have introduced into their various congregations or Synods a number of whimsical or extravagant Confessions of Faith so that, according to the statement of the preacher, Colton, some hundreds of these formulas may be found among the Presbyterians, and you can hardly go from one town to another without coming upon a new creed, notwith- standing the similarity of the sect. 2 Colton, who filled the most influential offices in the Presbyterian Church, relates that he himself has organized above fifteen Churches, and introduced into each of them a Confession of Faith drawn up by himself, but which had to be modified every time, accord- ing to the degree of his knowledge and the momentary character of his views. Thus in the Puritan communities there prevails the most extreme laxity of opinion, combined with isolated, and mostly fruitless, attempts to establish an obligatory or- thodoxy. To the old disputes and differences of the Puritans, new ones have now been added. These are Hopkinsonians, and followers of the " JS'ew Light," " Mode- 1 " Mercersburg Review," vol. viii. 34-3o ; vol. x., p. 41. The same periodical maintains (vol. vii., 202) that at present baptism is denied to the children of one half of the professed Christians of America, and thought slightingly of by the great majority. FLAVEL S. MIXES (p. CO) calculates, in the Presbyterian publication, the "Princeton Review," that in the last twenty years two thirds of the children of this denomina- tion, namely 413,298, remained unbaptized. 2 " Thoughts on the Religious State of the Country." New York, 1836, p. 63. UNITARIANS AND UNIVEKSALISTS. 239 rate " and " Strict" Calvinists, " Destructionists and Ke- storationists," dealers of original sin, like Taylor and Park; " Pre-existents," like Edward Beecher, who place the Fall of Man in a former state of existence. The " re- jection of original sin" has even become a prevailing theory in New England, that is, in the six North-Eastern States, which are the oldest of the Union, and the original home of American Puritanism. 1 In consequence of a process of doctrinal decomposition, there arose in America, towards the end of the last century, as there had previously arisen in England, without any foreign influence, congregations of Unitarians. It was the rude and mechanical Calvinistic conception of the Atone- ment theory, the rending asunder of the Trinity, implied by that conception, and the opposing of the Divine Persons, Who, according to that same conception, militated against one another, like parties in a law-suit ; it was this distortion and disfigurement of the Central Doctrine of Christianity that, by a natural reaction, made Unitarians of the Puritan theologians and preachers. In the State of Massachusetts, and in Boston especially, those pulpits from which had preached the oracles of American Calvinism, are now occu- pied by clergymen who deny the Trinity, and reject the Divine Nature of the Son. In the meantime, Unitarianism in America has already entered its stage of decay. The preachers of the sect have renounced Christianity and adopted Pantheistic views, as the most gifted among them Theodore Parker did in the year 1859 and partly they have gone over to the Episcopal Church. 2 Gorrie reckons that in the year 1850 there were 244 Unitarian preachers, and about 30,000 members. 3 Very close to the Unitarians stand the Universalists, who in 1840 had only 83 preachers, but, in 1855, 700 preachers, with about 1,100 congregations. Their doctrine of the ultimate salvation of all men has led many of them to a 1 " Mercersburg Review," viii. 219. * MF.SSSER'S " Kirch. -Zeitung," 1860, p. 96. 8 " Churches and Sects," p. 132. 240 METHODISTS. Rationalistic rejection of all Christian mysteries. This sect also, however, is already going to decay. It is in the religious world as in the world of vegetation. Those plants which most readily propagate themselves spread most rapidly and shoot up most luxuriantly are neither the healthiest nor precisely those that are most welcome to the gardener. In America it is especially the Methodists and Baptists who have spread most easily, and can boast of the most prodigious progress. This they owe to the skill with which they have made religion palpable and palatable, so that everyone can appropriate it easily, and get on well with it and also that the doctrine and practice can be mastered in the shortest possible time, and then dis- tributed from the pulpit. But it is also to their zeal and unwearied activity that these two great communities owe their success. Among all sects the Methodists have in America developed the most comprehensive activity, and within ninety years have spread to an extent of which there are not many examples in his- tory. They have indeed become divided amongst them- selves. The most distinguished party is the Episcopal Methodist Church ; but even in this the slavery question has produced a breach -namely, between the Northern and Southern Methodists and has led to a long law-suit concern- O ing the partition of Church property. The term *' Episcopal" is not to be taken literally; but Wesley did for America what he could not do in England : he ordained an Anglican clergyman Thomas Coke to be a Superintendent ; and since then his followers have had superintendents, who allow themselves to be called " Bishops." The laity are excluded from all share in the government of the society the Conference rules alone ; the congregations are not allowed to choose their preachers who are appointed for them, and that only for a few years. The greater part of the Methodist preachers are utterly destitute of scientific culture ; and real Biblical knowledge is not to be thought of amongst them. 1 They are amply pro- 1 See RAUSCHEKBUSCH'S " Die Nacht des Westens." Barmen, 1847, p. 22. METHODISTIC MEANS OF EDIFICATION. 241 vicled for if they have a good number of texts at command. Many have been previously mechanics, and as they happened to show some fluency of speech, were first, after a short training, made "exhorters," and then appointed to be preachers. After this, frequent class and prayer meetings leave them no time for Bible studies. The end they aim at is not the tranquil instruction and harmonious education of men to a Christian life violent excitement and agitation are the means best suited to attain the purpose which the sect seeks for and is desirous to attain. 1 In their divine services, the Methodists, as their preacher Rauschenbusch reports, 2 frequently make so much noise, partly during the sermon, but still more during the prayers, since they not unfrequently all pray aloud together, one outscreaming the other, that it is not possible to hear the sermon or prayer uttered from the pulpit. The constant changes of the preachers the travelling preachers the hymns sung to the wildest popular tunes the mutual communication of "heart experiences," so de- structive to humility and truthfulness the alternation of religious emotions, dependent on purely physical states and corporeal affections the artificial groaning produced by a half-sensuous, half-moral epidemic this entire apparatus of means invented by the Methodists, and copied by other sects, even by Germans, is supposed to produce in a few hours results for which a year's sedulous religious exercises and self-instruction would otherwise be required. All this evokes a sort of intoxication of mind, that for the moment appears to satisfy it, but afterwards leaves it so much the more void and famished; and so all such violent excite- ment and enthusiasm is not unfrequently followed by the dreariest indifference. Many of those t( converted " fall off 1 Christian knowledge is to the Methodists mostly a very subordinate matter superfluous, if not dangerous. The religious instruction of the young is regulated and, indeed, why should it not be so, since it is what takes place on "the bench of sorrow" that the salvation of the soul depends ? A vague, confused emotion is the pledge of election ! HENGSTEXBERG, " Kirch.-Zeitung," 1847, p. 328. 2 " Die Nacht des Westens," p. 43. E 242 THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH. again very soon, and avoid a religion which has occasioned them such bitter, delusions. A false confidence in this method, nevertheless, goes so far, that among Methodists the whole religious education of children is often neglected, in o - ' the expectation that a " Revival," a " Camp-meeting," and a few hours probation on the stool of repentance, will, all at once, make amends for the neglect of years. 1 The theology of America is expressed by the form and character of the churches, the number of which has been increased enormously by the growth of the population and the rivalship of the various sects. The European standard must not be applied to these buildings. The feeling of religious veneration for a consecrated spot does not seem to exist ; and many of the churches bear a much stronger resemblance to a theatre than to a Gothic Cathedral. As a matter of course, they have no altars, for an altar would be an abomination in the eyes of a Protestant American; he likes a building in which a pompous theatrical rostrum for the spiritual "orator" occupies the place of the altar, and in which every possible provision is made for the comfort of the audience. Many of the city churches look like elegant reception-rooms of fashionable ladies. 2 The Episcopal Church is here, as well as in England, the Church of " good society," and is perhaps so much the more agreeable to its highly respectable members, that they have the church all to themselves, and need not fear the intrusion of the poor and lowly. Even the educated German, if he cares about a Church at all, usually keeps to this, 3 and does not trouble himself about either the Lutheran or the Calvinist sects; whilst, on the contrary, the English immigrants, though they have been at home members of the State Church, generally in America join one of the Puritan or Methodist sects. 4 The American Episcopal Church, departing from the practice of the Mother Establishment, has introduced a Lay Repre- 1 SCHAFF, "America," p. 129. * See the description in " Mercersburg Review," iv. 214. 3 HKXGSTENBEKG, " Kirch. -Zeitung," 1847, p. 340. 4 CASWALL, " The Western World Revisited." Oxford, 1854, p. 296. GERMAN LUTHERANS. 243 eentation. But the deep chasm between the Evangelicals and the Arminian High Church people, which here as well as in the mother country divides the Bishops into two parties with very dissimilar views, renders every vigorous co-opera- tion in this Church impossible. In any other denomination such a contrast would have led to open separation and the formation of a new community ; and whenever either the one or the other comes to be in earnest in its views it must end in a like result. In England many people look with longing and envy towards the daughter of the Anglican State Church, whose O O ' lot it is to be free from the oppressive yoke of Government supremacy ; and Bishop Wilberforce wrote its history in this sense a few years since : " the mother was to rejoice in the consciousness of having brought forth a daughter happier than herself." One of the American bishops, however, remarks that " the laity have, in all church affairs (according to the laws there), an overpowering influence, which is still further increased by the dependence of the clergy on the voluntary contributions of the laity." 1 And this lay yoke, as he says, " fell the more severely on the Church, as the laymen are altogether irresponsible in the exercise of their ecclesiastical functions, and can be judged by no tribunal, even on account of heresy and schism." By the side of, and after the Anglo-Saxon race, the Ger- mans form the most important nationality in North America, and the numerous Protestants of this nation have managed their church affairs quite according to their own pleasure. Before all others, the German Lutherans in America have, for a long time, awakened great attention and sympathy. There namely, where Lutheranism, completely free from political tutorship and dominion, has been fully able to develop itself it was hoped its church-constructive power 1 SILLIMANIVES, "The Trials of a Mind ;" London, 1854, p. 143. The author has become a Catholic. PUSEY also says, in u The Councils of the Church" (London, 1858, p. 24), " The introduction of lay representa- tives into the American Church was an unfortunate example, set in bad times. R2 244 GERMAN REFORMED COMMUNITY. would have shown itself in the production of a united Free German Church. 13ut this hope has proved to be utterly vain. The great majority of the Lutherans have renounced both the language and the Lutheran doctrine, and become partly Zwinglian, partly Methodistic, and have thrown aside the old confession of faith. American Lutheranism is, in fact, in one word, autochthonic, and a plant very different from the German religious form of that name. Even the preachers and congregations that have desired to retain the Lutheranism they brought from Germany have not been able to effect any union. It is precisely among these that the clergy are exposed to the most painfully vigilant watching on the part of the members of the congregation who desire to govern them. They are tutored, worried, hemmed in, and oppressed by all parties, and at the same time miserably paid. 1 No Church authority has ever been organized, and the congre- gations are almost all independent. " Every Church," says our German informant, " is cleft by hostile divisions ; none are in a healthy state none stable, candid, faithful, and impartial, in their tendency. The individual has to seek his path painfully through a thorny field there is no one to show him the way." How every town where German Pro- testants amount but to a few hundreds is immediately possessed by the demon of Church discord, and cannot in any wise attain to the formation of a united congregation, has been strikingly described by the Preacher 13iittner. 2 Many of these German congregations are only " disorderly rationalist communities," who engage a preacher as they would a servant, and exclude him from the council of the Church." 3 The German Reformed community is regarded by the true American Calvinist as an heretical sect ; " it is almost Arminian," they say; " and, since Nevin and his companions have arisen within its bosom, also Romanizing." 4 * O 1 HENGSTENBERG'S " Kirch.-Ztg.," 1847, p. 300. See also REUTER'S tl Repertoire," vol. Ixxiv. p. 93. * " Die Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika ;" Hamburg, 1844, and " Briefe aus und iiber Jsordamerika." Dresden, 1845. 1 SCHAFF, p. 99. 4 Thus the Presbyterian BLAKEY, in his " Philosophy of Sectarianism ;" DEPENDENT CONDITION OF THE CLERGY. 245 Through, the whole extent of German Protestantism the slavish dependence of the preachers on the congregations is felt as one of the worst results of the prevailing Church system. The feeling of this dependence has been, indeed, from the beginning, stronger in the mind of the preachers than in that of his auditory. The consciousness weighs upon him that he has no high mission, no office sustained and guaranteed by an ancient and sublime institution. He is but a delegate, who only dares to proclaim to his hearers that which they had previously determined should be preached. Schaff, in his report to the Berlin Alliance Assembly, in whicli the most rose-coloured representation possible of the state of circumstances in America was expected, animadverted on the fact of the unbecoming dependence of the clergy upon their congregations. " The Americans," he says, 1 " expect a clergyman to do his duty, and, without fear of man, or anxiety to please, lay before them the whole counsel of godli- ness, and point as sharply and specially to human depravity, and to the consolatory promises that have been made to it " that is to say, that, in America, as elsewhere, wherever the doctrines of the Reformation are still in authority, the con- gregation like their preachers to relieve them of moral responsibility, by preaching the three connected doctrines of absolute Divine Election, of total depravity and complete moral impotency, and of Free Grace by mere Imputation. To do this, there is not the slightest occasion for the minister to be fearless ; on the contrary, he would show much more freedom from the fear of man if he preached the opposite old Church doctrine. The fact, to which every stranger bears witness, that there are in no civilized country so few people having opinions of their own, and the courage to express those opinions, as in America, must be extremely unfavourable to the mental London, 1854, p. 55. The book is instructive, for the knowledge of American Sectarianism it displays ; but still more attractive, from the light that the author lets fall on his own community, the Presbyterian Church, than from what he says as regards others. 1 " Amerika." Berlin, 1854, p. 63. 246 PREACHER VISITATION SOCIETY. freedom of their preachers. A well-informed and sharp- sighted observer has remarked, lately, li that, in everything not political, a tyrannically-ruling majority works upon all minds, and levels and crushes down all varieties, till they all resemble one another, as do the rounded pebbles in a brook." 1 It is known how this tyranny of public opinion has operated in the question of race ; the whole Protestant clergy have yielded to the prevalent aversion of every com- munity of whites to the coloured population ; and in New Orleans, for example, the Catholic Churches arc the only places in which white and coloured people pray by the side of one another. 2 All Protestant theologians, whose writings I have seen, complain of the want of independence in the preachers, of their general deficiency in moral courage, and the oppressive yoke that the congregations have fastened upon them. Channing, Colton, Mines, often recur to the subject. 3 They describe the preachers as the victims of a tyranny exercised frequently by the low and ignorant, and that to an extent such as has never hitherto been known. As a rule, the con- fidence and presumption with which the representatives of the congregation bear themselves towards their preachers, stand in an inverse ratio to their amount of mental culture. 4 Every idea that passes beyond their narrow sphere of theological vision renders the orthodoxy of their preacher doubtful to them. They are liberal with their exhortations and remon- strances, which they bestow upon him ex officio. A few years ago there was, in New England, a regular Preacher Visitation Society, of self-appointed laymen, who travelled from place to place, made inquiries concerning clergymen, and bestowed counsel, censure, or warning as they thought fit. It is quite consistent with this state of things that the congregations often only engage their preachers for a time, > "Skizzen aus Nordamerika." " Allg.-Ztg.," June, 1861, p. 2646. * " Christian Remembrancer," 1860, il 79. 3 For example, CHANNING'S " Works," v. 317 ; COLTON, 138 ; MIXES, 291. 4 See the vivid description in HEXGSTKNBERG'S u Kirch.-Ztg.," xx. 132. PltOTESTANT AXTI-CATHOLIC TACTICS. 247 and with the reserve of a certain notice in case of dismissal. 1 It is not surprising, therefore, that clergymen are met with every day, who have renounced voluntarily, or on compulsion, the office of preacher, and now carry on some secular occu- pation. The orthodox Churches, says the reformed preacher, Biittner (lie includes all Calvinist, Lutheran, and German Reformed Denominations under this head), however hostile they may be to one another, as soon as ever the word " Roman Catholic " is pronounced, forget their mutual differ- ences and hostilities, and stand against the Roman Catholics like a wall. Should a religious war ever break out in the United States, which is not improbable, for there is combus- tible material enough in readiness, the question will not be asked, " Are you a Presbyterian, or a Methodist, or a Baptist a Lutheran, a Calvinist, or a Congregationalist but, simply, Are you a Protestant or a Catholic ?" 2 Sehaffhas described how the polemical contest is carried on, by the whole Protestant press of America, 3 against the Catholic Church: it is, he says, by fabricated lies, by gross calumnies, by the ignoring or falsification of history. This cannot excite surprise, if we consider the breadth and depth of the chasm that divides all these sects, but especially the puritanical, from the Church, and if we are able to realise the contrast of their position. " Whilst," writes a German Protestant, from America, "all the Protestant denomina- tions are weakened by perpetual new divisions, and mostly at bitter enmity with one another, the Catholic Church, as one man one organism, animated by one soul, pursuing, with firm, clear consciousness, one object advances without noise, without even, until lately, uttering one word of defence against accusations and hostile attacks, but persevering with iron consistency, and from year to year gaining new ground." 4 1 " Atlantische Studien," ii. 130. * " Kirchliche Viertel-Jahresschrift." Berlin, 1845, i. 130. * " Kirchenfreund," Sept. 1852. 4 HENGSTENBERG'S " Kirch.-Zeitung," 1847, 341. 248 RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF NORTH AMERICA. The whole existing condition of North America, in a religious point of vrew, is calculated to awaken great anxiety among all thinking men in the country. " The great majority of the rising generation is without any positive religion," said the before-mentioned preacher, Edson ; " all the instruction they receive consists in, perhaps, some lessons of natural religion ; and I greatly fear that we are advancing by certain, and by no means slow steps, in the direction of complete absence of religion and moral ruin." 1 In the whole daily press there prevails worthless radicalism, and, for some time past, unveiled irreligion. 2 The total want of a sentiment of veneration, is, as the American theologians mournfully confess, a predominant feature of the national character. 3 The entire spirit in which the religious press is carried on is a disgrace to the cause of Christianity. 4 " The number of professing Christians," says a Baptist preacher, " is diminish- ing in all our sects." The Churches are stationary from want of preachers, and the conduct of professing Christians is generally such that it would be almost an affront to a man of honour to suppose him willing to be converted, and to become as " one of them. 1 ' If the present decline continues, in the course of twenty or thirty years "the candlestick" will be removed from its place. The Church makes no proselytes, and has no influence upon the masses. 5 In an American periodical, " The Evangelist," it was lately maintained that, even in the Free States of the Union, the present time was more favourable to Catholicity than had been any period for centuries past ; but this certainly must not be understood with respect to the prevailing state 1 TREMENHEERE, p. 53. 2 See the article, " Signs of the Times," in the " Mercersburg Review," vii. 290. * COLTON, " Genius and Mission of the Protestant Episcopal Church." London, 1853, p. 260. 4 lt Mercersburg Review," vii. 293. It is scarcely possible to say any- thing worse of the character of the religious press of America than what we find in this periodical. s See the work of the American HECKER, " Aspirations of Nature." New York, 1857. RELIGIOUS ASPIRATIONS. 249 of mind in North America, which is decidedly hostile to the Catholic religion. 1 It is natural, however, that many persons should feel oppressed and imprisoned within the narrow boundaries of sectarianism ; that they should be dissatisfied with the poor and meagre remnants of Christian faith there offered to them, and sigh for a harmonious and inwardly connected system of Christian faith and life; that, before all things, they should desire to be relieved from the torment of a dreary subjectivity, and an unauthorised conventional interpretation of the Bible. To what results this tendency will lead in the future, time must determine. KRAUSE'S " Kirch. -Zeitung," 1858, p. 551. 250 THE LUTHERAN CHURCH IN SCANDINAVIAN COUNTRIES. THE Wittenberg doctrine was, on the whole, introduced into the North by violence ; by the will of monarchs, with the assistance of nobles, longing to gain possession of Church property; and against the wishes of the people. The people were, in fact, systematically cheated out of their religion, as in Sweden ; and partly they were kept in profound ignorance so much so that in Denmark, at the end of the sixteenth century, not one in twenty knew how to read. In Norway, Christian III. had degraded the people beneath a twofold yoke that of the Danish nobles, and of the new Danish religion ; whilst, for the real religious culture of the people, nothing whatever was effected. This state of things lasted till the eighteenth century. Catechetical instruction was not given ; the sermons were unintelligible to the multitude, who were unprepared for them ; " and there reigned in the land an almost heathen blindness." 1 In a petition pre- sented by the Norwegian bishops, in the year 1714, to King Frederick IV., they felt compelled to make the avowal : " If some few children of God are excepted, there 1 Thus Bishop PONTOPPIDAX describes the total neglect and increas- ing barbarism of the people down to the year 1714, in his " Pastoral Letter." translated into German by Schonfeldt. Rostock, 1756, pp. 129-30. THE CHURCH IN DENMARK. 251 is no other difference between us and our heathen ancestors than that we bear the name of Christians." 1 In Denmark, by means of the Reformation, the king had become, as chief bishop, the complete master of the Church. In the royal law of 1665, it is declared boldly, without the least circumvention, or mitigation of the fact, "that the king, as supreme judge and ruler upon earth, possesses unlimited power over the Church and religion, as well as over the State." 2 One only condition was made with him by the patent of 1648 he was not to tolerate the exercise of any other religion than the Lutheran. The kings governed the Church through their chancellors, and subsequently by the College of Chancery, which, with its judicial business, the care of the poor, and other functions, had also to administer the affairs of the Church. As to the nine or ten bishops of the country who had nothing but the same name in common with bishops of the Catholic Church they, with the Lutherans, of course, must abandon every idea of episcopal succession and transmitted authority, and were nothing more than government .officers of the royal chief bishop. The Danish history, since the Reformation, contains no mention of any attempt or effort at ecclesiastical independence, or of any movement indicating life in the Church. All remained dumb and subservient, and the rulers, in thankful acknow- ledgment of that pliant subjection which they owed to the Lutheran spirit, carefully suppressed the slightest departure from the Lutheran dogma, and the doctrinal type of the theological faculty of Wittenberg. In the only university of the country, that of Copenhagen, there was "scarcely more than a scanty training establishment for the Church service," 3 and it took care to provide a theology acceptable to the Court ; whilst the disputes and divisions occasioned by Pietism were decided and put down by Royal Rescripts and Cabinet commands. 4 1 HENGSTENBERG'S " Kirchen-Zeitung," 1843, p. 536. 2 ENGELSTOFT, in "Herzog's Encyclopedia," iii. 610. * See a detailed description in BRUX'S and HOFFXER'S " Neues Reper- torium," v. 101. * The measureless ignorance of the theologians educated at Copenhagen, 252 ITS UNSETTLED STATE. By the new Fundamental Law of 1849, which has given an overwhelming democratic character to the Danish Govern- ment, the Lutheran Church is called " the Danish National Church," and the religious character of the Government is renounced, since full freedom of doctrine and worship is granted ; and indeed liberty had been carried to such an extent lately as to do away with the obligation to baptism. The old dependence of the Church on the State has, however, remained. The King, the only man in all Denmark who is obliged to be a Lutheran, is still Supreme Bishop ; it is not, however, the King personally, but the constitutional Minister of Divine Worship who rules the Church ; and how much stability is afforded by this mode of government may be known from the fact that Denmark has had since 1848 five and forty such ministers ! Of a regulated constitution of the Danish Church there can be no question ; at times it finds itself, as Bishop Martensen observes, " in a floating medium state that can scarcely be called any form or order at all." 1 Its constitution is for the present only a " subject of consideration." Three different views are at present put forward. Some wish for an ecclesiastico-political position for the bishops, after the fashion of the English Church. The supremacy of the Ministers and of the Diet over spiritual affairs would then remain. Others wish for a Church repre- sentation by clergy and laity in synods, on the basis of uni- versal suffrage. All thoughtful persons, however, are alarmed at the idea of universal suffrage in church affairs. The ma- jority are of opinion that the Church should get on as well as it can for the present in its provisional state, without a constitution, since affairs are at " the moment too unsettled, and people's views not sufficiently clear." 2 It must be a bad case if the existing state is preferred to any attempt to form to which must be added their moral stagnation, corresponded but too well with the dreadfully slavish condition of the rural population, and the petty pedantry and stupidity of the cities." Thus speaks the Danish reporter. u Repert.," p. 103. 1 The " Yerfassungsfrage der Danischen Volkskirche." Kiel, 1852, p. 7. 1 " Deutsche Zeitschrift fur Christl. Wiss.," 1859, p. 88. DIVISION OF THE DANISH CLERGY. 253 a constitution a state in which the Church is dependent on a Diet, whose members not only do not belong to the Lu- theran community, but in general are not even professed Christians. That a change in the position of the Church is felt more and more as a necessity, has been maintained by the preacher Kalkar von Gladsaxe, of Copenhagen, in the Berlin Alliance Assembly. 1 " Christ," he adds, in an apolo- getic tone, " is not so openly rejected as in other places, but there is very little spiritual life in Denmark." Under the influence of Rationalism, which made its way hither from Germany since the end of the last century, not only the people of the higher and middle classes but even the clergy in masses, became unbelievers. The candidates for the pastoral office made some hypocritical pretences to orthodoxy, but in the sermon preached immedi- ately on ordination, and under the eyes of their bishops, they showed themselves decided Naturalists. 2 According to Danish accounts, the great majority of the clergy have fallen as completely into the infidel new theological views as their Lutheran brethren, the clergy of Germany ; they have only hovered between mere frivolous unbelief, and Rationalism that assumes somewhat more of a scientific character. At present, and for a considerable time past, the Danish clergy have been divided into two great parties the Ra- tionalist unbelieving, whose teacher and leader was Professor Clausen, and the followers of Grundtvig. The persevering struggle of this man (Grundtvig) against Rationalism, has led him to a theory, that the German Lutherans, on their side, designate as "in its inmost core anti-reforming and anti-Lutheran ! " 3 Whilst Protestantism in America wholly rejects the Apostles' Creed, or casts it aside as valueless, Grundtvig regarding it as a clear and firm confession of o/ o o faith, and a manifest witness of the faith of the primitive Church, desires, in the same way as Lessing and Delbriick, to place it above the Bible, disfigured as that is by the caprice of private subjective interpretation. He 1 " Verhandlungen," &c., p. 534. 2 BRUN'S " Repert.," v. 105. * RUDELBACH, in " Die Zeitschrift fur Luth. Theol.," 1857, p. 7. 254 ECCLESIASTICAL STATE OF THE COUNTRY. and his party have, however, become more and more estranged from Lutheranism, and urge the complete abolition of State Supremacy and parochial connexion, and desire that every one should be at liberty to join whatever preacher, this or that, no matter which, but the one that he finds best suits him. The main point is, however, that the whole Grundtvig school is inclined to break with German Protestantism, or in some measure has already broken away from it. They will have nothing to do with German Protestant theology, nor with German confessions of faith. Rudelbach has ascribed this tendency to a fanatical hatred against everything Ger- man; but Grundtvig's whole course of thought for many years proves that the real cause lies much deeper, and that it springs from a mode of thought nearly akin to that of the English Tractarians. For three hundred years was Denmark in its spiritual and religious affairs entirely dependent on the German theology and literature, and every movement made in it was but a feeble echo of German movements and German productions. But orthodox Protestantism, as it exists at present in Ger- many, has no existence in Denmark any longer. " Orthodox preaching," says Petersen, " occurs in Denmark only spo- radically." l A Danish clergyman who in the Darmstadt Allgemeine Kirchenzeitung has written a description of the ecclesiastical condition of his country gives, indeed, a very bad account of it; but then he explains and adds his opinion, that "the Lord has not altogether forsaken the Church of Denmark." " Many laymen," he says, " have been awakened," and, in confirmation of his statement, mentions that "a smith has been converted from the evil of his ways, and is now travel- ling about the country " that " a farmer has established a home mission society" and that "a baker is labouring for the freedom of the Church, and a more active spiritual life." 2 Of what the clergy are doing he says nothing. It would be difficult, in fact, to paint a more deplorable picture of the state of any religious system. The people in 1 RUDELBACH, p. 106. 2 " Jahrgang," 1855, p. 1473, et seq. THE CHURCH IN SCIILESWIG. 255^ the cities withdraw so commonly from Divine service, that in Copenhagen, out of 150,000 inhabitants, there are only 6,000 regular churchgoers. 1 In other cities the case seems still worse than in Copenhagen. 2 In Altona one single church is found sufficient for 45,000 inhabitants. The Church, chained to a Government now in the hands of a thorough democratically-constituted assembly, is in any im- portant question altogether helpless. The Church itself is split into parties, and has no spiritual or moral authority upon which to lean ; and the people, without guide or shep- herd, have to seek for religious aliment among Baptists and Methodists, or to fall in the wilderness of barbarism. In Schleswig, also, the churches stand empty, both in the parts of the country where German is spoken and where Danish is the prevailing language. One chief cause of this is said to be the character of the Danish clergy. "The Danish clergy," says the Schleswig preacher, Petersen, " ino- culate the country with Danish levelling doctrines, Danish infidelity, and Danish immorality. The chief evil is not the oppressive enactments concerning the German language, but the irreligion that has been transplanted from Denmark to Schleswig, and the demoralisation that has accompanied it. Among the Danish clergy religious and moral conduct is the exception, not the rule." 3 The Danish ill-treatment of the Church in Schleswig is, as it is now acknowledged, and bitterly complained of, a con- sequence of the Episcopal power having been placed by the Reformation in the hands of the sovereign. All Church ar- rangements even those which concern its most inward life have long been made on the sole authority of the Govern- ment. In the year 1834, even the administration of the Church affairs was taken from the Upper Consistory, and transferred to the Schlesvvig-Holstein Government. 4 1 KRAUSE'S " Kirch.-Ztg.," 1859, p. 968. s " Allg. Lit.-Ztg.," 1841, ii. 491. " Erlebnisse eines Schleswig'schen Predigers." Frankfort, 1856, p. 337. 4 SCHRADER, " Die Kirchenverfassungsfrage." Altona, 1849, p. 174. 256 THE STATE CHURCH IN SWEDEN. The Lutheran State Church of Sweden has been, from the beginning, even more than that of Denmark, entirely dependent in its theological relations upon Germany. The small number of theological writings that Sweden possesses are nearly all nothing more than translations from the German. The theological Rationalism of Germany has indeed seldom found entrance into Sweden; the clergy had, at the end of the last and the beginning of the present cen- tury, almost ceased to occupy themselves with theology ; and when a celebrated Swedish theologian of the present time, Wieselgren, remarked, " our Church constitution and legislation only hold together on paper, for all has been detached and loosened by Rationalism," he must have used the word " Rationalism" only in the sense of " practical indiffer- entism." In England, a short time since, a glance was cast at the Swedish Church, in the hope of finding a certain kindred feeling and ecclesiastical sympathy with the state of the English Church and the efforts of Anglo-Catholics. But this hope has, upon closer inquiry, proved to be illusory. It was discovered that the Swedish Episcopacy had, precisely as little as the Danish, a claim to Apostolic Succession ; that the Swedish Bishops were very far from regarding and estimating their office in the sense of the old Church that they were, in fact, Lutheran superintendents, and nothing more ! The Swedish Church is simply a Lutheran one, a community from which every Catholic idea has been cleansed out ; completely devoid of what an Anglican would regard as a " Church spirit." l At the same time, however, the Swedish cannot be refused the testimony of being " the most perfectly organised Pro- testant community in Europe," 2 and in its love for Luther it perhaps exceeds even the old Lutherans of Germany itself. 3 On the other hand, the preacher Trottet maintains that the country of Gustavus Adolphus is the least Protestant of all countries into which the Reformation has found admittance. 1 " Christian Remembrancer," xiii. 425. * u Chr. Rem.," xiii. 435. * " Hubers Janus." Berlin, 1845, i. 232. STATE CONTROL OVER THE CHURCH. 257 As a follower of Vinet, he turns away from the history of the Reformation, and all the new ecclesiastical conditions founded on it, and places the essence of Protestantism in "the freedom of religious life and the unshackled movements of the Church." The Swedish Church, therefore, in which religion and politics are so closely interwoven, could not but appear to him ex- ceedingly unprotestant. The king is in Sweden the ft chief superintendent and earthly lord of the Church ;" he unites in himself the highest spiritual and temporal power of the kingdom, and exercises his authority over the Church through the Royal Chancery, whose superior officer is the Minister for Foreign Affairs. 1 The Diet also shares with the king the control of the Church ; and ecclesiastical affairs are discussed by its members. Thus this singular state of things has followed, that while the clergy possess completely the position of a privileged class, and through their representation in the Diet exercise great political influence, the Church itself remains in slavish de- pendence upon the State. 2 The king has even the power to demand from the Consistory letters of divorce for married couples who may desire to separate, and that for other causes than a violation of the marriage vow. 3 The occupations of the clergy are mostly of a secular character they are the best financiers and men of business in Sweden, and " capable of everything except their spiritual duties." 4 The Church affairs are generally left to the curates. The sermons are read, as, it is said, the people themselves do not desire extempore preaching; and after the sermon the clergyman has often to act as beadle or crier, and make from his pulpit the most trivial announcements for half an hour together. When in an assembly of Bishops the abolition of this repul- sive and troublesome custom was recently proposed, they almost all declared themselves to its retention, for the reason 1 KLIPPEL, in u Herzog's Encyclopadie," vol. xiv. p. 83. 1 TROTTET, "Prediger in Stockholm," in GELZER'S " Monatsblattern," xi. 140. 3 " Kirchliche Vierteljahrsschrift." Berlin, 1845, iv. 149. 4 LIEBETRUT, HEXGSTENBERG'S "K.-Ztg.," vol. xxxiv., p. 119. 8 258 CONDITION OF THE SWEDISH CLERGY. that if it were not for these announcements, they would often have only old women and children as their auditors. 1 The examinations carried on by preachers from house to house, which formerly enabled a clergyman to judge individually of the religious knowledge of his congregation, have declined in most districts into a mere mode of filling up tax-lists and making a census of the population. 2 German observers report an almost incredible ignorance 6f the clergy, even up to the highest; and it is a thing unheard of that any one appointed by a patron to a cure should be rejected, let him be ever so rude and uneducated. 3 His ignorance causes him no difficulty or embarrassment in his office ; for if he can but merely read and write, he satisfies all demands that can be made upon him. He has fulfilled his duties if, besides the performance of the Church formalities and ceremonies, of which more have been retained in Sweden than elsewhere, he can on Sundays read out a written sermon. If to this we add that the vice of brandy drinking, 4 constantly on the increase in Sweden, has reached even the clergy, the state of things there will be tolerably intelligible. On the whole, it may nevertheless be said that the clerical body enjoys in no other Protestant country at the present day such important privileges, such great and manifold influence, as it does in Sweden. To this influence is to be ascribed the severity of the proceedings there against the "awakened"' and the "readers," as well as obstinate resistance to all reforms. Accord- ing to Liebetrut's remark, a Swede who should touch on the existing abuses would be scouted on all sides as a Sama- ritan, who cared more for "life" than for "doctrine" a blind zealot concerning things for which there was no help. 5 Liebetrut and other writers are accustomed to give the Swedish Church and clergy the credit of orthodox Luther- anism, but they say there reigns a dead orthodoxy. " The 1 LIEBETRUT, xxxiv. 172. "Kirchl. Vierteljahrsschrift," 1845, iv. 149. LIEBETRUT, 163. 4 See hereupon " Allg.-Ztg.," 1847, p. 5475. HENGSTENBERG'S " Kirch. -Ztg.," vol. xxxviii., p. 148. "DEFUNCT ORTHODOXY." 259 Swedish Church," says Liebetrut, "is a Church desolate! dead! lying under the anathema of God. The Church unity is the unity and peace of the churchyard." l And in the same tone the Swedish preacher, Cervin Steenhoff, says, "It is now the time of the humiliation of the Church! she is dead! all has become contentious, desolate, and void!" 2 Sweden is now (besides Norway) the only country in Europe where tire genuine Lutheran doctrine reigns in the pulpit. To this the profound ignorance of the majority of the clergy found no obstacle; for the customary forms and catchwords of the system can be taken up and used by any one readily enough. " Nothing is easier here," says Trottet, "than to become suspected of heresy;" and, ac- cording to him, this state of the Church in Sweden is one of the chief causes of the moral corruption that prevails in that country. A destructive formalism has gained the upper hand; religious indifference has, by degrees, under- mined the strictness of manners formerly existing, and public opinion authorizes and protects, in many cases, the most revolting immoralities. 3 "Defunct orthodoxy" is just now one of the favourite phrases in Sweden, and in Germany also ; for the bad reli- gious condition of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is often laid to its charge. But there is a great mistake in saying this. The Lutheran orthodoxy was not dead in Germany on the contrary, as long as it existed it was extremely lively, and for two centuries (1550-1750) it maintained a struggle against Calvinism; then against Arndt and his followers ; then against Calixtus and the Helmstadt ' O school ; then against Spener, Pietism and the Halle school ; and most vigorously and successfully did it defend itself against all attempts to enfeeble it, until at length Rationalism became master both of it and orthodoxy, its rivals and built its hut upon their ruins. What is in Germany consi- dered the effect of " defunct orthodoxy," was much more the 1 HENGSTENBERG'S " Kirch.-Ztg.," vol. xxxiv., 172-151. 2 KLIEFOTH'S " Kirch. -Zeitschrift," 1856, p. 713, &c. 8 GELZER'S " Mon. -Blatter," xi. 143. 82 260 MAINTENANCE OF ORTHODOXY. natural and inevitable psychological and ecclesiological con- sequence of the Lutheran system itself; and of which the historical proof may easily be given. If mention is made of this "defunct orthodoxy" in Sweden, it should be remembered that it is nothing new in that country, but has been its normal state since the Reformation. The Swedish State Church has remained, down to the pre- sent time, in sole undisturbed possession, and has not tolerated the smallest deviation from the strictest Luther- anism. Serious theological controversies do not occur in Swedish history, with the exception of the liturgical dispute occasioned by the efforts of King John to return towards Catholicity; and the Swedish clergy have had no need of theological knowledge to defend themselves against strange doctrines. When Gustavus Vasa desired to convert the inhabitants of Helsingland to Lutheranism, he did not send to them distributors of Swedish Bibles, or preachers of the new doctrine, but he wrote to them, " that if they did not forthwith become Lutherans, he would have a hole made in the ice on the Deele Lake, and they should all be drowned." 1 Thus it has been ever. The sword, the dungeon, exile, or in modern times pecuniary fines, have been the approved methods of preventing religious disputes, or of settling them if they had already broken out. And this appeared so much the more necessary, since, as the celebrated Atterbom re- marks, " the state of public instruction, and the education of the clergy, were far below what they had been in the imme- diately preceding papal epoch." 2 Charles IX. and Gustavus Adolphus adopted, with obstinate Catholics, the simple method of cutting their heads off; and when, at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the following century, several Swedes Ulstadius, Peter Schafer, Ulhagius, and Erik Molin, became perplexed with the Lutheran main doc- 1 This fact is mentioned in the periodical called the " Frey," issued by the Professor of Upsala. It occurs in an article on Wieselgren's work concerning Gustavus Vasa. The article has been translated in the "Annales dela Philosophie Chret.," published by Bonnetty. Paris, 1848, vol. xvii. p. 282. * The same, p, 291. ABSENCE OF RELIGIOUS LIFE. 261 trine of " Imputation," and spoke of the necessity of " good works," Moliu was banished Ulstadius condemned to the house of correction for his life (and remained there for thirty years) and Schafer and Ulhagius were condemned to death ! ' And in accordance with the same principle were the "Awakened," or " Readers," treated thirty years ago. It seems to be difficult to assign the precise cause why, for a long time past, religious life has so much departed from Sweden, and all spiritual action has become so mechanical. Foreign German influence is not the cause ; but the observer cannot fail to be immediately struck with the effects produced by the great secularizing of the clerical orders, as well as by their want of due culture and prepara- tion. A brief training for a few months is deemed sufficient to qualify a man to assume the pastoral office, and any one may pass with the greatest ease from any employment or trade at once into the ranks of the clergy a position rendered attractive by social distinctions and good emoluments ; nay, he may even become a bishop, without possessing so much as a smattering of theological culture. 2 This was done by the poet Tegner, and also by a Professor of Botany. The care of providing for wives and children, and the quantity of civil business devolving upon the clergy, does the rest. It appears almost enigmatical that a people that has produced a Linnseus, Berzelius, Geijer, and Atterbom that has a richly-endowed Church and two universities a Church, too, which, like other Protestant Churches, has raised the postu- late of general Bible investigation into a religious principle it is truly enigmatical that such a people should have done nothing at all in theology. The former Professor of Theology, afterwards Bishop Reuterdahl says : " Theolo- gical instruction could hardly be less organized than it is in 1 "Nordische Sammlungen," 1755, vol. i., pp. 44-51. See also the Berlin " Allg. Kirchen-Ztg." 1849, p. 752. The sentence of death, pro- nounced by the Spiritual Court at Abo, was commuted by the secular authorities into imprisonment. 2 See the examples adduced by Liebetrut in HENGSTENBERG, vol. xxxiv. p. 163. 262 SECESSION OF THE " READERS." Sweden. Ignorance, the love of gain and want of under- standing in the clergy, are the causes why so many people in every parish think they can do without the Church." 1 The Swedes need only look over to Denmark, and its now wholly Rationalistic clergy, to see the consequences of the neglect of theological studies. They have only the choice of retaining their Lutheran orthodoxy and renouncing theology or of admitting theology at the cost of the former. It was natural that, in a country where the power of the State had maintained with such severity the old penal laws concerning religion ; where the clergy are so enslaved that the secular authorities dictate Church penances, and when these have been performed the pastor must at once absolve every offender it was natural that under these circumstances they should renounce theology, and prefer remaining good Lutherans. Symbolic orthodoxy and scien- tific theology can no more subsist peacefully together in Sweden than in other Protestant countries. Since their great quarrel in a preceding century, no attempt at recon- ciliation has ever succeeded, and each party of the married pair has sued for, obtained, 'and is prepared to present to its ci-devant partner a deed of separation ! The only movement that for many years has taken place in the stagnant waters of the Swedish Church, has been that made by the " Readers," who were in fact, at first, nothing more than zealous Lutherans. Their motto was, "Justi- fication by Faith alone," and the non-freedom of man's will ; and they separated themselves from the Church because the clergy did not preach to them this favourite doctrine either with sufficient distinctness or often enough. 2 When the Lutheran State Church attempted to cru^h these poor people under the whole weight of a brutal police- despotism, hundreds allowed themselves to be brought to ruin rather than submit, or they emigrated, and fled into the deserts of Lapland. When the " Readers" had already 1 See the extracts from his writings in HENGSTENBERG'S " K.-Ztg.," vol xxxviii., p. 151. 3 ' Neue Preuss.-Zeitung," 18th Decemb., 1856. THE CHURCH IN NORWAY. 263 begun to administer baptism and the communion by one of their own number, they betook themselves to the English and American Baptist Missionaries, and got themselves bap- tized anew. In the year 1853, the utter inefficiency of dealing with sectarians by the infliction of punishments was acknowledged. In despite of all such penal measures, the sects of Baptists had been continually increasing in the once purely Lutheran Sweden ; and the " awakening" of which we hear so much in the reports from Sweden, consists chiefly in the progress made over the whole country by the Anglo- American sects the irreconcileable enemies of Lutheranisin and the preachers sent out by the Independents, Baptists, and Methodists. The condition of the Swedish Church, in its relation to the State, is to be again met with in Norway with this difference only, that, inconsequence of the former connection with Denmark, the dependence of the clergy is still greater than in Sweden. Here, also, the power over the Church is in the hands of the civil authorities. The sovereign rules the Church through the Minister of Public Worship, and the clergy are not represented at the Storthing; for which reason it was found possible in the year 1844 to introduce religious freedom into Norway, which it was not in Sweden. The desire for a more independent position of the Church is frequently expressed here, especially among the clergy. Norway had, formerly, through the connection with Den- mark (which was broken in 1813), been inoculated with Bationalism. It made rapid progress, and most of the pulpits were soon in possession of unspiritual Rationalists, who preached dry moral lectures, or treatises on political economy. 1 When the rustic, Nielsen Hauge, by his sermons and writings, succeeded in awakening a great number of people of the lower class to a feeling opposed to the infidelity of the preachers, he had to atone for it by an enormous fine and ten years imprisonment from the consequences of which 1 Thus says the report on the state of the Church of Norway in HENGSTEXBERG'S "K.-Ztg.," vol. xxxiii., p. 566. 264 DECAY OF CHURCH DISCIPLINE. he died, in 1824 ;* but his followers, the Haugeans, were treated with indulgence. The people endeavoured to find in the sermons of lay preachers a compensation for what they failed ,to receive in the Church. At present, among the younger generation of the clergy, a return to Lutheran ortho- doxy is perceptible ; but it is said this tendency has no support in the religious feelings of the people. 2 On the whole, the latest German writer on the subject describes the state of the Church as wretched, as one which affords abundance of weapons for the attacks of invading sectarians. 3 In the rural districts of both Sweden and Norway, the weekly divine services have fallen off univer- sally. 4 As to Confession, nothing remains of it but " the Absolution," which here, as in Denmark, is given to every one without any previous recapitulation of his sins ; without the applicant having even to answer a single question with a "yes " or " no." In like manner, the visitation of the sick is no longer practised. The complete decay of Church discipline is here also complained of. There is said (by the same German observer) to be but a small circle of religiously awakened people, opposed to a great mass which is lax and thoughtless. There also the pews of the higher classes and official persons frequently stand empty. 5 The laity in general complain of their preachers their worldly-minded- ness their neglect of all care for souls. The clergy plead, in their defence, that they are overwhelmed with worldly business, 6 and al<o the size of their parishes their own farming and family cares ; and the great distance from them and each other of most of the members of their congregation. The reference to this last-mentioned circumstance brings us to a feature common to the whole Protestant North I mean the disproportion of the number of preachers to the 1 FORESTER'S "Norway," 1848 and 1849. London, 1856, p. 308. 2 KRAUSE'S "K.-Ztg.," 1859, p. 639*. 8 HENGSTENBERG'S "K.-Ztg.," vol. Ixiii., pp. 769-781. 4 SARWEY, in his " Theological Studies and Criticisms," 1849, ii. 774. 5 HENGSTENBKRG'S " K.-Z.," vol. Ixii., p. 499. 6 SARWEY, " Theol. Studien und Kritiken," ii. 780. INADEQUATE SUPPLY OF CLERGYMEN. 265 population, and the spiritual incapacity of the Church con- sequent on this disproportion. In Norway, there are only 485 clergymen to 1,500,000 souls; on an average, there are about 3,600 persons to every parish ; and, notwithstand- ing the enormous extent of the parishes, several of them as many as five are often united in the hands of one pastor, in order that he, with his wife and children, may enjoy a more abundant income. Even the English visitor, Forester, expresses his astonishment at this pluralism on a large scale, and the neglect of the people for the benefit of rich priests' families. 1 There are many parishes of from 6000 to 12,000 inhabitants, and these scattered over immense districts, who have but one preacher, and but very rarely two. 2 Thus, Holstein has, for 544,419 almost exclusively Lutheran inhabitants, only 192 preachers, two or three of whom also belong to one and the same Church. 3 In all the Scandinavian countries taken together, the Protestant Church is, on the whole, very badly served; that is to say, the number of churches and preachers is quite inadequate, so' that immense masses of persons have it not in their power to attend any religious service. In the Duchy of Schleswig, not a few livings have been abolished since the Reformation, because the clergyman, with his wife and children, found the income too small; so that there are parishes of 13,000 people, dispersed over a vast breadth of country, with only two preachers. In the same way, in Farther Pomerania, in 1850, thirty formerly independent parishes, with as many churches, with a population of 15,000, had, through combination with other districts, disappeared. 4 In all these Scandinavian countries, there are innumerable persons who have never in their lives entered the House of God. 5 In the Russian countries, especially in the Baltic provinces, the Lutherans, whose number in 1854 was 1,834,224, had 192 preachers; 1 " Norway," p. 309. "Darmst. Allg. Kireh.-Ztg.," 1856, p. 1650. 3 MESSNER'S "K.-Ztg.," 1861, p. 282. 4 MOSER'S " Kirchenblatt.," 1856, p. 188. * " Darmst. Allg. K.-Ztg.," 1856, p. 1650. 266 SPIRITUAL DESTITUTION. so that there was one for every 4394 souls. 1 Thus the people have to suffer, because clergymen deem it to be right, proper, and necessary that they should have and provide for wives and children ! 1 REUTER'S " Repert.," vol. xciv., p. 168. 267 THE PROTESTANT CHURCHES IN GERMANY. GERMANY is the birth-place of the Reformation. Within the mind of a German man, and that man the greatest of his age, did the Protestant doctrine spring up. Before the superiority and creative energy of that one mind did the aspiring, active portion of the nation humbly and trustingly bend the knee! In him in that union of strength and intellect they recognised their master ; they lived in his thoughts he appeared to them as the hero in whom the nation, with all its characteristics, was incorporated. They admired him ; they gave themselves over to him because they perceived in him their country's most potential, powerful self; because it was their feelings that he expressed more clearly, more eloquently, and with greater power than they would them- selves have been able to give utterance to them. Thus has Luther's name become for Germany not merely the name of a distinguished man he is himself the very core and kernel of a period of national life the centre of a new circle of ideas the most condensed expression of that religious and ethical mode of thought peculiar to the German mind, and from whose mighty influence even those who resisted it could not themselves wholly withdraw. Luther's writings have long ceased to be popularly read ; and are only now consulted by the learned for historical purposes; but the image of his personality is still vivid. His name, his heroic 268 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY. figure, still work with an enchanter's power upon the high and low ; and from the magic of his name the Protestant doctrine still derives a portion of its vital power. In other countries, people feel an aversion to adopt the name of the originator of a predominant creed ; but in Germany and in Sweden there are still thousands who are proud to call them- selves " Lutherans." Although Protestant Germany forms the smaller portion of the nation, yet this smaller portion is both politically and intellectually the stronger. Politically stronger, for the German dynasties are chiefly Protestant, and what is very important in Germany the administration, even in Catholic districts, is mostly entrusted to Protestant officials, who are zealous for their religion. It is intellectually stronger, for the great majority of the high schools are wholly, or chiefly, in Protestant hands ; and the entire body of literature, which has formed fora hundred years the mental aliment of the higher and middle classes, is, in its widest sense, Protestant that is to say, it has arisen out of the great rupture with the whole past history of Christianity, which the Reformation, in conjunction with the humanism so hostile to the Church had brought about, and which two centuries and a half have rendered permanent. Ever since Lessing extended the Protestant view of the development of Christianity, and of the Church, to the earliest ages, it has applied to the Apostolic times the same standard of motive and cha- racter by which Protestantism has learned to measure the following centuries. By the theory long prevalent (though not always entertained with a full consciousness of its effects, and mingled with much obscurity), viz: that the Christian Church, on the whole, was a failure, and had brought more mischief and falsehood than truth and blessing to the human race, the whole history of Christian nations and states had been rendered soulless and trivial. What had been left by the Reformation, in place of the old Church edifice, could not possibly claim the sympathy and veneration of the educated classes. It is now generally acknowledged, even by believing Protestants, that the whole state of the Church, and of the LUTHER ANISM AND THEOLOGY. 269 Protestant theology of that time, had "estranged from Christianity many of the noblest and most gifted men of the nation;" and thus was formed that atmosphere of infidelity, of contempt of all that was Christian, and in which heathenism, or Islamism, appeared more human, more invigorating, and more poetical than the gloomy Galilean doctrine of self- abnegation and sanctification. Gervinus has said, in his rough, reckless manner, " We still stand, on the average, much at the same point as Goethe and Schiller, Voss and Jean Paul, Winkelmann and Wieland, Forster and Lichtenberg all of whom ' released themselves from the bonds of dogmatic Christianity.'" 1 Sixteen years have passed since then, and these words are just as true now as they were at that period. Aversion to Christianity, as soon as it attempts to assert itself in life or in science, is still general amongst educated persons, and it opposes itself at every step, as an obstacle, to orthodox Protestantism, as well as to the Catholic Church ; only that the latter is for several reasons and especially because of its firmer organisation and greater power of resistance more energetic, active, and universal. A campaign against the Catholic Church will unite all that is Protestant, positive and negative, and troops of the most heterogeneous combatants, under one banner, and bring about a transitory reconciliation among them. The events in Germany and Switzerland, from 1845 to 1847, and lately again in Baden and Wiirtemberg, have proved this. In other Protestant countries the internal want of harmony between the Protestant system and theological science, has mostly led, as we have seen, to the decay or ruin of the Litter. In Germany, however, the theological impulse, united to the general intellectual current in the country, has always been too strong and irresistible. Lutheran orthodoxy has not indeed been able to extinguish it, but it has for nearly two hundred years reduced theology to the condition of a subservient handmaiden; and even though it be but a mutilated theology, deprived of its two eyes Bible study and Church history and limited to dogmatic and polemic discussion. 1 " Die Mission der Deutschkatholiken." Heidelberg, 1845. 270 VICTORY OF THEOLOGICAL RATIONALISM. After Pietism had inflicted some severe wounds on ortho- doxy, theology roused itself to the struggle for its emanci- pation ; and then was the former mistress soon overthrown, and did not long survive. This invasion and complete victory won by theological Rationalism in Germany, almost without a battle, is a re- markable and unique event in history, and one of which the causes have not yet been sufficiently explained. By the long contest with the Helmstadt school, and subsequently with that of Spener, and Pietism, Lutheran theology had been internally and logically developed, but at the same time the logical and moral antinomianism to which it led became o obvious to the most purblind sight. Towards the middle of the eighteenth century came also the influence of the new Biblical and historical studies. As long as the rule of the Lutheran system maintained itself consistently within the Concordien formula, the study of the Bible was, of course, intentionally neglected. It evidently shrank from the inevi- table conflict with the symbolic books. Professor Heinrich Majus, of Giessen, 1 when he entered on his office, mentioned with censure that with very few, if any, of the universities of Germany, the interpretation of the " Holy Scriptures was made an object of earnest study." Spener gives the same testimony, and lately Tholuck and Liicke 2 have again alluded to the fact that, through the whole seventeenth century, Exe- gesis had fallen completely into disuse and disfavour. In the year 1742, also, Bengel complains, in the preface to his " Gnomon," that " the manifold misuse nay, malicious con- tempt of Scripture, had risen to the highest point, even among those who thought themselves to be philosophical and very spiritual persons." As soon as the study of the Bible had come again into fashion, partly through means of Ben- gel himself, and partly as a reaction against the Pietistic movement, the dissolution of the. Lutheran doctrine began. / O The tone of historical criticism, and especially the concep- tion of Church History in Germany, contributed greatly to 1 " Praxis Pietatis, sive Synopsis Theologias Moralis." Gissas, 1697, Pref. " Deutsche Zeitschrift," 1854, p. 178. PROTESTANT CONCEPTION OF CHURCH HISTORY. 271 this dissolution. The idea that the whole course of develop- ment of Christianity, from the time of the Apostles, had been a continual and ever-increasing malformation, until at last, at the Reformation, this utterly distorted and ruined re- ligion was awakened to new life, had been the prevailing notion since the sixteenth century. In this sense were all histories taught and written. A man who deserves to be o called the most profound and acute theologian, of the first period of Rationalism, describes this state of opinion : " Among Protestants, Church History is nothing else than the historical proof of the necessity of a Church Reforma- tion, and of a perpetual increase of corruption, both in doc- trine and life. According to the Protestants, the Church had been at least, since the eighth century a sink of ig- norance and corruption. All the heads of the Church had been dreadfully false teachers, and the Church itself a com- plete madhouse." He then remarks : " The extreme care with which, on the Protestant side, every fact has been col- lected which could be made to afford the smallest testimony for the former prevalence of corruption in the Church the injustice with which all former chiefs and heads of the Church have been represented as tyrants, and all the members of it as mere heathens and the carelessness with which the good that has always been present in the Church, notwithstanding the great abuses that had crept into it, is overlooked ; this defect in Church History, as treated by Protestants, has been eagerly employed by the enemies of Christianity for their own purposes. 1 Tollner quotes an expression of Frederick II. 2 in one of his writings, in which the monarch states the customary Protestant account of Church History, namely, " that it was a great drama performed by rogues and hypocrites, at the ex- pense of the deluded masses ;" and such histories he supposes 1 TOLLXER'S u Kurze Vermischte Aufsatze." Frankfort, a. d. Oder, 1769, ii. 87, et seq. 2 The Preface to " Abrege de 1'Histoire Ecclesiastique de Fleury." BERNE. Berlin, 1767. The book is by De Prades. That the Preface w.is written by the King, Tollner probably did not know. r 272 DEFECTS OF LUTHERAN ORTHODOXY. had been the real cause of the King's contempt for Christi- anity. This manner of regarding the history of Christianity completely coincided with the reigning mode of thought and literature of the time, and through it was developed that spiritual revolt from Christianity which was completed in Germany by the simultaneous and reciprocal action of the clergy and the educated classes upon one another. The theology of the Reformers and their followers established the notion that God had withdrawn Himself from the Church after the demise of the Apostles that He had resigned His place to Satan, who thenceforward had undertaken the office which, according to the promises in the Gospel, the Holy Ghost should have fulfilled and so established a dia- bolical millennium, which continued until the appearance of Luther. 1 When faith in the infallible truth of the symbolic books became in a few years extinct, 2 in consequence of the new Biblical studies when, after the accession of Frede- rick II., Lutheran orthodoxy lost more and more the protec- tion of the ecclesiastical power of the State when the Theo- logians began more and more mercilessly to expose the de- fects and contradictions of the Lutheran reformation doc- trine, 3 then all the supports of religious feeling at once were tumbled down and prostrated. The entire education of the people, the ideas they had imbibed with their mother's milk, all was calculated to make them regard the whole history of Christianity before the Reformation as a churchyard covered with decayed and sunken tombstones, and with mouldering bones, and where ghostly shadows alone were wandering. 1 See also SEMLER'S " Lebenbeschreibung," ii. 156, concerning the part in Church history assigned to the devil by the Protestant world. * " In the year 1770 there existed not a single theologian in a Protestant university who would approve any work that did not confine itself within the systematic formulae." SACK'S " Lebensbeschreibung," i. 252. What a change must have taken place in fifteen years ! 1 It is especially in TOLLNER'S writings (which, on dogmatic subjects, are far more important than those of Semler) that the decomposing pro- cess going on in Protestant theology and the Genesis of Rationalism may be perceived. PROGRESS OF "RATIONAL" CHRISTIANITY. 273 With the faith in the Divine Guidance of the Church fell also all faith in its divine origin. The root was judged by the stem ; the beginning judged by the subsequent career judged and condemned ! And thus, then, there remained for the men who held office under, and got their bread by Christianity, nothing else to fall back upon but that aggregate of empty, unsupported notions concerning God, morality, and immortality, to which the name of Rationalism has been given. So much the more certain and powerful became the effect produced by the writings of Semler, Lessing, Reirnarus ; by the prestige of the example of Frederick II. ; and by the philosophy of Imrnanuel Kant. In the course of a few years the whole class of German Protestant preachers and the theologians at the universities the first amongst them had fallen off from the old positive faith. The entire of the new generation of clergy grew up in Rationalism ; and stone after stone was taken from the Temple, and carried away by its own priests. From the pulpits even of village churches the new " Rational" Christianity was preached ; whilst only a few remote congregations remained in undisturbed possession of the old faith ;' and in the cities the preachers were often Rationalists before the best educated among the middle classes had fallen victims to that wide-spread Deistical enlightenment, which had been so carefully cherished by the new and flourish- ing literature of Germany. A Mecklenburg preacher repeats what he has heard from the lips of an old clergyman : " That the rapidity with which the mockery of infidelity was effacing from language and manners the old forms of faith in that country, bordered upon the marvellous." 2 In France, about the same time, frivolous infidelity had seized on the higher ranks of society, but the clergy re- mained, on the whole, untouched by it ; and even amid the 1 Thus it is said in the New Dorpat " Zeitschrift Theol.," i., 588: " In many out-of-the-way districts of Westphalia, the Rhine country, and Western Schleswig, there are parishes that have never been touched by the Rationalist poison." 4 RHEINWALD'S " Repert," viii. 259. 274 PRINCELY EPISCOPAL SUPREMACY. storms of the Revolution, it was only a comparatively small number of priests that became apostates. The great ma- jority remained, even under the most fearful persecutions, true to their faith. In Protestant Germany, on the contrary, it was theology especially which completed the work of destruction it was the clerical class that introduced to con- gregations, both in town and country, their open or veiled Naturalism, and brought on that defection of the masses from Christianity before which men now stand wringing their hands and knowing not what to do. Rationalism has not, on the whole, had any great influence on the relations of Church and State, or on the constitution of the Church. The Reformation had already here done all that was essential. Germany Wittenberg, is the true birth- place of princely episcopal supremacy and territorialism. The princes received the supreme power from the hands of theologians, not " although" but " because" they were princes. It was their right and their duty, they were told, to under- take the government of the Church, as a branch and an efflux of their political sovereignty. When a man now living says, " Let the name of Episcopacy (of the prince) be left, as a memorial of the disgrace of the Church until she shall re- pent and do penance," he expresses a thought that was totally foreign to the first and second generation of German Protestants which is still foreign to the majority of preachers and Consistorial Councils, even though many laymen may be of the same way of thinking as Hommel. 1 Since the Princes and Estates of the Empire in Ger- many have come into possession, to an unlimited extent, of Protestant ecclesiastical power, there have arisen in Germany as many Churches as there are principalities or territories. The attempt to establish a united German Protestant, Lu- theran, or Calvinistic Reformed Church was never made. Every one was content with the existing state of things; that in every little territory there should be a different Evangelical Church ; and that this crowd of Churches should 1 HOMMEL, u Die wahre Gestalt der Bayerischen Landeskirche,'' 1850, p. 26. STATE-DEPENDENCE OF THE CHURCHES. 275 have no one point of union except antagonism to the Catholic Church. At the Diets the Corpus Evangelicorum formed a kind of representative body ; and there was, on the whole, much similarity of doctrine, although the individual Churches had their own symbolic books, and very various liturgies. And thus there was, in fact, only an aggregate of National Churches. Before the dissolution of the German Em- pire, the number of independent separate Churches was much greater. " Germany," says Ernest Solomon Cyprian, 1 " has, with its isolated Evangelical Churches, if we reckon the free Equestrian order (the Ritterscliaft), more than a thousand independent rulers ; for each one can do with his own congregation all that the Pope can do in the Roman See. Who can expect that so many masters, of such various tem- peraments and inclinations, and exposed to such different temptations to sin and disorder, can ever be brought to har- monious agreement ?" This state of things, Cyprian thinks, both explains and palliates the numerous faults and abomina- tions of the German Church system. The Church (he says) is only answerable for her doctrine, and that, fortunately, is everywhere good, sound Lutheranism ! There are now in Germany about thirty-eight Protestant Churches, each of which is independent of the other, and has its own organization ; and since in each of the States the Church has been degraded into a mere branch of the Admi- nistration has been inserted as a wheel in the great State machine it has come to pass that all the threads of ecclesias- tical government come together, and are united in the hands of a single Government official, the Minister of Public Wor- ship. Thus, in Saxony, for instance, it depends entirely on the judgment of their Minister what amount of attention he will pay to the recommendation of the Consistory of the country in Church affairs; 2 and, as a matter of fact, the destinies of the Saxon Church are wholly within his grasp. 1 Preface to GROSCH, "Xothw. Vertheidigung der Evangelischen Kirche," 1745. p. 33. 7 See hereupon LEHMAXN, " Zur Frage der Xeugestaltung der evang. luth. Kirche Sachsens." Dresden, 1861, p. 6. T 2 276 THE "UNION."" The case is the same in Hanover ; the Minister acts in Church affairs without asking the advice or opinion of the Consistory, and the Consistory has really nothing more to do than to execute the commands of the Minister. 1 If in some countries the institution of Synods has been added to that of the Consistory and Monarchial Episcopacy, it has imparted no especial dignity to the Constitutional structure ; for the Synods are chiefly composed of theologians and preachers, and the lay element is very sparsely repre- sented in them ; whilst the decrees of Synods and of the Church government united, have proved impotent when op- posed to the resistance of the laity in Bavaria, Baden, and the Palatinate. The " Union" which was begun in Prussia, and imitated else- where, has, since 1817, amalgamated the Lutheran and Cal- vinist Reformed Churches, and given an essentially different form to German Protestantism. The new Church thus formed was to take the name of the "Evangelical Church ;" and it was the Prussian Government especially which in- sisted upon the introduction of this name, because " Pro- testant" was a party name, and did not sound so well as "Evangelical." 2 The members of the united Church have, therefore, ceased to be Lutherans or Calvinists, and have become " Evangelicals." The names of " Lutheran " and "Protestant" were to be omitted wherever it was possible; and lately the Consistory of the Province of Pomerania has declared that the general term "Evangelical" does not any longer signify what it did in 1818. It has already passed into State documents as, for example, into that of the Constitu- tion of 1850. It does not there specially designate " the union," but is a collective term to express opposition to Ca- tholicism. In official notifications the term "Evangelical" O is, therefore, not to be discontinued. 3 1 REUTER'S u Repert.," vol. Ixiv., p. 277. 1 See HAUPT'S u Hanbuch iiber die Religions-Angelegenheiten im K. Preussen," 1822, ii. 160. KAMPZ, ' Aunalen," 1821, p. 341. * See WILSIXG, u Die reformirte Kirche in Deutschland." Altona, 1853, p. 123. CONDITION OF THE GERMAN LUTHERAN CHURCH. 277 In consequence of this " Union," then, there are now, theo- logically considered, three Churches, instead of the former two, in Germany the Lutheran, the Reformed, and the United or Evangelical. Genuine Calvinism, for which the Dordrecht decisions serve as a standard, has almost died out in Germany ; for there is said to be left only one congre- gation professing it. With the other, not united congrega- tions, "Reformed" generally means nothing more than that the Lutheran doctrine of the Communion is rejected. On the other hand, the old Lutheran Church has also vanished from the German soil. The name can but be claimed by the 31,000 Prussian Lutherans who have remained as a separate body ; but these are not recognised by the Lutherans of Saxony and elsewhere as true disciples of Luther on the contrary, they are reproached with having made important and objectionable variations from his doctrine. The former Lutheran congregations, which have joined the Union, can, however, scarcely be called Lutheran any longer, for the mode of celebrating the Communion has been accommodated to that of the " Reformed," or " United," and it is upon this point that the most decisive and distinguishing mark of a Church union lies. There are also certain ceremonies and institu- tions in which Lutheranism formerly differed from Calvinism these have been abandoned, as well as, and before all others, that of private confession. When, therefore, Stahl complains (as he did lately), of a threatened approaching absorption of the Lutheran Church into that of the Union, 1 it may be answered that in Germany the German Lutheran Church now only exists in the wishes and yearnings of some few theologians, pastors, and jurists, and by no means is a reality or concrete church establishment. There is only the difference of " more " or "less" between the united and non- united churches. The " Union" was the personal act of the King of Prussia, effected by him under the influence of his dynastic interests, and with the view of producing an ecclesiastical reconciliation between the Royal House of Prussia (which, since 1613, had 1 " Die lutherische Kirche und die Union." Preface, p. viii. 278 OBJECT OF THE " UNION." renounced Lutheranism and adhered to the doctrine of Calvin) and the preponderating Lutheran population of the country. An Agenda, the work of the king himself, was to serve as the chief cement of the Union ; but it struck upon greater difficulties than the Union itself, as the introduction of liturgical elements into the sefvice was regarded as a dan- gerous approximation to the practice of the Catholic Church. On the whole, " the Union " was accepted with marvellous ease and promptitude by both preachers and congregations ; people were pretty well agreed that the doctrines in which they differed were of no special importance, and might be properly left alone. It was the question of fees for con- fessions, and not upon any difference of doctrine, that made Schleiermacher, for a short time, fear that the work of peace would be wrecked. It was considered, too, that a united Church would be stronger and much more respectable as opposed to Catholicity. Throughout Protestant Germany the disposition of the preachers and their congregations was alike favourable to the "Union;" and it was established speedily, and without the smallest resistance, in Nassau, the Bavarian Rhine provinces, Baden, Anhalt, and Wiirtemberg; and if such was not also the case in Saxony, Hanover, Mecklenburg, and Bavaria, the cause was discoverable in the small number of Calviuists in those countries. The King of Prussia had declared that it was a ritual merely, and not a doctrinal amalgamation, had been proposed by "the Union" but the two could not be sepa- rated. Several preachers and village congregations who felt this to be the fact, and perceived that the Union would be the annihilation of the Lutheran Confession, wished to hold themselves aloof from it ; but the Government determined to treat them as " dangerous sectaries," according to the pre- scriptions of the general law of the country 1 that is to say, to inflict punishments upon them, expatriation, imprisonment, and military executions. In Berlin the Bishops Eylert and Neander had come to a complete understanding. The present General-Superintendent, Hahn, marched at the head 1 EILER'S " Meine Wanderung (lurch's Leben," iv. 204. REVIVAL OF THEOLOGY. 279 of a military force against the refractory congregations. The Minister Altenstein spoke in accordance to the theory of " the limited understanding of subjects." "It was the duty of the Government to protect the deluded people against the consequences of their own thoughtless actions." 1 Thousands were compelled to emigrate to America, and not one single voice was raised in all Protestant Germany on behalf of the suf- ferers, who had been treated with refined cruelty, and against whom the whole apparatus of bureaucratic methods of coercion had been employed. The entire liberal press approved and applauded what had been thus done. The Lutherans had rightly judged that " the Union " would inevitably lean to two results : the dissolution of Lutheranism, and the spread of dogmatic indifferentism that is to say, of infidelity. As soon as Frederick William IV. had set free the imprisoned preachers, they established, at a synod at Breslau in 1841, a separate Lutheran Church at the head of which was the jurist Huschke, and which soon obtained from the Government recognition and tolera- tion as a separate sectarian Church. Theology, in the meanwhile, had begun again to raise itself from the slough of unspiritual, unbelieving Rationalism. The accession of Frederick William IV. who, as a zealous friend of his church, immediately promised and afforded it the most powerful protection gave a new impulse to a ten- dency towards the Positive, already awakened and encou- raged by excellent teachers at the Universities. The believing theologians and preachers saw themselves every- where preferred by the Government; the rising generation of students turned towards them ; and then there came to divide the feelings of old and young the catastrophe of 1848, which struck terror into the whole Protestant clergy of North Germany, and showed them in the perspective the threatened rule of a multitude destitute of religion through the fault of the clergy themselves. In Prussia the reign of Hegel's Pantheism was at an end the Pantheism to which the minister Altenstein had given up both schools and 1 EILER'S "Meine Wanderung durch's Leben," iv. 235. 280 " UNION," OR (l RECONCILEMENT THEOLOGY." pulpits. By degrees theological educational offices were all filled by believing professors. Jena and Giessen alone remained on the hands of the Rationalists. In the new and now orthodox theology a twofold direction was soon observed, proceeding from two different assumptions, and leading to very different results. Chiefly on the foundation laid by Schleiermacher and Neander, there was formed a " Union," or "reconcilement theology," represented by Nitzsch, Julius Miiller, Dorner, Liicke, Rothe and others. By the side of this arose a Lutheran theology, encouraged especially in Erlangen, Dorpat, Leipsig, and Rostock. It declared itself at first as merely a Repristination theology, as the doc- trine simply of the Concordian formula, translated from the language of the sixteenth into that of the nineteenth century. But this soon manifested itself to be a sheer impossibility for scientifically instructed and energetically disciplined men. This dreary undertaking was abandoned to a few pastors, at the head of whom was Ruclelbach, who could now boast that, as "old Lutherans," they cultivated the only genuine Lutheran theology so that if Luther should come back to earth he might recognise the contributors to the " Zeitschrift fur lutherische Theologie" as his own true sons and spiritual heirs. In the Universities, with scarcely a single exception, they declined having anything to do with this Lutheranism ; and in them (the Universities) was formed the party of " the new Lutherans," represented by such men as Kahnis, Delitzsch, Kliefoth, Stahl, and others, with whom are also to be mentioned Harnack, Vilmar, Petri, and Miinchmeyer. These theologians declare that they keep to the Lutheran doctrine of Justification, but will not be bound by the favourite Protestant dogma of " the invisibility of the Church," and a "universal priesthood." Since they main- tain the idea of a divine institution of the office of the Church, in opposition to that of a mere transmission by the congregation, they are logically compelled to the acceptance of another divinely ordained transmission, namely, that of the Sacrament of Ordination. They profess, therefore, opinions concerning " office " and " ordination," " sacrament " and DISSATISFACTION WITH THE " UNION." 281 "sacrifice," which have brought on them from all sides the reproach of " Catholicity." " You are already," it is said, " close to the gates of Rome a little further on, and you will find yourselves inside of the Eternal City." 1 That this German Lutheran Puseyisrn must, like the Anglican, lead to a union with the Papists, is the opinion expressed in the " Zeitschrift " of Guerike and Rudelbach. 2 Of the preachers in Prussia who are dissatisfied with " the Union," only a small number has left the Church : the great majority has remained within it, partly because they could not rely on their congregations partly because they did not like to renounce fixed incomes, to become dependent upon the will of their congregations. 3 But they would like to throw oft' the yoke of " the Union," and withdraw themselves as far as possible from a community with Calvinism in doctrine and worship. They will not, however, give up their position in "the Union Church," because it is "the State Church," and one does not like to forego its rights and advantages by separating from it; and, also, because one can contend against " the Union " much more effectually when within its precincts than from the outside. The Unionists declare that, were the Union dissolved, there would be at least five Churches in Prussia. It would be the most "un-Prussian act" that could be committed; and it is added, " that they who endeavour to bring about the abo- lition of the Union are the enemies of Prussia." 4 The ordinances of Frederick William IV. sought to con- tent the Lutheran or Confessional party at the head of which stood Stahl and Hensstenberg by various conces- o / sions, and, at the same time, to restrain it within certain limits, by a renewed proclamation of the principles of " the Union." Finally, in the year 1857, "the English Evange- lical Alliance" was summoned to Berlin to strengthen the 1 LEHMANN, pp. 2, 6. 2 " Jahrgang," 1853, p. 163. 3 See the declaration of LENZ, " Denkschrift liber die neuesten kirch- lichen Bewegungen in Pommern." Berlin, 1858, p. 43. * The General- Superintendent HOFFMANN, " Verhandlungen der Berl. Kirchl. Conferenz.," 1857, p. 577. 282 THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE IN BERLIN. cause of " the Union." Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalism,' Calvinist Anglicans, and other sects, im- pelled by their common hatred to the Catholic Church to fraternize (but reserving their differences), proclaimed that " they came to Berlin to bear testimony against the new- Pharisees and Sadducees." And the heads of the United Lutherans very clearly perceived that the first designation was meant to apply to themselves. On the other hand, Hoffmann, Nitzsch, Schenkel, Krummacher, Heppe, Sack, Kapff, Plitt, Ledderhose, and a numerous band of German spiritual kindred, declared that these Enwlish-Scotch-Ameri- can " Denominations " were " flesh of their flesh and bone of their bone," and welcome fellow-combatants in the battle against exclusive Lutheranism and "Rome." 1 It ought to be considered, they cried out to these members of many creeds, that " the Alliance" consisted only of good Protestant denominations, and all professing the grand fundamental doctrine of Justification by imputed righteousness ; and that only by such an " Alliance " could it be possible to represent, on the Protestant side, the essential unity of the Church of Christ. 2 When the grand display was over, the Lutherans scorn- fully asked, "What permanent end had been attained by it?" By thus calling in foreigners, they had cast suspicion and raised accusations against their German fellow-believers, with whom they had hitherto lived in peace ; and they had, by fraternizing with erroneous believers, confirmed them in their error. 3 In fact, the result of this " Communion of Saints" made visible in Berlin was that the general confu- sion was greatly increased, the doubts and uncertainties of the laity strengthened, and the people confirmed in the idea that theologians and preachers had themselves no fixed doc- trines ; and that, after all, perhaps doctrine was a matter of very little consequence. "The Union" had previously pro- vided that the people should be much puzzled what to believe 1 Stahl's speech in HENGSTENBERG'S "K.-Ztg.," 1857, p. 553. 2 LIEBETRUT, u Die Evangel. Allianz." Berlin, 1857, p. 27. * WANGEMANN'S "Preuss. Kirchengesch.,'' iii. 750. TONE OF THE ASSEMBLY. 283 concerning the Lord's Supper ; and now, through lt the Alli- ance," Baptism also was placed among the articles of which no one knew what was to be taught as certainly true. The chief promoter of the Berlin Alliance Assembly was Von Bunsen, who, as Geheimrath Eilers 1 testifies, was possessed with the idea of uniting all non-Catholic Confes- sions and Sects into one grand Evangelical union against the Catholic Church. After the death of Frederick Wil- liam III., it was expected and desired, in the higher official world of Berlin where, in the words of the same statesman, 2 " hatred to Catholicity had awakened an interest for the Evangelicals " that Bunsen would be appointed to the Ministry of Spiritual Affairs, and the demonstration of the Alliance in the German metropolis of Protestantism was welcomed in those circles for the same reason. The same men who, at the Church Assembly at Bremen in 1852, had declared the struggle against " Rome " to be the first and most pressing affair to be considered, 3 formed also the kernel of the Berlin Alliance gathering. Hatred to the Catholic Church, and joy at every injury, real or imaginary, to it, constituted the fundamental tone to the whole proceedings of the Assembly ; but whatever else was of permanent con- sequence solely to the Protestant Church system, was regarded by the orthodox Lutherans and Confessionalists as a blow aimed at themselves. Since the illness and retirement of King Frederick Wil- liam IV. from the Government, which followed immediately 1 " Wanderung durch's Leben," iv. 48. * Ibid., iv. 41. 3 Against HENGSTEXBERG'S speech concerning the relation of the Catholic Church, especially of its mission, arose a cloud of witnesses. ZANDER'S speech closed with the words, " Let us attack the enemy where he is to be found, namely, in the heart of Rome," and after this, " the sluices were opened, and the waters rose high." " Babel must fall." " Rome is an offspring of hell." " The infernal system of the Papacy evokes hatred, and the Gospel must, as long as Rome is Rome, hold no fellowship with it." These were the fundamental chords that were struck. Thus reports the " Neue Preussiche Zeitung," Sept. 19, 1852. 284 STATE OF INDIVIDUAL PROTESTANT CHURCHES. the Alliance Assembly, there has been a kind of truce entered upon. Those disposed to Lutheranism shake from time to time indignantly the ecclesiastical chains that " the Union " has imposed upon them ; but they do not talk any longer of leaving the State Church. Some have endeavoured to establish themselves in countries that have remained Lu- theran, but the majority feel themselves weak, because they are, in fact, nothing more than a party of theologians and pastors, without any flocks to follow them. Goschel, one of the temporal leaders of Lutheranism, mournfully confessed, lately, "that the Lutheran Church of Germany was really in a dying state. It has lost for the most part its very name ; in many countries it has already fallen to ruin, and the cause of its destruction is the prevailing indifferentism." A reaction has indeed been aroused against the absorption of Lutheranism by "the Union," but it is utterly wanting in energy it is sick with all kinds of hesitations and scruples. 1 "Throughout Germany," says a Wiirtemberg theologian, 2 " the Lutheran Church is become a mere name to the peo- ple ; and as to the educated classes and theologians, it has with them been cut down to the root. 'Lutheran' has be- come in Wiirtemberg an obnoxious and abusive sectarian epithet." If we now proceed to the contemplation of the state of individual Churches in Protestant Germany, there is first to be noted especially since 1846 a very active life, and an impulse to ecclesiastical construction and improvement among the clergy, and the laity friendly to them. Numerous dis- cussions at Conferences and Church-days, provincial and general, have taken place ; and a considerable number of institutions of an educational or ethical character, or for the physical welfare of the people, have been established through the " Home Mission." But all great and really religious problems await their solution ; and very few people have even made an attempt to come to an understanding as to how the problem can be solved. 1 " Zeitschrift fur luth. Theolog.," 1860, p. 310. * In SCHAFF'S " Kirchenfretmd," 1857, p. 67. THE CHURCH CONSTITUTION. 285 The very first question that of the Church Constitution the retention or abolition of the Episcopacy of the temporal sovereign is at the outset calculated to cause a division. O ' and to discourage the friends of the Church. In most coun- tries, it is thought that the Csesaro-Papacy is a chief cause of the decay of the Church. " What really oppresses our Church" (the writer is speaking especially of Saxony) "is the bureaucracy and the temporalization of the Church in all its institutions, so that all is bureaucratically governed, and spiritual affairs are disposed of like any other common matter of business. 1 It is now well known what was thought of his own Supre- macy by the monarch who, among all the princes of modern times, was the wisest and most clear-sighted friend of the Protestant Church. The state of the German Churches, we find, was in his eyes "absurd and untenable." "The terri- torial system, and the supremacy of the sovereign," says Frederick William IV., "are of such a nature, that one alone would be sufficient to kill a church, were it mortal." He then mentions, as a highly characteristic fact, that the abolition of the Consistory (in the year 1808), and the transference of its business to the government authorities, had been allowed to pass as a purely indifferent administrative measure, in which " the Church " was by no means concerned. " With all his soul and with all his strength " the king said, " he longed for the moment in which he might resign his Church supremacy to Bishops, with whatever name it might be thought fit to bestow upon them." 2 Every important change in the state of things previously existing is regarded, however, with fear and trembling, even though the subserviency of the Church, and its absorption into the organism of the State, are felt to be oppressive and degrading. " Take from the Church," it is said, " in its present shattered condition a condition that has become much worse since 1848 the support and strength it receives 1 HENGSTENBERG'S "K.-Z.," 1851, p. 99. 2 L. RICHTER'S " Konig Friedrich-Wilhelm IV., und die Verfassung der evangel. -Kirche." Berlin, 1861, pp. 22, 38. 286 THE INSTITUTION OF SYNODS. from having the sovereign as its head and guardian, and you will see that it will fall asunder so completely that no one will ever be able to re-unite the fragments." 1 Up to this time it has never appeared that the orthodox have anywhere shewn themselves at all in earnest with the principle of Church independence. "The majority" warns and threatens them with fatal consequences. The only country in which a really new Church constitution has been introduced is Baden; and this does, in fact, appear as a terrifying example, although its originators regard their modern constitution as "a model for the whole of Evangelical Germany." Their plan is a transference of "political constitutionalism" to the Church a change even in the idea and essence of the Church which is hereby transformed from " a community of all who think to be justified by faith in Christ " into " a com- munity of those who," according to the expression of a government organ, " believe in the moral order of the world." 2 High hopes were placed for many years in the institution of the Synods. In Prussia in all Germany great things were expected from these assemblies; but they were required that was the first condition to leave the Episcopacy of the sovereign untouched, and restrict themselves to a merely deliberative character ; and to play the part rather of a convocation of Church notables than of a modern constitu- tional representative assembly. The first attempts were not encouraging. Concerning the ecclesiastical conference of the Deputies from German Princes, held in 1845, in Berlin, it is said : lt The first attempt was the last, and remained without any visible result." 3 Then came the splendidly-composed General Synod of 1846, including the very flower of theo- logical intelligence, and of the religiously-disposed portion of the Government. It undertook the solution of the most difficult religious questions, and desired to set aside the 1 MESSNER'S " K.-Zeitung," 1860, p. 84. MESSNER'S " K.-Ztg.," July, 1861. 1 RICJITER'S " Geschichte der evangel. Kirchenverfassung in Deutsch- laml," p. 253. OBJECTIONS TO THEM. 287 confessional writings of the old Reformers, and introduce a new formula. This, which was drawn up by Nitzsch, was, however, made so vague and verbose, in order that it might be acceptable to all parties, that, as the Lutherans said, " it did not attribute too much faith to the unbelieving, nor too much incredulity to the believing." Although approved by the Synod, it became a jest to the public in general; and a few months after the termination of the Synod, no one would have anything to do with the resolutions that had been passed by great majorities. 1 New attempts at Synods were made in Berlin in the years 1856 and 1857. The King desired to have them, but he was warned " that, by calling them together, he made obvious to all the world the imperfection and disorders of the Church, which otherwise had been partly a secret of the authorities, and were known in all their extent only to a few of the initiated." 2 The impossibility of a Synod devising anything tenable in the way of a Confession of Faith, and steering a safe course between the claims of the Union and o of the Lutherans, but especially the anxiety as to the form in which this Synodical system was likely to develope itself, occasioned this plan to be again dropped. One thing was dreaded and detested as the worst that could happen to the Church namely, the rule of "majorities," or that Church- democracy so warmly recommended by Bunsen. " If," said Kothe, "the majority of those who count themselves as members of our Church is to decide concerning matters of faith, and doctrine, and worship, the Church established according to their notions will soon have little more of a Christian Church left in it." 3 If we now turn to the doctrinal-theological side of the German Protestant Church, we shall acknowledge, that here even at the present time is its chief strength and fame. That only in Germany does there now exist a real Protestant 1 HENGSTENBERG, in the " Aktenstiicken der Evang. Oberkirchen- raths," 1856, iii., ii., p. 25. * HENGSTENBERG, 1856, iii., ii. " Ethik," iii. 1041. See HENGSTEXBERG'S " K.-Ztg.," 1856, p. 533. 288 A THEOLOGICAL CHURCH. theology, a science of theology, is generally acknowledged. All other Churches of the Reformation obtain their theological nutriment as far as they feel the want of any from the Germans. Julius Miiller and Liebner are quite in the right the former, when he designates theology, " with its restless spirit of inquiry, and its earnest desire to dig deep," as the actual charisma of German Protestantism ;' the latter, when he paints the contrast between the burden of ignorance which lies on the Protestant Church so that the "city upon a hill is scarcely any more to be seen, or the eye is blinded to it," and the splendid efforts of the German theologians of the present day. 2 The Protestant Church of Germany is, before all things, and essentially, a Theological Church. Theologians, literati, learned university men, created it, and fixed on it,ineflfaceably,the stamp of their own thoughts and actions. Theologians form its only authority, and, through the advice they give to princes, may be called its rulers. Its "churches" are, consequently, "schools," or "lecture-halls;" and its "pulpits," "professorial chairs." It began its existence with the theses of an academical dispu- tation. The " word," as its founder was accustomed to say (and he never really departed from his professorial character), is, in fact, all first and last and its only word. It lec- tures, makes its bow, and withdraws ; it preaches, and it sings, but its "chaunts" are not "hymns;" they are, for the most part, nothing more than " versified theological treatises," or " sermons in rhyme." It is a Church born of a connubial alliance between professors and princes; the features of both parents are discernible in its features, though not exactly in harmonious combination ; and if it is frequently reproached with being " sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought " and that it is " temporalized " and that it is to be regarded as an institution rather than a Church why, that is but merely saying that -"the child cannot deny its 1 " Fortbildung der Deutsch-protestantischen Kircbenverfassung " p. 4. 2 " Zur Kirchlichen Prinzipienfrage der Gegenwart." Dresden, 1860, p. 24, et seq. MODIFICATIONS OF LUTHERANISM. 289 own father and mother." And so it is possible that the judgment passed upon it by the richest intellect and most profound mind among living Protestant theologians may prove to be prophetic " The Protestant Church in Ger- many," he says, "has educated a theology" (I should reverse this relation), " which, in the course of time and that by no accidental process, but by the necessity of its very existence will be brought into the most complete hostility with the same Church, and enter on a course, of which the sole, inevitable result must be its complete dissolution." 1 Theology in Germany has indeed again become believing, but much is wanting to its being a rightly believing one in the sense of the confessional writings. Even those theo- logians who boast particularly of their faithful devotion to the Lutheran system are not orthodox. " The fact is ob- vious to every one," says Julius Miiller, " that among all the Lutheran theologians who have lately published any com- prehensive works in the domain of doctrines of faith, there is not a single one who does not consider the Lutheran sym- bolic books as requiring modification in some point or other." 2 And here come into consideration definitions of profound importance. " For many years," said Ehrenberg, at the Berlin General Synod, " he had been looking for a man who agreed in all points with the symbolic books of his con- fession, but as yet he had never found one." 3 For a century it has been maintained that no theologian, whether from his professorial chair or in the pulpit, has been instructing his hearers in complete accordance, either as to form and sub- stance, with the symbolical books. 4 And so imperiously does this position, especially in reference to the solemn con- fession of faith, bear upon the clergy, that they have found out a way by which they might make that which is the fact appear to be in accordance with what was required both by law and custom. 1 ROTHE'S " Theologische Ethik," iii. 1015. * " Deutsche Zeitschrift," 1855, p. 107. * " Verhandlungen der evang. Generalsynode zu Berlin," p. 301. * " Monatschrift fur die unirte evang. Kirche," 1847, ii. 84. U 290 PREDICAMENT OF THE REFORMED CHURCHES. So long as German Protestants were in the habit of sub- mitting to every ecclesiastical regulation made by their monarchical supreme bishops, they quieted their consciences with the reflection that the princes had prescribed an oath to be taken as to the symbolical books ; and then, about the close of the last century, jurists gave expression to this opinion : that the views taken as to the accepted teaching in reference to the symbolical books was only to continue as long as the Protestant princes might desire they should be maintained. 1 After a long dispute upon the point, as to whether a person had to swear as to the symbolical books, either "because" or "in so far as" they contained Scripture doctrine, there came the period of Rationalism, in which " light work" was made with both oath and creed, and each individual found a consolation for himself in the multitude around him who entertained the same views, and were placed in a like predicament with himself. Ever since 1817, the Church authorities proved themselves to be ingenious in discovering devices forgiving full scope to private judgment, and in constructing formulas peculiarly qualified to evade or to weaken the rigidity of Confessional declarations. And so persons promised to teach "in the spirit," or "according to the principles," or " in so far as they were scriptural," or " with a certain regard to the declarations of creed :" and in Baden they went so far as in their " Confession" to maintain a free examination of the Scriptures. In Saxony and in Baden, however, the old, strict, and unconditional " Decla- ration" was adhered to. All propositions and discussions upon the same question have, up to this time, been attended with an unsatisfactory result. The Churches of the Reformation are in this pre- dicament they cannot well subsist without a solemn Decla- ration from their clergy and a settled doctrine ; and neither can they subsist if they have .either the one or the other. On one side it is said: " What can a Church be from which every symbol has vanished what can it be but a Babel?" 2 1 TOLLNER'S " Unterricht von symbolischen Biicbern," p. 30. 3 BROMEL, in the " Luth. Zcitschrift," 1855, p. 275. STANDARDS OF CREEDS AND DOCTRINES. 291 On the other side it is replied, and with perfect justice too: " A rigid binding down to symbols, in the present state of theology, can only lead to hypocrisy and intolerable violence to conscience." l Thus it is indispensable to make the solemn Declaration very vague, in order that a, free scope be afforded to the clergy as to the symbol. And hence it is only "ac- cording to its spirit" that they can be judged; and the signi- fication to be given to "the spirit," and the weight to be attached to it, must in the end be left to the clergy them- selves, unless there happens to be, as in Saxony, a living, active, acknowledged authority to interpret and determine what doctrine is to be taught. At the foundation of the Evangelical Church Union at Wittenberg, in the year 1848, a considerable number of distinguished theologians for the first time declared that " they stood, as to their creed, upon the ground of the Reformed Confession." This very wide phrase, and at bottom binding to nothing those who made it, has since that time become a great favourite. Then in the year 1853 it was declared, at a meeting in Berlin, " that the Augsburg Confession should be regarded as the standard and expression of a common creed and doctrine." This was the strongest and greatest effort at effecting a submission to a certain formula which had yet been made. The matter, however, though seriously proposed, was not seriously meant, for even those who were present assenting to such a proposition were thoroughly well aware that amongst themselves, and in all Germany, there was not a single theologian who did, in point of fact, accept all the articles of the Augsburg Con- fession. How little the parties who passed such a resolution felt themselves bound in points of faith by it, was soon shown by some of those who had taken part in the pro- ceedings of the meeting at which it was passed (Schenkel, for instance), publishing writings which were in distinct and strong contradiction to the Confession of 1530. And then, where "the Union" is most firmly established, there the authority of the symbolical books is irremediably 1 Thus speak Rothe, Petersen, and Marheineke. U2 292 DISREGARD OF THE SOLEMN OBLIGATION. ruined. At church assemblies and pastoral meetings it has recently been declared that in Prussia, according to the Tenth Article, a person is free to partake of the Lord's Supper in three different senses in the Lutheran, or the Calvinistic, or in accordance with the Union signification ; and there are others, also, who maintain there is nothing to prevent its being taken and understood in a fourth or a fifth sense! 1 Besides this, there was the fact, which was not, and could not, be disputed, viz., that by the Solemn Declaration contained in the Ordination Formula, many were, in Prussia (as well as in Saxony and Hanover), forced by the law to lie the fact is not to be palliated, but to be lamented and the only way of quieting individuals so situated was with the reflection that there was a multitude of others who were tell- ing lies, or had lied ; and that such lying must be borne with, because numbers of their followers would be involved in an inextricable embarrassment if a serious construction were put upon the Solemn Obligation. 2 If the Solemn Obligation were to be accepted as effectively binding, and really to be acted upon, then the theological- scientific education of the sacerdotal order must be abandoned, and persons in authority restrict themselves to the formation of establishments for clerical candidates similar to the Dis- senters' academies in England. No theologian can, or will, any more seriously bind himself to the whole doctrine of the Augsburg Confession and Concordian formulas. The use which hitherto has been made of these by-gone rules of creed has been mainly polemical. Every one lays down the measure of the symbolical books upon that which he desires to denounce as heterodox ; but every one, at the same time, denies that his own doctrine is, when he departs from such a standard, to be decided by it. No one who is clothed with an official professional position can venture to stand against the torrent of modern exegesis ; and when, for example, Er- langen theologians vowed that there was no passage in the Bible could be expounded in a sense different from that 1 u Deutsche Zeitschrift," 1854, p. 200. * BRUN'S " Repertorium," viii. 134. DOCTRINE OF "JUSTIFICATION" ABANDONED. 293 which was laid down in the symbolical books, then " the Scripture Evidence" of Professor von Hofmann was pointed at ; and he then was, on all sides, accused of being a falsifier of the pure Lutheran doctrine of " Satisfaction," and "Justi- fication" and so did the same book serve to show that, at this time of day, neither the big nor the little flies will remain quiescently pendent in the spider's web of such Solemn Obligations. All are agreed in this that the main doctrine of the whole of the Confessional writings is that of "Justification;" that in that dogma Protestant antagonism to the Catholic system has its centre and its most pregnant expression. In it " the Reformation recognises its central point, its noblest jewel, its essential substance it is that wherewith Evangelical Christianity, founded upon the Gospel, stands and falls." 1 "No one understands anything of Christianity who has not a clear and vivid comprehension of this doctrine. This doctrine is, however, in its innermost core, destroyed in the Romish Church.'' 2 " In accordance therewith," says Hengstenberg's organ, " in every sermon must our banner be at least once unfurled." 3 " The doctrine of Justification," it is said in Erlangen, " is the permanent death that gnaws the bones of Catholics." 4 " It is the standard by which the whole of the Gospel must be interpreted, and every obscure passage ex- plained." 5 If now one should say to a religious member of the Ger- man (and especially on account of this doctrine self-styled "Evangelical") Church : "This doctrine is abandoned by the scientific theologians of Germany ; there is scarcely one theologian of any name who will stand up, in serious earnest- ness, and with a view to the inevitable consequence following from it, for this dogma of the Reformers and of the symbolical 1 KLING, in HERZOG'S " Encyklopiidie," xii. 582. 2 Thus writes F. W. KRUMMACHER in the u Halleschen Volksblatte," 1853, p. 203. ' " Evang. K.-Z.," vol. xlviii., pp. 415-416. 4 " Zeitschr. flir Protest.," vol. xxvi., p. 119. 5 Ibid., vol. xxix., p. 134. LUTHERANISM AND THE NEW THEOLOGY. books, and the Concordian formula in particular" if these words were so spoken, they would only provoke an incre- dulous and compassionate smile. And yet such is absolutely the fact. Already had Tholuck's "Literary Advertiser" (litterarischer Anzeiger) directed general attention to the unheard-of levity with which the article on " Justification" was at the present time treated j 1 so that what the Reformers had (as in the case of Osiander and others) rejected, was now declared to be the orthodox doctrine. And then it has been shown by Schneckenburger 2 that the new Lutheran theologians have disowned both the doctrine of Luther and the symbolical books, and have abandoned the main article of " Justification," or they have given to it a signification the very opposite to that which the first Reformers had de- sired or intended. And so it has come to pass, as he remarks, that there is but one theological writer, who can at the present time be named, who remains true to the old Lutheran doctrine, and that is Petri. 3 Since Schnecken- btirger's death the contradiction between the dogmatic and exegetical deductions of theologians, and between a general appeal to the " Confession," the " pure Doctrine," and the article of "the standing and falling Church," has become more sharp, harsh, and dissonant. A few years ago Kahnis, too, declared, "he recognised in the direction of the 'Union' theology (Nitzsch, Lange, Miiller, &c.) no theologians who stood on the basis of ' Justification through faith.'" Kahnis had, he said, to remark with respect to "Justification" first, that he held with the Lutheran theologians Martensen, Von Hofmann, Sartorius, and others ; and, secondly, that he had found himself formerly in a position like to theirs. 4 1 " Jahrg," 1848, p. 248. * " Vergleichende Darstellung des lutherischen und refofmirten Lehr- begriffs," 1855, ii. 38-45. * Although SCHNECKENBURGER is right, upon the whole, in his judg- ment of the Lutheran doctrine and theologians, still he has fallen into error when he ascribes to the Reformers an opposite doctrine, by hunting up a few theologians of the same confession, who held opinions opposite to the prevailing and adopted doctrine, and then putting those few for- ward as the real representatives of the Protestant Church doctrine. 4 " Die Lehre vom heiligen Geiste." Halle, 1847, p. 82. THEOLOGIANS OF THE NEW SCHOOL. 295 And here, if the author is not to be reproached with the introduction of what may be considered as superfluous, he would wish to cite the names of theologians, some living, and some dead, who were participators in the latest theolo- gical development, and who have abandoned the Protestant doctrine of " Justification," as it is set forth in the Concor- dian formula and the Heidelberg Catechism, and which was the prevailing doctrine until 1760. These theologians are Olshausen, Schleiermacher and his entire school, Heydenreich, Brandt, Nitzsch, Ullmann, Neander, Sartorius, Bahr, Schenkel, Martensen, Nagelsbach, J. T. Beck, Kollner, Schoberlein, Gerock, Hundeshagen, Richard Rothe, J. P. Lange, Ebrard, Von Hofmann, Julius Miiller, Lipsius, Beneke, Rennecke, Sack, Dorner, Kostlin, Baumgarten, Diisterdiek, Kurtz, Ackermann, Krehl, Schmid, Weizsacker, Kalchreuter, Krahner, Ge^s, Stier, Griineisen, Hagenbach, and De Wette. 1 This list could, upon more diligent examination, be certainly considerably enlarged. It indisputably embraces the most gifted individuals, and who, as the most profound investigators in Biblical learning, have especially imparted a new impulse to theology. And, as- suredly, many others might take their place by the side of those that have been named, if they had not preferred, upon such a subject as this, to content themselves with the hack- neyed phrases of " Justification by Faith," &c., &c. ; and at the same time carefully eschewed every close exposition and minute anatomization of the dogma. It has, indeed, been for some time customary to make an open avowal as to an adherence to the material principle of the Re- formation, and so to carry on a game with phrases, as if they 1 Even the theologians, -who pass in our days as the purest Lutherans, have not escaped the reproach of having fallen away from the Lutheran doctrine of " Justification." This has occurred with KLIEFOTH, (see " Zeitsch. fur luth. Theol.," 1854, p. 84), and so with Thomasius, Harless, and Preger (see KLIEFOTH'S " Kirchl. Zeitsch.," 1858, p. 404). Guerike, who has obtained, beyond all others, the praise of holding by the purest Lutheran orthodoxy, is shown in THOLUCK'S " Theol. Auzeiger," 1848, p. 322, &c., to have had in his description of the tl Justification" creed, in his " Symbolik" (2d Edit., 1846, p. 365), to have destroyed what was the leading idea of Luther and the Reformation. 296 A GAME WITH PHRASES. were so many counters ; whilst, as regards these phrases, no fixed ideas are attached to them, or different ideas are affixed to the same solemn words of " Justification by Faith." " Of what avail is it," says a theologian, " to Evangelical Christianity, if it confesses that it is only through faith that righteousness and salvation are attainable, when it is at the same time not agreed as to wherefore there is faith unto salvation." 1 Upon this point Schenkel is a remarkable example ; for he, upon every opportunity, repudiates the Eeformer's doctrine of Justification as untenable ; and then again can speak exactly like one of the mob of preachers upon the grand material principle of Protestantism ! Thus, too, Bunsen intimates that Justification alone through Faith has been translated out of the Semitic tongue into the Japhetic, and that it is " the principle of moral self- responsibility." 2 And very recently, Rossman, in his " Remarks upon the age of the Reformation," (" Betrachtung- en iiber das Zeitalter der Reformation,") made the discovery that every modern state is based upon the evangelical principle of Justification through Faith ! It is indisputably one of the most suggestive and, at the same time, widely comprehensive events in the later history of religion, that the doctrine which was peculiarly the foun- dation of the whole edifice of Protestant teaching should be scientifically prostrated completely to the earth. It is, in sooth, still a standing reproach for one theologian to make to another that it is sought to lead him into error, and to turn him away from the " Gospel," when the attempt is made to divert him from the pure doctrine of Justification by Faith. But then, when a person is compelled to propound a scientific exposition of the dogma, and when general phrases can no longer be employed, then there regularly is brought into view a doctrine which Reformers and the genuine followers of Luther denounce as " Pa'pistical" or " Arminian." 1 LOWE in the " Gbttinger Monatschrift fiir Theol. und Kirche," 1851, p. 336. Also HASE, "Die Entwicklung des Protestantismus," 18o5, p. 19, speaks openly upon the contradiction between the now widely ex- tended notion of Justification through Faith and the orthodox doctrine. * " Hippolytus," i. 339. MEANS USED TO UPHOLD THE LUTHERAN DOGMA. 297 Exegetic theology in Germany has become so powerful, and distinguished expounders of the Bible have still so high a scientific reputation to maintain, that the repulsion of this theology to the expositions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, is an impossibility. Not a few of the modern exegetists have, with the very best intentions, attempted to connect together the doctrines of the Reformers and the Bible. With such intentions they went to work; but their labour came to naught ! The staff is broken upon which they leant who sought to render the Confessional writings again available ; and the toil has been vain of those who have sought to restore the old Protestant creed, and to re-animate the faith at one period placed in the symbolical books. Even the distinctive appellation of "Evangelical," has no longer its right signification ; for what was mea,nt at the time of the Reformation by that word was the t( Imputation " doctrine, with all its consequences. And yet all things were attempted, and all, too, ventured, for the purpose of upholding this " article of a standing and falling Church ! " It was for the sake of this that the Epistle of St. James was pronounced to be " an epistle of straw ;" and it was for the sake of this that in the Augsburg Confession, laid before the Emperor and the Empire, the barefaced falsehood was promulgated, that this doctrine had previously been maintained by St. Augustine; and when Melancthon, out of sheer down-right shame, had omitted it from an edition of the Confession, still it was despite of most earnest protests on the part of a few theologians again (in 1576) foisted into the text of the Confession! For the sake also of this doctrine, had Luther deliberately and purposely given a mistranslation of several passages in the Bible, and especially of the Epistles of St. Paul ; it was, too, to uphold this, his favourite dogma, that the great Re- former interpolated fanciful expressions of his own, that were foreign to, and altogether undiscoverable in, the original text. The Reformers went further. For the purpose of being able to preserve and maintain an article of faith which was utterly unknown to all Christian antiquity, a breach was 298 NOVELTY OF THE DOCTRINE. made with all ecclesiastical tradition, and the authority of the dogmatic testimony of the Church in every age rejected. " This," says Julius Mtiller, " must be openly admitted, by every unprejudiced historical investigation, that not merely the ecclesiastical theology of the middle ages, but even the Patristic theology of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, are, upon every point that is a matter of dispute between Catholicism and Protestantism, more on the side of the former than of the latter." 1 If Miiller intended to intimate that this important fact lay concealed from the men of the Reformation, viz., thnt their doctrine was at variance with that which was main- tained in the first centuries of Christianity, he is partly ri<rht, that is, he is so far right in this, that the fact was carefully concealed from the people that the laity did not know any- thing about it; but it was far otherwise in the narrow circle of the Reformers, because there the circumstance was openly adverted to. Melancthon declared in his letter to Brenz that what he had maintained for the German Protestants in the Augsburg Confession was an untruth. Luther had fre- quently and frankly avowed that his doctrine was quite dif- ferent from any to be found in the most ancient Churches ; and hence it was that he contemned the Fathers, as witnesses to what was the Ancient Church doctrine. His labours to lower, so far as he possibly could, in public estimation, the authority of the Ancient Councils, were plainly in corre- spondence with the consciousness of their being adverse to his doctrine. The same thing has been acknowledged by Calvin, viz. that the new doctrine of " Justification " was neither to be found in tradition nor amongst the Fathers. And when the United Theologians and preachers of Rostock, in a written appeal to the preachers of the cities of Liibeck, Hamburg, and Liineburg, declare " That as to the articles of ' Free Will,' ' Grace,' and ' Justification,' the teaching of or- thodox antiquity is in complete concordance with that men- tioned by Catholic theologians" 2 when such a circumstance, 1 "Deutsche Zeitschrift," July, p. 214. * See BERTRAM'S u Evangel. Liineburg," p. 271. They remark that there are only a few passages in the later -writings of Augustine and STAHL'S VIEW. 299 we say, as this occurs, then it is plain that those who really are theologians indulge in no illusions upon these points. But then when persons are speaking before the world another, and quite a different, form of language is used. A something, however, must be said upon this point, and what it is may be surmised from the view which Stahl takes of it, viz. " Imputed righteousness is the mystery which contains the innermost essence of the Christian religion, and the fulness of Divine Light; and it is only through the Re- formation that this Divine Light was shed upon the spirit of mankind." 1 And this doctrine it is which peculiarly qualifies Prosper (upon the irresistible operation of Grace). They are an excep- tion to the Catholic and Ancient Church doctrine. 1 HESGSTENBERG'S " K.-Z.," 1853, pp. 324-325. The theologians of modern times are in the habit of avoiding the use of the expression " im- puted righteousness" as a distinction from true, interiorly affected " righteousness." The discourse is ever only of the righteousness by faith, justification through faith. This designation, however, in the mouth of a Protestant is so much the more inapplicable and deceptive, as it is the Catholic Church that has been peculiarly competent to show how faith, operating through love, has been found to be right in the sight of God; whilst, on the other hand, according to the old Protestant system, it is not faith, but the imputation of the sufferings of Christ, which makes man appear justified before God, or that the process of justification is therewith fulfilled, that God attributes to man the suffer- ings and the fulfilment of the law by Christ, as if man himself had yielded the same obedience, and that man, through faith, knows and be- comes assured of this imputation. By such a mode of comprehending the subject, man is justified in a very vague manner merely through the means of a very forced figure of speech ; so that one can only be said to be justified through faith, as it might be affirmed " that he had eaten a full meal because he had handled a fork." But what service the imputa- tion doctrine can confer upon individuals or the community may be in- ferred from the following words of VILMAR : " Even in Luther, despite of all the boundless graces bestowed upon him, there is sin and sin never to be justified. But we see in him not sin, but to the sinner imputed righteousness through faith in the one Redeemer, Jesus Christ ; and all have heard what He has said, that through this imputed righteousness is alone to be judged what may, in man's whole existence, happen, or apparently occur to him. Take away this imputed righteousness, let us not see it, and then nought remains of him but the weakest sinner, and in all his thoughts the wildest nonsense that the dreariest of madcaps ever devised." " Zeitschr. fiir huh. Theol.," 1848, p. 234. 300 PROTESTANTISM IN A DILEMMA. the Lutheran Church to hold a high position in the Catho- licity of its doctrine of that Catholicity which, as he says, ever consists in God-appointed doctrine and ordinance, and in being the bond of Christianity for all places and through all times, and in opposition to human invented error, which never has been universally accepted. 1 In the author's judgment the importance of the subject here mentioned can scarcely be too highly appreciated. Here upon the one side stand Luther, Melancthon, Calvin, and their disciples, the Protestant Confessional writings, and the combined Lutheran and Calvinistic theology of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They all have professed to find that doctrine which we for brevity sake name "the doctrine of Imputation," laid down distinctly in the Bible. On the other side is the newer and the latest theology, the whole modern scientific exegesis, and it rejects the doctrine, it re- jects the Reformation exposition of fragmentary Bible pas- sages as false and untenable. But it .is a supreme evangeli- cal principle, that the Scripture is perfectly clear and suffi- cient on all fundamental points. How, then, is this funda- mental difference to be cleared up ? And thereby is con- cerned a doctrine which, as everyone admits, has an incalcu- lable influence upon Christian consciousness and ecclesiastical life a doctrine (by the admission or confession of many Protestant theologians), that had formerly been a source of destruction to countless beings, and has caused a desola- tion of the Churches, of which persons formerly had no fore- thougrht. The whole edifice of the Protestant Church and O theology reposes, therefore, on two principles one material, the other formal : the doctrine of Imputation, and the suffi- ciency of the Bible. But the material principle is given up by exegesis and dogmatic theology; and as to the formal principle, for the sufficiency of the Bible, or even for the inspiration of the writings of the disciples of the Apostles, not the shadow of a scriptural argument can be adduced. The time will, it must, come when the whole vast importance of this matter will excite universal attention. To such 1 " Die lutherische Kirche," 1859, p. 452. 1MPOTENCY OP PREACHING. 301 serious thought must the experience which has now been gone through force the attention of those who, in driving Rationalism out of the pulpit, and re-establishing a Protest- ant believing body of preachers, have found the experiment not correspond with their expectations. " For a long time," says Baumgarten, 1 " persons might entertain the notion that it was Rationalism made our churches empty, and our preaching unattended to. But now since Christ crucified is again preached, and yet no serious effect, upon the whole, is to be observed, it is necessary to abandon this mistake, and not to conceal from ourselves that preaching is unable to revive religious life." " The impotency of the present preaching," he continues, " is still more appalling, when it is generally known and confessed that those who could testify to the extreme depth of the degradation to which it has descended, refrain from telling the entire of its evil conse- quences." Delitzsch has confirmed the testimony given by Baumgarten. "It is," he says, "indeed true that the nullity of results from preaching is one of the saddest circumstances of the day." 2 And there have of late been many Councils held as to the causes of this deplorable fact. The Berlin meeting of the Evangelical Alliance occupied itself a good deal with this theme. " Wherefore," it was asked, " has it come to pass that, despite of a restoration of theology to the Ecclesiastical Confessions, there should be exhibited so little of spiritual life amongst the congregations ?" Professor Krafft, who delivered a lecture on the subject, has recognised some of the causes of the evil. He has said, and that, too, plainly enough, that the doctrine of the symbolical books had, at a former period, effected " the downfall of all spiritual life ; and persons, therefore, must not be surprised, if its renewal at the present moment should bear similar fruit." 3 The preacher Beyschlag, of Caiisruhe, who, immediately after KrafFt, addressed the meeting, has spoken still more clearly on the same theme, 1 " Nachtgesichte des Sacharias," 1855, ii. 12 1, et seq. 3 " Erlang. Zeitschr. fur Protestantismus," 1858, p. 305. 3 " Verhandlungen," p. 186. 302 CONDITION OF PROTESTANT CONGREGATIONS. which he referred to as " the most peculiarly pressing and urgent ecclesiastical question of the time." 1 The whole calamity of the Protestant Church up to this very day was "itsone-sided creed confession 1 ' the"dead orthodoxy," with its doctrine of " Sanctification." 2 "Out of it Rationalism had naturally sprung; and the revival of this orthodoxy has become a chronic Church epidemic, seizing upon and carrying off great numbers of the clergy." Naturally, these declarations, as to the phenomenon, were repudiated by many; but, then, as to the fact itself, all were unanimous. And even at meetings of preachers (for instance, the Berliners, in 1858, and the Saxons, at Gnadau, in 1859), held consultations about it. Lately, too, the ten- dency towards which the faithful were inclining was com- plained of even in a Palatinate ecclesiastical journal. 3 " If," as it said, "one looks closely into the condition of individual congregations, to whom, for long years, the Gospel has been preached in its simplicity and purity, it will be found that the Word seems to have fallen on land covered with thorns, or upon a stony soil, or upon the hard-beaten highway ;" and in such a complaint is involved the strongest demand for subjecting the so-called "Evangelical Gospel" itself to a revision. In logical connection with the Imputation doctrine stands the Reformation apprehension of " the four last things" The old Lutheran and Calvinistic doctrine was, that every man, upon his death, instantly either attained to the happiness of Heaven, or was thrust down into Hell. An indispensable absolution and purification from sin was regarded as a species of physical process, and lay in death and the corruption of the body so that, as a modern writer has remarked, " all that was wanting to Death was the name of a Sacrament, and to join it on to, and make it the completion of, the other two." 4 1 " Verhandlungen," p. 194. In the same manner in which the " justitia forensis" was branded by him, was the old essentially Protestant doctrine referred to. See p. 195. 3 u Evangelischer Reichsbote," 1859, " Neujahrswort." 4 FRIES, in the " Jahrbiichern fur deutsche Theol.," i. 304. I do not understand how KLIEFOTH (" Liturg. Abhandlungen," i. 169) can make DEFECT OF THE OLD SYSTEM RECOGNIZED. 303 At the time of the Reformation, and even up to the end of the last century, the people were very ready to accept this notion, which the lightness of faith, and Declaration Acts, made appear to them as alike suitable and consolatory. Truly, indeed, as Professor Neumann has complained, "has the doing away of every species of communion between the living and the dead mainly led the mass of Protestants to the very brink of doubt in everlasting life." 1 From it has arisen that general beatification, and that pestilent mischief of funeral sermons, which have, in no slight degree, contri- buted to a moral and religious torpor, and to the wide-spread frivolous delusion, as to man's ascension into Heaven being alike instantaneous and easy of accomplishment." 2 Theologians have now recognised the sad defect of the old system ; and even zealous Lutherans cannot venture to fall back upon this point to the views promulgated by the early Reformers. Hence, for some time back, the necessity has been perceived for adopting a half-way manner of explaining it as has been done, for example, by Kern, Fries, Girgensohn, and others. And then, as to a question connected therewith that is, " If prayer for the dead was permissible or advis- able ? " that is put to rest as an undecided point. Every preacher has, concerning it, either his own settled opinion, or none ! That which, in some places, it is recommended to the laymen to do, is, in other places, exposed to a severe censure. The old Lutheran theologians consistently declared that prayers for the departed were altogether useless. 3 The Prussian Agenda has adopted the practice, whilst, at the same time, in accordance with the example given by the Anglican Church Liturgy, it assures the hearers of the sal- vation of the deceased, and that he is indubitably in the full possession of beatitude ; and hence its prayers may be Rationalism responsible for what had previously been the doctrine of the Reformers. 1 " Zeitschrift fur luth. Theologie," 1852, 282. * See upon this point the recollections of MAYWAHLEN in the Preface to his book, " Der Tod." Berlin, 1854. * KLIEFOTH'S " Liturg. Abhandlungen," i. 311. 304 FORMS OF CHRISTIAN WORSHIP. regarded as an insignificant formula. Besides this, there are to be found amongst clergymen, as in Wiirtemberg, no few adherents to the doctrine of a restoration of all things for O example, the prelate Kapff and these persons, in their innocence! do not perceive that they thus shatter to pieces the old Protestant system, and do not leave one stone of it resting upon another ! In Divine Service, the doctrine of a Church gives a form to its religious aspect. If there is in a Church a sound and harmonious relation between doctrine and life, between the clergy and the laity, it manifests itself in the appro- priateness of the Divine Service, and the participation of the people. There are not more, it may be said, than three possible modes of a Christian form of worship. Either the sermon constitutes the main portion and centre of the worship, so that the remainder, hymn and prayer, are merely subservient assistants. Or, the main act of worship is a Liturgy, in which there is a reading aloud of passages of Scripture and forms of prayer. Or, in the third, the worship is an actual celebration of the whole work of Redemption a Communion, in which all who are present participate in the complete act of the Lord's Supper, and in which each of the whole com- munity offers himself up, with Christ, a victim to the Father as the most perfect form of adoration to the Almighty God. The first form is indisputably the most suitable to the old and true Protestantism ; the second is that which has been chosen by the English Established Church, and though pleasing to the higher classes, is not so universally acceptable to the populace ; the third is the form of worship of the ancient Church, and of the ecclesiastical communities which have maintained their continuity, either without interruption or essential change such as t'he Catholic, the Greek, the Russian, and the Monophysite Churches in Asia and Africa. In Protestant Germany, the sermon has always had the absolute masterdom. The Divine Service is a preachment service, and its Church peculiarly and especially a lecture- PROTESTANT CONGREGATIONAL PASSIVITY. 305 room, or a school. It became an accepted maxim with its theologians, that without a sermon there could be no real Divine Service. In the same measured progress in which this opinion advanced, it was found that, without any pre- concert, and without any visible influence of one national Church upon another, the few liturgical pieces which had been at the first used in Divine Service, began to disappear from amongst the congregations in all parts of Germany. 1 And this impoverishment of the Divine Service was thus shewn to be a perfectly natural circumstance, for it was one in complete correspondence with the Protestant mode of thought and feeling. The consequence of this practice was first, that the con- gregations were, for their edification, in subjectivity to the clergy ; secondly, that the complete passivity of the people in the Divine Service became the characteristic mark of Protestant worship. Theologians themselves have admitted " that at no period has there been found the same rank deficiency of congregational energy amongst Catholics as in the midst of Protestants." 2 " The Evangelical Church," says another, " repudiates every semblance of the office and order of priesthood, and yet transfers the whole of the Divine Service into the hands of a preacher, and affords to him a proportionately higher power, and a far more exclusive representation of the whole congregation, than the Romish Church has ever conceded to one of its priests." 3 Hence the attendance on Divine Service is altogether dependent upon the popularity of the preacher ; and hence persons are accustomed to say, " I no longer go to church to him" A third points out the contradiction that arises between the numerous discourses of a priesthood and the immobility of 1 GRUNEISEX, "Die Evang. Gottesdienstordnung." Stuttgart, 1856, p. 41. He shows how naturally it came to pass in Wiirtemberg since the sixteenth century, until at length its Divine service had not its equal for " poverty and partiality." * BAHR, " Begriindung einer Gottesdienstordnung." Karlsruhe, 1856, p. 154. * REES VON ESENBECK, " Der christl. Gottesdienst," 1854, p. 161. X 306 UNDUE IMPORTANCE OF PREACHING. the congregations, who never say even an "Amen" to the prayers offered up for them, but merely let themselves be talked at ; and it is affirmed -that the much lauded and often praised simplicity of the Protestant Divine Service should be most properly described as " poverty-stricken" and " monotonous," and not only imparting an impression of " dryness," but also as being characterized with " weakness, weariness, and somnolency." 1 And it has come to this, that, by the admission of the clergy themselves, they have no longer congregations, but merely a public audience, and that audience chooses the preacher it prefers fancying him for his voice, manners, and attitudes running after him who best suits its own notions, and then forsaking him if he has exhausted his gifts as an orator, or has ceased to be the fashionable. And there is also the declaration of a very calamitous fact of visits to the Church being barren of fruit, of being negligently paid, and so the churches left empty. " The community," says a Prussian clergyman, " are sickened with sermons ; and the multitude has become tired, at last, of having always to go to school!" 2 In such circumstances, it is a remarkable symptom of the present state of affairs viz. the experiment at an intrusion upon the territory of the Divine Service, such as had never before been attempted. For three hundred years there never had been so much written upon the same topic as within the last ten or twenty years. 3 The first species of aid that presented itself, naturally, was to increase the number of hymns and prayers, such as has happened in Prussia since the introduction of the liturgical element. But then this fact has come out on all sides namely, that the churches are really only visited by the public for the sake of the sermon. The singing and the Divine service are neglected, and it is only a short time previous to the delivery 1 SCHOBERLEIN, " Ueber den liturgischen Ausbau," 1859, p. 83. * CUNZ, " Das geistliche Amt und der Pastorenstand," p. 60. 3 BAIIR, p. 1. LACK OF SOLEMN FESTIVALS. 307 of the sermon that the churches begin to fill. Such is cer- tainly the case in all Saxony. 1 And then wherever the " Agenda" is introduced, there is the same account to be given of the behaviour of the people. " In North and Middle Germany," says Zittel, " I have often had the opportunity of remarking how three fourths of the church visitors only began to enter the church when the liturgy was over, and that immediately after the sermon they again left it. 2 Even the General Superintendent Hofmann has remarked that in most cases congregations exhibit not the slightest par- ticipation in the Service during the Liturgy, or they are merely represented in the children's choir. 8 There is an awful lack of the solemn festivals of the Catholic Church, in which each great festival is symbolically individualised, and adapts itself in a life-like manner to the popular sentiment and feeling. The Protestant Church, on the other hand, " which has an absolute horror of all sym- bolical significations in its Divine service," and therefore, as it is said by a clergyman of that church, " there is in our festivals something so monotonous, and in all their physiog- nomies something so similar, that they can neither be dis- tinguished from one another, nor from the usual Sunday services." 4 And then, if an alteration be attempted, and a symbolical element introduced, the same fate overtakes it as befell the attempt to make the people kneel down during Divine service that is, it is almost everywhere put an end to. 5 The preachers and the Consistories were perfectly willing again to introduce the practice ; but the population refused with the declaration " Kneeling is a Catholic prac- tice." It was further desired that Protestant churches should be not merely stations for preaching, but also houses of prayer ; 6 for they were in this respect in such a scandalous 1 HENGSTENBERG'S "K.-Z.," 1858, p. 1114. 2 HUNDESHAGEN, " Der Badische Agendenstreit." Frankfort, 1859, p. 13. * MESSXER'S u Kirch. -Ztg.," 1860, p. 105. * ZITTEL, " Zustande," &c., p. 236. 5 SCHOBERLEIN, " Ueber den liturg. Ausbau." Gotha, 1859, pp. 329, 330. "Erlang. Zeitsch.," vol. xxv., p. 185. x2 308 CATHOLICISING THE PROTESTANT SERVICE. condition, that "one could not bring a heathen inside of them without blushing for shame." 1 They seemed but to be intended for a brief assembling together. The only use to which they were applied was for a meeting of an hour or two's duration every eight days. The people did nothing for the adornment of their churches ; they were nothing more, in public estimation, than " the stone houses in which the preacher made a speech on Sundays," and they were regarded as quite good enough for that purpose. But here is a point on which advice is of no use. If there were another service in the course of the week, it would be only another sermon over again, and the people (it was generally acknowledged) had already had quite enough of preaching. And then there is the fact that it is only within the last ten or twenty years that there ever had been in many places Divine service in the middle of the week. But then there was another mode of proceeding one, however, that has not yet been introduced and that will not be attempted, because of the universal opposition it would provoke, but that still in theory is recommendable and that is, in accordance with the custom in the old church, to make the Holy Communion the main part and centre of the Divine service, and therewith to recognise and exalt the character of the Victim in this Holy Action. Such a course is now recommended by the most illustrious of the theologians by Kliefoth, Hengstenberg, Hofling, Sartorius, Harnack, Lb'he, Kahnis, Bachmann, &c. And here is to be noted an essential difference between Lutheranism and Calvinism that the Lutherans in their churches have an altar, and thereby at least intimate the desire for a Sacrifice and its admissibility ; whilst the Calvinists have only a common table for their celebration of the Lord's Supper. 2 This Sacrifice theory is, however, an open repudiation of real Protestantism, for its originators and promoters, when they proceed seriously with the subject, are compelled to abandon the name of " Lu- therans." And sharp reproaches have not failed to be made HEXGSTEXBERG'S "K.-Z.," 1857, p. 529. 1 GOBEL'S " Reform. K.-Z.," 1855, p. 167. PROTESTANT DIFFICULTIES. 309 against such theologians for their " Mass-Sacrifice theory," and with respect to their " catholicising." l There is a very pressing necessity felt as to the restoration of the fitting, celebration of Sunday devotion, and impressing upon the people an attendance upon Divine service as a sacred duty. But here again every struggle is impeded by Protestant principles, which rise up in the way as insur- mountable obstacles. Kraussold, 2 Liebetrut, and others, have shown that the principles of the Reformation have rendered it impossible to found upon them an obligation to the solemn observance of the Sabbath. The Sabbath has fallen with the Mosaic law ; the Sunday is not to be found commanded as a Holy Day in the New Testament ; the Church has no higher authority to introduce such a Holy Day : to its commands, therefore, there is as little obedience due (through Evan- gelical freedom) as to its Ordinances respecting Fasting, Confession, and so forth. How, then, is it possible to make . a Protestant population comprehend that they are bound to the observance of the Sunday as a Holy Day? The numberless councils for the last thirty years that have been held upon this question have, as a matter of course, only served to establish the complete impossibility of solving it. Already has a demand been made to change the Lutheran translation of the Bible ; but when the people seek there for a passage upon the Sunday, and upon the obligation to observe it holy, and can find no such thing, then the preacher by his interposition will not be able to afford much help in getting out of the difficulty. 3 A similar difficulty manifests itself in the case of the Baptists, who form a considerable and constantly increasing fraction of Protestant Christianity. It is now admitted on all sides that neither a command of Christ nor of the Apostles can be cited in support of Infant Baptism. At the Church Assembly at Frankfort, in the year 1854, space was afforded 1 See " Studien und Kritiken," 1836, p. 472. * " Drei Kapitel iiber die Sonntagsfeier." Erlangen, 1850. 8 " Deutsche Zeitschrift," 1855, p. 273. 310 HELPLESSNESS OF THE CLERGY. for the reception of the Baptists present, by the declaration of the President, that "Infant Baptism was one of those problems that had not yet been fully solved." And there have been a few theologians, such as Ebrard, who would much rather yield the point and abandon Infant Baptism, so that the principle of the literal interpretation of the Bible may be preserved, and persons not be compelled to recognise the authority of the Church. For years persons have, in Conferences and Church Assemblies, been labouring at the double question of Infant Baptism and Baptism by effusion or aspersion, without being able to make one step in advance. But this is not all: Even as regards Marriage and the Nuptial Benediction there are now assertions set up, from which, in point of fact, all that can be said 6r inferred is, that those who make them would, if they could, support them by Scriptural quotations. Thus, a short time ago, the Lutheran Pastoral Conference at Ravensberg, amongst others, adopted a resolution to the effect, " That the Church cannot acknowledge any real marriage without Ecclesiastical Benediction." 1 At the same time, it was declared to be the determination of the Assembly to enter a Protest against all civil marriages within the Church, and to excommunicate everyone who entered into a civil marriage. It may easily be guessed what answer these pastors would be able to give if a layman had called upon them for Scriptural proofs in sustainment of such propositions. The utter helplessness of the clergy in their relations with their congregations in general, as well as individual members the fact that at present the pulpit is the only place from which, and the sole means through which, the preacher can exercise any effective influence all these things have attracted the attention of many to the two most deeply felt defects of ecclesiastical life : and these are a want in the care of souls and of Church discipline. Upon the possibility and the urgency of attempting a restoration of both, there has 1 "Darmstadt K.-Ztg.," 1859, No. xxxiv. PRIVATE CONFESSION. 311 been much both thought and written. Almost every assembly of preachers is occupied especially with the ques- tion of Church discipline, of which the last remnants have long since disappeared. And then it has been thoroughly recognised that "a cure of souls" can be only attainable when the souls show themselves as they really are to their clergyman make themselves known to him seek for and desire his advice and special guidance ; and the only means by which such objects are attainable is through confession. " The Confessional," says Kliefoth, "is the place ordained for the cure of souls." 1 The practice of "Confession" has, however, disappeared from all parts of Germany. The preacher now announces a general absolution from the pulpit, without even the form of a confession of sins being gone through or acknowledged and admitted by an affirmation on the part of the congregation. Every attempt to facilitate a revival of the practice of Confession instantly encounters a determined opposition on the part of the people. 2 " Private Confession," it is said, in the Protestation of the Augsburg Protestants against the Orders of the Upper Consistory, in the year 1856, "is, con- sidering the position of Evangelical clergymen, and their con- nection with family life, an institution that would be abso- lutely intolerable." " The people," say the Erlangen Theolo- 1 " Liturgische Abhandlungen," ii. 496. * The following report from Riga shows what are the means employed to render it impossible for preachers to have a real " cure of souls" : " The office of the clergyman as a spiritual director the cure of souls is here, as with us elsewhere, fallen into desuetude. People have long since desisted from making the clergyman the confidential depository of their spiritual condition. The moment it is suggested, then there is a notion of ' auricular confession,' ' priestcraft,' ' tyrannizing over con- sciences,' &c., &c., &c. Many would, upon being noticed in making a nearer approach to the clergy, be warned, as if they were upon the point of abandoning the evangelical faith and becoming Catholics." " Kirch - liche Vierteljahrsschrift," Berlin, 1845, p. 166. Cunz and others had remarked that when a person in Protestant districts happened to ask a question as to "who was the spiritual director of the place?" he re- ceived as an answer, " There are no Catholics here, and the only clergy- man here is a preacher." 312 DOCTRINE OF A UNIVERSAL PRIESTHOOD. gians, "never have had confidence in their clergymen as Father-Confessors." 1 It is, then, no longer possible to re- establish "Confession" in any form whatever not even in the old Lutheran fashion, whereby all that was done was to recite to the preacher "a General Confession of Sins," which was either got off by heart, or read out from a piece of paper even that, the easiest, most commodious, and most imperfect form of Confession one, too, of which conscientious clergy- men in the seventeenth century, had such a horror, that they declared " the Lutheran mode of making confessions was the plague of their Church " -well ! even that can be never more introduced and established. Every attempt must be wrecked upon the rock of that prime and darling doctrine of " a universal priesthood," by means of which everyone is made his own priest and teacher, and stands in need of no intermediary, no witness, and no office, but can, with a clear, unswerving conscience, absolve himself of his own sins ! So has it at all times been held in every Calvinistic Reformed Church, and consequently there is nothing less thought of in " the Union " than the revival of Confession. " Of what avail to me is mine own priesthood," says a Protestant lay- man, "if I must first be assured by a pastor, who knows nothing of the state of my soul, that my sins have been for- given me ?" The power of dispensing with every species of priestly intercession "the directness of a communication with Christ" is, as it has been in various modes already expressed, that which, connected with the Imputation doc- trine, makes (with many) the Protestant religion far prefer- able to the Catholic. 2 For the purpose of winning an assent to the possibility of establishing a sacerdotal, sin-absolving office and to induce persons again to recognise (that which is alike strange and foreign to the notions both of preachers and laymen in the world of Protestantism) an individual really having a cure of souls there has been devised a portrait of a universal priesthood, which very closely resembles the Catholic view, 1 " Zeitschr. fiir Protest.," vol. xxi., p. 52. * See, for example, the "Deutsche Zeitschrift," 1857, p. 66. MEANS OF ENFORCING CHURCH DISCIPLINE. 313 and is the very opposite of that which Luther drew at the commencement of his career. This has been done by Henjjstenbenj, 1 amongst others. But all such theories have o o/ o not the slightest influence in practical life. And so, too, every hope and expectation must be aban- doned, of ever seeing " Church discipline" in any form what- soever introduced. As to " Confession," and " discipline " exercised through the practice of Confession, there cannot be as much as one word spoken. And so there finally remain as means of enforcing discipline "an exclusion from the Communion table, and the refusal of Christian burial." As to the first means, it is inapplicable, because of the indiffer- ence there is felt with respect to the Sacrament of the Altar ; and the general negligence in attending it is one of the crying evils of the Church at the present moment. From various quarters it is reported that the number of those par- taking of the Lord's Supper is constantly declining more and more, 2 and that even the most of those well disposed towards the Church content themselves with Communion once in a year. 3 " Hundreds of thousands of Evangelical Christians," says Friihbuss, 4 " are self-excommunicated, and will have absolutely nothing to say or do with the Sacrament of the Altar." There are numberless others who, from a scruple of conscience, or from the Unionist mode of adminis- tering the Sacrament, will not participate in it. And so, it may be seen that there are, in the Church, vast numbers against whom " an exclusion from the Sacrament " could not be employed for the purpose of enforcing Church discipline. The matter, however, is still worse as regards " Christian burial." In the North, the custom is entirely abandoned of the clergymen accompanying the body of the deceased to the grave. 5 In Hamburg, for instance, interments take 1 See his expressions in his u Kirchen-Zeitung," 1852, p. 19, and on the " Catechismus Romanus," pp. 2, 7, 22. 2 BAUMGARTEN, u Der Kirkliche Nothstand in Mecklenburg," 1861, p, 41. HENGSTENBERG'S " K.-Ztg.," 1858, p. 1115. 4 " Ueber Wiederbelebung der Kirchenzucht." Breslau, 1859, p. 50. 4 " Berlin Kirchenzeitung," 1844, No. Ixiii. 314 EXCESS OF PREACHING. place without any participation on the part of the ecclesias- tical authorities. 1 "In town and country," says Friihbuss, "it is the rule not to have a religious burial, when one wishes to avoid payment of fees. The poor people, looking to a saving of expenses, pray for permission to have " a quiet funeral." From this practice has arisen a general notion that a quiet funeral " a still burial," that is, one divested of ecclesiastical ceremonies is much " more solemn ;" and so it is regarded as the prerogative of persons distinguished for learning and science, and has become a privilege of many orders in society. 2 In Prussia, it has been moreover re- marked that, if Church discipline were once again actively enforced, and that the most important canons of the Primi- tive Church were put into execution, the most of those who are now discharging the duties of educational professors, and three-fourths of the Pastors, would be put at once under a ban of excommunication. 3 The Protestant Church in Germany has no room for a multiplicity of offices and vocations. Every one who enters into its service must be a preacher must make that his main occupation ; and he is, therefore, exposed to all the temptations and mischiefs which a constant call for public speaking must inevitably entail upon him. " He may, or he may not, have gifts for his office," says Karsten, " but still he must preach ; and by that which he least understands will the measure of his capability be taken ; whilst that which he really does thoroughly comprehend, in the existing condition of his office, he cannot make use of for the benefit of the congregation." 4 " And then, how very few, in fine, will be found to be the number of really good preachers ! If we 1 HENGSTENBERG'S "K.-Z.," 1857, p. 60. 2 KLIEFOTH'S " Liturg. Abhandlungen," i. 201. FRUHBTJSS, p. 68, remarks, that in Berlin a few cigar-smokers are preferred to pastors as attendants upon the bodies of the deceased. * FRUHBUSS, p. 61. 4 "Die protest. Kirche," p. 54. CANDIDATES FOE HOLY ORDERS. 315 reckon them up, we shall discover that not one-tenth part of the clergy are suited to be preachers." 1 Hence comes the prevalence of a conventional style of speaking, of traditional cues, hollow phrases, and theological inanities, upon which, if one attempts to lay hold, they are found to elude the grasp like a vaporous mist. The universal domination of mere phraseology has attained to an unexampled height amongst modern German homilists. " Shall we never have done," exclaims the preacher Hoyer, "with the awful chattering of contemporary theology, which, like a bewilder- ing demon, has seized hold of our poor students, walks with them in their official duties, and talks with them in their sermons ; and when it cannot render them unintelligible, is yet able to make them spiritless, tame, and disagreeable?" 2 For a very long time, the wretched condition of candidates for holy orders has been discussed in writings, and debated in public conferences. " We are," say the complaints of candidates for the office of preachers, "after we have terminated our academical studies, for the best part of our lives (very generally for fifteen years) excluded from the service of the Church. We must become tutors in public schools or private families for many years, and when we, at last, and at a late period of life, attain the position of preacher, we then find that occupations ' not in accordance with our vocation' have estranged us from it. 3 " Without any immediate connection with the Church," so describes Schmieder their position, "without any cohesion amongst themselves, they wander about, isolated, homeless, often without any means of livelihood, a prey to want utterly hopeless ! The Church leaves them to their fate ! How many candidates have been overwhelmed through this pressure of circumstances upon them, and have silently been destroyed by their misery ! 4 A person has only to compare the organ- ization of the Protestant Church with the Catholic, where 1 Cuxz, "Das geistliche Amt.," p. 51. 2 " Zeitschrift fur luth. Theologie," 1855, 295. 8 LANDSCHREIBER, " Die Kirkliche Situation." Leipzig, 1860, p. 80. 4 " Verhandlungen des Kirchentags zu Elberfeld," p. 57. . 316 DOMESTIC CARES OF THE CLERGY. every young man, the moment his preparatory studies are completed, finds his. fitting employment in the service of the Church ; a person has only to make this comparison, and he will at once discover where lies the root of the evil so generally complained of." It is well known that every candidate, so soon as he has obtained a position affording the necessary means for the maintenance of a family, enters into the state of marriage. Then anxiety respecting his income, and care concerning his wife and children, become the main affairs of life ; and what a state of dependence and slavishness is inextricably bound up with his domestic circumstances, is briefly and graphi- cally portrayed by Schenkel. 1 " There arises," he justly observes, " a species of demoralization, which is an unavoid- able concomitant of his condition, and compels him to be ever sufficiently prudent, so as not to give offence to person- ages of influence. This incompetent, inadequate, thought- smothering, unprotestant institution has had such a character- degrading effect in our German Protestant Church." The opinion thus expressed is not incorrect ; but then, that the questionable institution is unprotestant, is an opinion so far from being correct, that it may, on the contrary, be affirmed that it is one of the consequences naturally developed by the Reformation. Then there have been large districts and parishes of two, three, and four thousand souls, with two such parishes united in one, in order that a suitable maintenance might be pro- vided for "the families" (of the clergymen). And yet the pressure of want is felt more and more by such " families " every year. Thus, the Schleswig Consistory, in an Appeal made in the year 1858, had complained that " there had lately been many parishes in which no one could venture to take upon himself the office of .pastor, for the clergymen in them were in such constant anxiety to procure a sufficiency of daily bread for their families, that they had lost all satis- faction in the discharge of their parochial duties, and were 1 " Die Erneuerung der deutschen evangelischen Kirche." Gotha, 1860, p. 55. THEIR DEPENDENT CONDITION. 317 destitute of that ease of mind requisite for a proper per- formance of them." 1 On all sides the description becomes still more gloomy of " the destitution of the parish clergy," of the increasing household expenditure of their " families," and of their incomes at the same time either remaining the same, or diminishing. It has been the custom to bestow the highest eulogies upon the prerogative of the clergy of the Evangelical Confession, that they, as husbands and fathers of families, were identified with laymen in their mode of life, united with them in social intercourse, and therefore form- ing no particular order in society, and belonging not to a distinct " caste," and so being, in fact, made to correspond with, and carry out the doctrine of, "a common priesthood," which required that there should be the greatest possible similarity of condition between laymen and preachers. Meanwhile it is shown, and there are a thousand voices to testify to the fact, that for three hundred years one constant complaint has been made, as to the rank of a preacher being universally despised, and their office so little prized, that they have very seldom been able to win the love or confi- dence of the people ; and that the general disfavour in which they stood made itself painfully felt in the wretched income and the poverty-stricken state of the majority of the body. In the past century the contempt and degradation that had fallen upon the order of preachers, were the motive to Ja- blonsky for entering into a negotiation with England, and this with the approval of the Prussian Court, for the purpose of introducing the Episcopacy into Prussia. 2 In the year 1792, a preacher mentions that the best theologians of the time were accustomed to lay upon Luther the responsibility 1 KRAUSE'S " Kirchenzeitung," 1858, p. 72. Compare with this the complaint made in the " Gottinger Monatschrift," 1849, p. 325 : " In the smaller districts the preachers, with their families, cannot live without the greatest economy, and even so find it very difficult ' to make both ends meet' (kaum durch kommen)." 2 " Christian Remembrancer," 1845, i. 120. See HENKE'S " Magazin," v. 224, where will be found a vivid description of the prevailing con- tempt for clergymen. 318 ALIENATION BETWEEN PASTORS AND PEOPLE. of their condition iiaving become so lamentable. 1 In our own time the Prussian Government has desired to create a respect for the preachers' class, by the bestowal of titles and orders, 2 and has shown itself quite willing to regard the clergy as a particle of its widely-extended, many-branched bureaucratic officials, and to permit it to have some share in the honours and prerogatives enjoyed by other government employes. The Upper Consistory of Mark has, indeed, complained that there is not the slightest prospect for preachers attaining to independence through a marriage with a wealthy wife, as few maidens with large dowries could ever be induced to prefer a preacher to any other person for ahusband! 3 To such lengths has an alienation between pastors and people reached, that, according to the declaration made by the preacher Kuntze at the meeting of " the Alliance " in Berlin, " the people being now estranged from the Church, look upon preachers, the Church, and Christianity itself, as a species of mere governmental and police institution, and exhibit in the plainest and most distinct manner their dislike and contempt for the three together." 4 " So far," he says, " as we are concerned, the Church has not the slightest in- fluence upon the feelings or consciences of the population. With such effect have persons laboured for the spiritualiza- tion of the Church, that body and spirit are both very nearly annihilated. In the estimation of the multitude, all that the pastor now represents is himself!" 5 "Amongst most con- gregations," says Moll, " there is a dislike and an avoidance of any communication with the clergy ; whilst a necessity for their services is neither felt nor understood. No confi- dence is reposed in the clergyman ; and the general exhorta- tion made by the Agenda to congregations, to seek in their spiritual necessities for the aid and counsel 6 of their pastors, 1 STEINECK, " Nachricht von dem Leben des J. M. Gb'tze." Ham- biirg, 1792, p. 19. 1 HENGSTENBERG'S "K.-Ztg.," vol. xxx., p. 20. 3 HENGSTENBERG, vol. xxx., p. 22. 4 Hid., p. 22. * " Verhandlungen," p. 432. HEKGSTENBERG'S "K. Z ," 1857, p. 690. DISCOURAGEMENT OF THE CLERGY. 319 has scarcely been attended to by a single individual." 1 " There exists," said Jaspis, at the Church Assembly at Hamburg, in the year 1858, "a frightful partition between the people and their spiritual directors so great is it, that in many places earnest clergymen give up all as lost, and do not venture to do anything." 2 A year earlier, Dean Rinck had spoken the following bitter words, at a Church Assembly held in Stuttgart : " A universal complaint must be pre- ferred against our modern clergy, that they have so com- pletely abandoned the attempt to exercise an active personal influence upon the souls and families of those committed to their charge, as if it was their desire that the spiritual care of their flocks should be taken away from them." 3 A highly respectable theologian of Wiirtemberg said to Professor Schaff, " The people now regard us clergymen as nothing better than royal officials and black-coated policemen." 4 So far have gone an absolute discouragement and complete despair as to the possibility of accomplishing any fruitful result with religion, that the question has been propounded, " Whether or not a person ought to remain in the service of the Church, or if it was not absolutely necessary to leave it?" Superintendent Thym refers to cases having occurred, within his own experience, as to how such a question assails and afflicts almost all pious souls who thoroughly comprehend the terrific perdition of the time, and who are also well aware how little they, with all their labours, can do to miti- gate it. 5 A Wiirtemberg clergyman remarks : " The Church has disappeared even almost to its very name both amongst the educated classes and with the multitude in Germany. Theologians, indeed, speak much of a Church that is, of 1 " Die gegenwartige Noth der evang. Kirche Preussens," pp. 11, 26. 2 " Verhandlungen, herausgeben v. Biernatzki," p. 8. * " Yerhandlungen," p. 140. 4 " Germany, its Universities, Theology, and Religion." Edinburgh, 1857, p. 116. "1st die evangeliche Kirche Babel, und der Austritt aus ihr daher unerlassliche Pflicht," Von SPENER, uberarbeitet von THYM. Griefe- walde, 1853. 320 RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF THE LAITY. the dignity, power, and revenues of a Church. The people, too, now and again go ' into the church ;' but it is only as ' the public' they go there, and not as * a congregation ;' but that they themselves are a part of the Church that they are the living stones wherewith are built up the edifice of an ecclesiastical community that is a thing either not thought of, or it has never been brought home to their understanding. Cassaro-Papism, and still more Bureaucraticism combined with Nationalism, have impaired the Church utterly, and given to it the appearance of being nothing better than a mere political association; whilst Pietism has abolished the last remnant of all right notions respecting a true Church community, by concentrating such notions upon its own little 'gatherings' (Gemeinschaften). In the place of an objective Church creed, there is everywhere to be met with the indi- vidual 'subjective stand-point' the individual 'sovereign I,' and the spirit of 'individualism' the spirit of these times, with its pass-words and talismans, which persons prefer bearing rather than submit themselves to the yoke of Christ and the creed of the Reformers." 1 Not less disheartening is the judgment pronounced by two Saxon clergymen : " The Church knows nothing of the necessities and spiritual wants of its members ; it has for them neither eyes, hands, nor heart ; it holds no relation with daily life ; it is nothing more than a Sunday institution, and is unconscious of all that passes during the week. Preaching and baptism, surplice- fees and theological squabbles, are the sole visible signs by which its existence is made known to the bulk of mankind." 2 When the present situation of the Protestant clergy in Germany is portrayed, the description, of course, includes an account of the religious condition of the laity. What is said of the one is, for the most part, applicable to the others. All tends to prove this lamentable fact the masses are non- Churchmen. It would be both weakness and folly to waste 1 SCHAFF'S " Kirchenfreund," 1857, p. 416. * Kirchen und Schulblatt," von TEUSCHER und HANSCHMANX. Weimar, 1852, p. 65. SOURCE OF DANGER TO PROTESTANTISM. 321 time in useless lamentations over this circumstance. What is necessary to be done is to look the fact straight in the face. 1 A broad and deep chasm lies between Theology and the Christian knowledge of the people : the one has ascended to the highest point of speculation, whilst the latter is still stumbling through the alphabet. 2 The Erlangen theologians complain " that every one amongst the Protestant popula- tions fancies he can make a religion for himself, and no one any longer rightly knows what he ought to believe and what he ought to maintain ; and with this confusion in their ideas, the people are also to be remarked for having lost their moral stability." 3 But what might occur if a knowledge of the true state of affairs should penetrate amongst those who may be rightfully called " the people," and especially amongst the intellectual and educated classes'? It may sound like a paradox, but still every one who thoroughly comprehends the subject will admit its truth that the universal religious indifference of the educated classes at this moment is the chief security for the existence of the Protestant Church. If there once awakens in those circles a living interest for religious matters ; if they take the Bible in their own hands for the purpose of testing their religion ; if they should desire to learn in what relation to each other stand the now existing theology and the doctrines taught from the pulpit, and how their preachers coincide in their opinions with those expressed in other states and countries if they should do these things, there will come the day of discovery and of exposure ; and then, too, the confidence now reposed in the Church will be at an end. Then also will they perceive that Luther's Bible not merely abounds with gross faults and misapprehensions of the original text, but also that lie frequently and intentionally, and for the purpose of upholding his doctrine, disguised the Apostolic words ; and that the Epistle of St. Paul in par- 1 " Sachsisches Kirchenblatt." Preface to 1860. * Ibid., 1860, No. vi. Zeitschr. fur Protestantismus," vol. xx., p. 371. u 322 IGNORANCE OF PROTESTANT LAYMEN. ticular was mishandled by him. 1 They would learn, also, that the grand " acquisition" of the Reformation, the Pro- testant "Justification" doctrine, is now abandoned by the most distinguished theologians as "untenable," and by the exegetists branded as " unbiblical." Nitzsch, indeed, recom- mends to theologians silently to correct the symbol ; 2 but the time cannot be far distant when this silent correction will become notorious to the multitude ; and the secret will not long remain unspoken, viz., that not a single theologian of any name or note binds himself down to the Confessional writings. The first prelate of the Saxon Church, Liebner, a short time since, portrayed, in the darkest colours, the utter want in Christian knowledge, "which was," he said, "actually astounding, not only amongst the multitude attached to the German Evangelical Church, but even amongst the great body of the educated classes." 3 The Churches of his Con- fession appeared to him to resemble a Manichaean world a kingdom of light, composed of German theology and its guardians ; a kingdom of darkness, composed of laymen, for the main part deeply immersed in negative and positive ignorance ; and both the light and the darkness standing in strong contrast opposed to one another. That, beyond all other things concerning which the great mass of laymen had formed the most perverse notions, was first as to the Reforma- tion, and then of Luther himself. "The laymen," such is 1 The only preacher of whom it is known that he, on this point, con- ducted himself with candour towards his congregation, was the Prussian preacher, Ehrenstrbm, who afterwards emigrated to America. He taught Greek to members of his congregation, and then pointed out to them the different passages that Luther had falsely translated. (WANGEMANN'S " Preuss. Kirchengeschichte," iii. 132). On the other hand, PALMER ( u HOMILETIK," p. 303) emphatically warns all preachers never to say to the people that this or that passage was falsely translated by Luther that the fact was to be as a mystery, on which they were to remain silent ; or, at the utmost, all they ought to do should be to admit that the trans- lation was obscure and indistinct. 1 " Deutsche Zeitschrift," viii. 201. * u Zur Kirchlichen Priuzipienfrage der Gegenwart ; Zeugnisse a. d Siichsischen Kirchenregimente." Dresden, I860, p. 19. SEVERE QUESTIONS. 323 Liebner's opinion, " have pictured to themselves Luther as a man who was to be venerated as a grand deliverer, who had freed them not merely from the yoke of Popes, Bishops, and Councils, but also from the tutorship of Protestant theologians, and conferred upon each man the right to believe according to the extent, of his faith, and to live according to the measure of his conscience. Such, however," he added, " is not the Luther of the theologians." Laymen, on the other side, counterbalance these heavy complaints with severe replies. "When," it is said, "Liebner so loudly lauds the high pretensions of existing theology, 1 and that it has been in constant unity and continuity with the Scripture, and exhibiting itself as a progressive and internally developing Church, and, therefore, to be truly Catholic, then can intelligent laymen ask ' Have you yourselves not unfre- quently said, and proved to us, that the Reformation was the deepest and most incurable breach that ever had been made in the unity and continuity of the Church ? Is it not, too, an admitted fact that the main doctrine of the new Church was previously completely unknown, and that it was not a Continuation, but a Negation of doctrine hitherto taught ? Is the destruction of the Primacy, the Episcopacy, and the entire Church Constitution, a perduration of Ecclesiastical Continuity ? Is annihilation the same thing as devel- opment and perpetuation ? You reproach us with wan- dering in the dark night of theological ignorance; but, before you repeat the reproach, place, if you can, in our hands an Ariadne thread, which will help to guide us in safety out of the labyrinth of doubt and uncertainty in which we are now straying. Give us a clear answer to this most urgent of all questions Who is it that we are to believe? Is it the particular preacher beneath whose pulpit accident has placed us ? Is it the Consistory of the country ? Is it the 1 Ibid., p. 37. So had STAHL, in a preceding year, in a discourse upon ecclesiastical congregational order, spoken " of the faith of the Church being the same for centuries." Is it possible that Stahl fancied he could persuade the Berliners that what their forefathers believed in the year 1580 was that which had been believed by the people of Berlin in 1516 ? Y2 324 MODERN ORTHODOX THEOLOGY. theological Faculty of the National University ? Is it the temporal Prince, who is also a Supreme Bishop ? Is it the symbolical books, from which every theologian has emancipated himself? Is it our own private judgment upon particular passages of the Bible 1 We take up your latest commenta- tors upon the Bible to help us on our way and what do we discover? Ten different explanations of one and the same passage in the Scriptures, and each explanation backed up by the name of some celebrated theologian ! How many are the confirmatory passages in Scripture cited in the symbolical books, to which a different interpretation is now attached from that there assigned to them ? We have asked you for bread, and you have given us a stone. You have always on your lips the words Protestant Freedom, but it is an iron yoke which you lay upon us ; it is a spiritual bondage that you would exact from laymen. Should we accept, with a blind faith, doctrine from a preacher who is bound by no higher authority than himself, and cannot prove that the doctrine he teaches is a common, general, and accepted doctrine? It has been said by one of yourselves : A community can never be more grossly tyrannized over than when it is compelled to place itself beneath the unrestrained will of any one indi- vidual and when it must be guided in accordance with his peculiar notions.' MI When Liebner maintains that his own and his colleagues' O theology contains within its bosom all the saving means which the necessities of the time require, but that this is only a secret doctrine so he allows all sorts of conjectures to be formed as to the meaning of his mystery ; whilst a very different opinion is loudly expressed by others as to what have been the achievements of theology in the present day. A very short time has elapsed since Stahl made the declara- tion " that the theological science of Germany was at best but a double-edged sword, and as capable of inflicting a wound upon faith as infidelity." 2 So, too, Professor Krafft, of Bonn, and the preacher Beyschlag complained, at the 1 KARSTEN, " Die protest. Kirche," p. 29. MESSNER'S " K.-Ztg.," 18G1, p. 377. DETERMINATION OP CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 325 Berlin meeting of the Evangelical Alliance, that the modern orthodox theology, with its recoil upon the symbolical books, was the principal cause of the religious weakness of German Protestantism. 1 The Bible Societies have for the last fifty years distri- buted in Germany, as in other places, millions of Bibles. Even the poorest person can now, with very little trouble, possess a German Bible. The effect, however, is, according to the assurance of a preacher, " that there is no book less studied than the Bible that amongst a hundred Christian households there was scarcely one to be found in which the Holy Scriptures were still read." 2 " The people," says Gu'der, " nurture a secret distrust of the Scriptures." 3 " Even the best amongst the country people," observes another, " mostly read it only on Sundays and festival days." 4 Nevertheless, it has lately happened that a Faculty alto- gether theological declared " that naught of the doctrine of the Church can now be referred to by the preachers in their addresses to the people ; because the main decisive question is ' Why and wherefore they should believe ?' And this misleads the people as to a false notion that, when they are taught to believe anything upon the mere human authority of the Evangelical Church, they should also be bound to accept an interpretation of the Scripture for doing so. And hence it is that no preacher can suggest to his congregation that they should simply receive his doctrine, but he must refer each to an examination of the Bible for himself and it is the result of this self-study, and not the testimony of his own Church, that is to determine the acceptance of Chris- tian doctrine. And with this state of circumstances, it is found that nineteen out of every twenty of the still church- going population must be declared to be creedless ; and if one should be able to carry into effect this theory upon the 1 " Verhandlungen," pp. 187, 196. * THOLUCK'S " Liter. Anz.," 1845, p. 289. 1 "Deutsche Zeitschrii't," 1855, p. 151. 4 HENGSTENBEEG, "K.-Z.," 1852, p. 873. 326 A CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. creed preached from the pulpit, the churches would soon become empty a matter upon which the Faculty would give themselves so much the less trouble, as they have here a very weighty authority on their side namely, the Evan- gelical Alliance, whose second Article has determined " that it is the right and the duty of every Christian man to inter- pret the Scripture according to his own conviction of its meaning." Theologians and preachers, who have attached themselves in crowds to the Alliance, in Berlin, have ac- cepted this Article without hesitation. It is not as yet adopted in the Catechism. How many laymen, it may be asked, are there in all Germany, who think of this " duty," and of fully performing it ? There is a small number of Lutheran theologians, men of very earnest views, and who in reality imagine that, woful as may now be the appearance of the Lutheran Church in Germany, still it bears within itself, and it alone does so, every hope of a better state of Church affairs in the future. Somewhat larger may be the number of those who bind up their expectations with " the United Church," and dream of a grand development for it at a near period. A few thoughtful theologians, however, acknowledge that neither " Lutheranism" nor " Calvinism," nor a com- mingling of both elements into a " Unionism," can have either a long duration, or hold out the hope of a vigorous development, and therefore they await a Church of the future. This fact must, indeed, be admitted by every believing Christian, that the present state of Church fragmentation cannot possibly be a normal state, nor be of long con- tinuance ; but, on the contrary, " that the Church's inborn essence of Unity will yet overcome that disruption which has been effected by the powers of this world." 1 In this future Unity it is -said that even the Catholic Church will be included ; and that it should, in essential things, become Protestant, is what is naturally required ; as 1 Thus do the Gbttingen theologians express themselves in their Decla- ration, 1854, p. 66. UNION OF THE TWO CHURCHES. 327 well as that its "reserved" organism should be destroyed. For this, it is hoped, events sooner or later will provide. Now, the right view to take of such a notion as this is " that an amalgamation of the Catholic Church with the Protestant, so that the peculiarities of both may be transferred into one United Church, is an impossibility." That which is essentially Catholic, and that which is essentially Protes- tant, are not like the two opposite sides of the same sub- stantiality, which conjointly make it complete, and united together form a richer and more harmonious totality ; but they stand in relation to each other as two repellents, for the one is a negative of the other. A union of the two Churches, through amalgamation, could only be effected by the one of them ceasing to be what it is, and breaking off from its tradition whether that tra- dition was Protestant or Catholic. The acceptation of one single principle, upon the one side or the other, would be sufficient to attain this object. At the moment, for instance, in which German Protestantism should acknowledge that there is a Church, in the sense of one that is real, divine, with promises and power, and an established institution, then, in that moment, it would enter upon the process of being Catholicised ; and so, too, would the Catholic Church be self-dissolved upon the day in which it would accept the Second Article of the Evangelical Alliance, and proclaim " that no one must henceforth submit himself to religious authority, but must, on the con- trary, found his faith, in the last instance, upon nothing else than his own interpretation of the Bible." Fichte (if the author mistakes not) was the first who, in 1806, gave expression to the notion, " that there must, out of Peter's (the Catholic) and Paul's (the Protestant) Churches, be a third, which would be a transfiguration and amalgamation of the two, and which, by " the abolition of the peculiarities" of each, should be their successor " a John's Church." Schelling, at a later period, in his lec- tures, expatiated on this idea, and it has, since then, been many times referred to with great applause. Thus, for 328 EXPECTATION OF A NEW CHURCH. instance, Professor Piper, in the Church Assembly at Stutt- gart, in 1857, consoled his auditors with the expectation of their yet beholding a " John's Church." 1 So also has Merz presented his readers with a view of "a Church of Humanity of the living John ;" and, with this John's Church, the commencement of " a fourth revolution in the Church." 2 Ullman, 8 yielding to a like turn of thought, has discovered three leading forms of Christianity, which found an outward manifestation in the Greek, Roman, and Protestant Churches; and then directs attention to a fourth, in which Christianity, as a religion of the Divinity with humanity, will constitute itself as a perfect absolute religion, and be " the Church of the future." Such a notion as this is doubtless at the present moment very widely extended. As to the comparison of the opposi- tion between Catholicity and Protestantism, as a difference between Peter and Paul, it is intrinsically untrue, and will scarcely be regarded as permissible by any theologian ; whilst there are doubtless many theologians who suppose that there will yet be a new Church, in which there will be but one shepherd and one flock, and that this Church will present itself in a form very different from that which is now exhi- bited by Protestantism. If one would describe, as does the Berlin " Deutsche Zeitschrift," the existing Protestant Church as "a mere outward form, a stranger alike to the sympathies and life of the people, and as the mere ruin of times that have passed away; 1 or if the notion concerning it be that expressed by Schenkel, Lange, and Rothe, 5 that " Protestantism has never yet brought forth one real, substantial, operative Church," 1 u Verhandlungen," p. 48. * " Armuth und Christenthum," p. 88. * " Wesen des Christenthums." Hamburg, 1849. * " Jahrg.," 1851, p. 304. s ROTHE'S " Theol. Ethik," iii. 1012. SCHENKEL, " Das Prinzip des Protestantismus," p. 11. LANGE, " Uber die Neugestaltung des Ver- haltnisses zwischen Staat und Kirche," 1848, p. 89. HOPE OF A SECOND PENTECOST. 329 then indeed are persons justified in fixing their thoughts upon " a future " or " a John's Church ;" or they must, like Hase, begin to prophesy of the downfall of Christianity itself, and of the birth and predominance of a completely new re- ligion. As to the budding forth of a Church in the State, such as Rothe expects, it must be a future Church of a peculiar constitution in fact, nothing less than a Universal State Church ! But when an attempt is made to impart a corporeal, substantial form to this shadow of a future Church, then are the ideologists found to evaporate in empty phrases, or they picture forth a modern millennium, and emit a cluster of hopes, and a swarm of wishes, bright, brilliant, fugacious and volatile as butterflies, " and in whose actuality the simple Christian will place as little faith as any other human being in his sober senses." l In close connexion with these expectations of a new Church is to be found in all the Protestant portions of Europe a very general and longing desire for a new " descent of the Holy Ghost." In England there are some prayer societies established for that purpose. At the Church As- sembly in Berlin, and in despite of the unanimous adhesion to an unchanged Augsburg Confession, the cry went forth " that there could be no salvation without a new descent of the Holy Ghost !" In the pulpits, as in pamphlets, a second Pentecost, without which it was said " the world could not much louger go on, was wished for, and therefore was to be expected." Even Delitzsch 2 himself says, "It is indis- pensable that there should be a descent of the Spirit from above." Such a repetition of the Festival of Pentecost is, however, neither promised in Scripture, nor in the eighteen 1 Such is the proper remark of the " Zeitschrift fiir luth. Theol.," 1857, p. 311. "These churches of the future," says Rudelbach, in the same journal (1853, p. 90), "are the scabies of the day, and bear with them all the characteristics of that malady they show that there is in- wardly decay, and exteriorly, irritation." 2 " Erlanger Zeitschrift fur Protest.," 1858, p. 305. 330 EXPECTATION OF A MILLENNIUM. hundred years of the duration of the Church has it ever been either desired or hoped for. 1 Near to these hopeful expectants, who are looking forward to a new Church, and to a second Pentecost as the birth-day of their new Church, are those numerous individuals, more down-hearted or less aspiring in their anticipations, who announce the near approach of the ending of this world, and the return of Jesus Christ to judgment, or to the commence- ment of the millennium. When an expectation of a millennium of an earthly kingdom of Christ shews itself (the Augsburg Confession notwith- standing) amongst the Lutherans, 2 it is to be regarded, as being based upon their despair of any improvement of their Church, as a perception of the inevitable dissolution of that Church; and to such sentiments must be attributed the origin of such an idea. Clergy and theologians who stand like incompetent physicians by the sick-bed of their Church are, it may be said, " born Chiliasts." By them it is said : " The discipline of faith has no hold any more either above or below and even the simple but true preaching of the Gospel encounters manifold contradictions or multitudinous indifference.", 3 Or they take the same view with Rudelbach, when he says, " Where one fortress of Lutheran orthodoxy tumbles down after another, and when at the head-quarters (of Lutheranism) there is such an awful chasm opened, then must it be plainly seen that the days in which we live are ripe for the great apostasy." 4 Many, too, seek for salvation and consolation in new interpretations of the Apocalypse, and in a reference to the 1 " If such a notion," says Hase, with respect to it, "is seriously enter- tained, then these persons place their hopes in the performance of a miracle, such as has not occurred since the times of the Apostles. In so doing they only openly declare their despair to conduct their religious affairs in accordance with that historical and natural development with which Christ has guided his Church through eighteen hundred centuries." "Prot. K.-Z.," 1856, p. 1151. 2 Recently by Lessing, Florke, Karsten, &c. HENGSTENBERG'S " K.-Z.," 1859, p. 1181. 4 " Zeitschrift fur luth. Theologie," 1859, p. 255. CONSOLING PROSPECTS FOR THE CREDULOUS. 331 approaching millennium, when and where all that is now wanting to the Protestantism of to-day shall be supplied, and " the crooked ways be made straight." And then there is Auberlen, who has recently discovered that the whole visible Church, including even the Protestant portion of it, has become part and parcel of "the harlot" in the Apoca- lypse, and, therefore, there is nothing left to mankind but to await the millennium j 1 and another, Nagelsbach, is charmed with Auberlen's " consolation for all, who on the one side would willingly aid the Church, but on the other see no possible means of being able to render it effectual assist- ance" so that, in fact, all that any one is able to do is to wait ! 2 Others, like Baumgarten, admit that the existing Church is fundamentally perverted, but they console themselves with the prospect of a speedy conversion of the Jews. " The whole development of the Church hitherto," it is maintained by Baumgarten, is a gross erratic wandering of State-Churchdom a degenerate Heathenish Church ; but that converted Israel is destined to become for all nations '' the redeeming and sanctifying head," 3 and will once more present a bleeding victim in the temple of Jerusalem ! It is more positively announced by another that there will soon appear one who has been foretold by Christ as an earthly Consoler and Messias. We are now, it is said, in the year 5976 of the Redemption, and in the year 6000 will be the first resurrection and the millennium. 4 Finally, the present Minister of Public Worship and Education in Prussia, Von Bethmann-Hollweg, shortly be- fore his appointment to office, gave expression to his despair in Chiliastic aspirations. 5 " To the Apostles, Peter and 1 " Der Prophet Daniel und die Offenbarung Johannis," 1854, p. 294. 2 REUTER'S " Repertor.," vol. xcii., p. 204, and again in vol. ciii., p. 85. 8 HENGSTENBERG'S u K.-Ztg.," 1859, p. 697. 4 CHRISTIANUS, " Das Evangelium des Reiches ;" Leipzig, 1859. The author asserts that he has availed himself especially of the works of the Erlanger theologian, Von Hofmann. 5 In GELZER'S " Monatsbliittern," 1858, vol. xi. p. 126. 332 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY. Paul, who have each had their Churches, for a time must that of John succeed. In Church and State are alike exhibited the counteraction of every progressive step there is dissolution both in State and in Church ; there is the decay of organic forms, and there is an incapacity in the age to create new. Both Church and State must perish in their earthly forms, that the kingdom of Christ may be set up over all nations that the bride of the Lamb, the perfect com- munity, the new Jerusalem, may descend from Heaven" Not long before this was published, another Protestant Statesman had warned his Protestant readers to turn away from false prophets who announce the end of the world, be- cause they have come to an end of their own wisdom. 1 A description of the present state of ecclesiastical affairs makes it necessary to devote a few sentences to a description of the position which Protestantism in Germany maintains with regard to the Catholic Church. The adherents of both Confessions associate and intermingle daily more and more with each other. With equal steps they advance, and a contact of mind with mind becomes more frequent ; and everywhere the Protestant churches and congregations place themselves close to the Catholics ; and they do so as adversaries. Even in the extremities of the North, as of the South, the toleration of a foreign faith can now only be a question of time. As to the situation which Catholics appear to occupy, it shall be referred to in another place. What is desired in this part of the work is to fix attention upon the course of conduct exhibited by the ecclesiastical leaders and orators of the Protestant Church towards the Catholic, and on the false position in which they place them- selves. This may, with truth, be said that Catholic tendencies lie at the bottom of the whole movement that has been made towards a religious life and an ecclesiastical restoration in Protestantism. He who has watched this movement receives the same impression as if he saw a number of individuals 1 BUNSEN, " Gott in der Geschichte," i. 133. ITS RELATION TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 333 thrust into a narrow, stifling, dark, and loathsome cell ; and that those who were so packed together were attempting to open now this door and then that, in order that they might inhale fresh air and new strength ; but that, with every such attempt, there pealed forth in their ears a loud chorus of clerical and lay voices, exclaiming " Shut out the miasma ; keep away from you the foul grave-stench that arises from old, mouldering tombs." It is with the reproach, " You are becoming Catholic," that the opponents of the movement have sought to check it. It is with the cry, " You want to make Catholics of us," that the great masses of the population have, for twenty years, repelled every earnest effort made towards the enrichment and improvement of Protestantism in dogma, in ecclesiastical life, and in the Divine service. Who can deny that, consistently with the principles from which the spirit of Protestantism has originated, such a course of conduct so marked with fear and caution is not perfectly natural ? " The attitude of Protestantism," says Stahl, " is ever that of the Borghese gladiator. It is a per- manent assault, the uttermost tension of every sinew and muscle, against Rome. Its whole energy is directed to this point never to let near it Catholic doctrine and discipline, as the smallest manifestation in that direction excites far more horror than would be caused by the grossest trans- gression in an opposite way, &c., &c., &C." 1 In the years 1848-1851 there were many signs given, from which might be inferred a closer approximation of the two Confessions : it appeared as if both the motives and doc- trines which separated them not being brought prominently forward could, and did, cordially join hand in hand together for the common protection and preservation of moral and religious principles, both in political and social life. In the Diet of some provinces such an association of believing Pro- testants and Catholics had been formed with very happy results. It had so shewn itself that, in most of the affairs then pending, the only alternative to choose between was, " Christianity or Atheism" and at such a crisis the causes 1 " Die lutherische Kirche und die Union." Berlin, 1859, p. 456. 334 RESOLUTION OF THE BREMEN ASSEMBLY. for a separation of creeds had better be avoided as questions for discussion. But then came the Church Assembly in Bremen, which must have produced a deep and painful im- pression in all parts of Catholic Germany ; because there the great majority of an Assembly, composed of professors and clergymen, expressed themselves with such bitter and unrelenting hatred against a Church to which belonged the larger number of their own countrymen, as well as a pre- ponderating number of all baptized Christians. A particular provocation on the part of the Catholics had not been given to afford an opportunity, or to supply a pretext, for any such explosion. And yet, at that Assembly, a resolution was unanimously passed : " That the expression of this confessional hatred should, in every German congregation, be adopted as a constituent portion of the Divine service, and that in every place should again be sung forth the words : 1 As pious men, we pray and hope For sudden death to Turk and Pope. 1 " * Rationalist times had made a change with regard to those words, which theologians and pastors, having now again become believers, deemed it to be an urgent task for them to restore to popularity, and again excite the people to their repetition ! An intimation as to the probable or necessary consequences of such circumstances as these, or what may be their signification as pathological symptoms, it does not belong to us here to notify; but we supply the place that might be otherwise occupied, by the expression of opinions formed by two individuals, who, from the high official positions for- merly held by them, had the best opportunity of knowing the matters of which they spoke, and who were both the most determined political opponents of Catholic interests, and both zealous friends and supporters of the Evangelical Church. These two individuals are the President von Gerlach airtl the Privy-Councillor Eilers. The first of these says : " We daily see how small, in comparison with the power of the Catholic Church, is the influence which the Evangelical has ' O 1 " Und steur 1 des Papsts und Tiirken Mord ! " " Verhaudlungen," p. 152. CONCILIATORY ADMISSION. 335 upon the enlightenment and sanctification of the mass of the population, and upon the majority of its own members. The cause for this is not far to seek." 1 The second of these, Eilers, was well known as one of the most influential officials in the Eichhorn Administration, and who, in his day, held in his own hands the management of three newspapers, devoted to the purpose of opposing the Catholic Church ; and which were, for that purpose, subsid- ized by the Government. These are his words: "I have made it my study to ascertain the connection that exists between what is the Christian life of the Catholic population, and its institutions and practices ; and, with an unwilling heart, I am compelled to admit that, in general, a far more Christian-like life is led by those who belong to the Catholic than to the Evangelical Church. It is a well recognised fact that the Evangelical clergy, in general, are far very far behind the Catholic in their devotion and efficiency in the discharge of their pastoral duties." 2 When two laymen express themselves in a manner so rea- sonable and conciliatory, may it not be hoped that the time is coming, and perhaps is already near, when preachers and theologians may give way to milder thoughts and gentler expressions and that they may learn to think and believe that what, upon the whole, the Catholic Church in Germany has done is no more than it could not leave undone! All the reproaches and complaints made against the Church amount to this that those preferred under the name of a reformation and a breaking away from the past, have been refuted that the^Church has remained true to the commission entrusted to it : and thus adhering firmly to the principles on which it was established, it has regularly and consistently been developed ; and, furthermore, that, rigidly abiding with unbroken steadiness to its ecclesiastical life, and in cohesion with other portions of the same Church, it has fulfilled its mission. 1 " Aktenstiicke aus der Verwaltung des evangel. Oberkirchenraths." Berlin, 1856, iii. 423. * EILERS, " Heine Wanderung durch's Leben." Leipzig, ii. p. 226. 336 THE POPE AND THE STATES OF THE CHURCH TO THE TIME OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. DOWN to the period of the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Popes were subjects of the Roman Emperors. They stood, subsequently to the close of the fifth century, in the same relation with respect to the Ostrogoth kings of Italy; and one of the Pontiffs, John I., died in the prison into which he had been thrown by King Theodoric. When the Ostrogoths had been overthrown by the arms of the Byzantines, the Popes then became subjects of the Eastern Roman Emperors. The Popes, although grossly maltreated, and placed in an embarrassing position, between Constanti- nople, the Exarchate, and the Longobards (ever craving for the possession of Rome), still continued constantly to increase, both in power and influence, in Italy. At the close of the sixth century the Pope was already the richest landowner in the Peninsula. Large patrimonies scattered over the whole of the Peninsula, as well as in Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and even France, belonged to the Pontiff; and these being attended to by ecclesiastical managers, enabled the Pope to supply the population of Rome with food, and to purchase peace from the Longobards. Gregory the Great exercised upon his numerous estates a certain jurisdiction, and superintended the Imperial Government officers. And then, in the same BREACH BETWEEN ROME AND CONSTANTINOPLE. 337 proportion in which the Eastern Roman sovereignty became crippled, and that the Exarchate was scarcely able to main- tain itself against the strength of the Longobards, the power of the Pope naturally rose of itself, and the temporal dominion of Rome fell to him not as a possession to be ambitiously sought for, but as a mere matter of necessity and duty. The Popes were compelled to become war-leaders, to build fortifications, to enlist soldiers, and to appoint officers. The iconoclast strife, combined with the harsh, provoking Church-intermeddling and political despotism of the new Byzantine Soldier-Emperors, led to a breach between Rome and Constantinople, and this breach to the loss of the rich Papal territories in Sicily and Lower Italy, which were taken by violence away from the Papal See, by the Emperor Leo. For this loss a rich recompense was soon afforded. The Longobard king, Luitprand, with a generosity not common to that prince, presented a portion of Southern Tuscany to the Church of St. Peter ; and the Frank king, Pepin, made over, in the same way, the districts that he conquered Emilia, Flaminia, and the Pentapolis that is, the land on the sea coast, from the mouth of the Po to Ancona; and eastward, from the ridge of the Apennines to the Reno. 1 The 1 It will, we conceive, be useful to the general reader, before accom- panying the author in his sketch of the history of the Papal States, to know exactly what territories were comprised in them, previous to any recent invasion from Piedmont. Upon the return of Pope Pius IX. to Rome, he issued several edicts in the months of September, October, and November, 1850, regulating various details as to institutions, and estab- lishing the following organization, which makes known the names of the various districts and provinces over which he ruled as Sovereign : "The whole of the State was distributed into five great divisions. One of these was to bear the name of the District of Rome (' Circondario di Roma'), and the other four were to be termed ' Legations.' The great divisions were subdivided into provinces, the provinces again into governments, and the governments into communes. " In the district of Rome were included, besides Rome and the Comarca, or country immediately about the city, three provinces Viterbo, Civita Vecchia, and Orvieto. " The four Legations were Z 338 ROME AND THE FRANKISH KINGS. Pope, on his side although he and the Romans still acknow- ledged, in theory, the Byzantine authority granted to the Frankish king and his sons the Roman " Patriciate " that is to say, the office of " Protector of Rome, and of the Roman See." Although Pepin had laid the keys of the towns of the Exarchate on the altar of St. Peter at Rome, still, the Pope could exercise no real authority in them ; on the contrary, Sergius, and, after him, Leo, constituted themselves Arch- bishops of the richly-endowed Church of Ravenna, and rulers over the Exarchate ; and when, by the victories of Charlemagne, the endowments were renewed, still the Papal See did not obtain exclusive governmental power within the district. The Frankish kings granted to the Church of Rome the revenues of the lands, but retained for themselves the supreme authority over them. 1 Charlemagne, indeed, confirmed the endowments of his father, and in subsequent years added to them new patrimonies and revenues, and gave Tuscan cities to the Pope ; and we see afterwards that is, after 780 the Pope in possession of the dominion of Ravenna, but still acknowledging the supremacy of Charle- magne, by a steady execution of the imperial commands. 2 The city of Rome belonged to the Pope ; but he himself desired to see the military and judicial authority in the hands of Charlemagne, as " Patricius," and provided for the Roman people taking an oath of obedience and fidelity to the king. By Charlemagne's taking upon himself the imperial dig- nity, and founding or re-establishing a Western Empire, the 44 1. Romagna comprising four provinces, Bologna, Ferrara, Forli, and Ravenna. " 2. Le Marche comprising six provinces, Urbino and Pesaro, Mace- rata with Loreto, Ancona, Fermo, Ascoli, and Camerino. "8. Umbria comprising three provinces, Perugia, Spoleto, and Rieti. "4. Marittima e Campagna comprising three provinces, Velletri, Frosinone, and Benevento." " Despatches from Mr. Lyons respecting the condition and administration of the Papal States." London, 1860, p. 11. 1 VESI, 4l Storia di Romagna," i. 394. " Cod. Carol. 67, ap. Cenni Monum. 81," p. 439. IMPERIAL AND PAPAL AUTHORITY. 339 temporal power of the Pope became both more distinctly marked and more secure. The shadow of a Byzantine supreme authority had now disappeared. Rome belonged to the Western Empire, and the Pope and the Romans took an oath of fealty to the Em- peror. As the Emperor was to be, beyond all other things, the protector of the Church, and as the temporal possessions of the Pope now stood specially under the imperial guardian- ship, so were they also under the imperial authority. The limits between the Imperial and Papal authority were never very exactly drawn. The kingdom of Italy, which was held by Pepin, the sou of Charles, was composed of the former Longobard territories in Northern and Middle Italy. In Rome and the Roman territories, the imperial supreme au- thority was exercised by envoys or messengers "Missi." Since these formed a superior class of officers to those who were appointed by the Pope, the officers named by him in the towns under his rule were called "duces" and as the imperial officers had superintendence over them, the Emperor Lo- thair, in the year 824, decreed that these "missi" should be no- minated jointly by the Pope and the Emperor; and that every neglect of the Papal officers, the duces and judices, should in the first instance be reported to the Pope. Both powers, the Papal and the Imperial, mutually supported each other. The Pope let the Roman people swear fidelity to the Em- peror ; and the Emperor as Lothair did threatened every- one with his displeasure who should not in all things render obedience to the Pope. Official documents were dated ac- coixling to the years of the Emperor's reign, and the Roman coins were impressed with his image. The election of the Pope, which was made by the great persons at Rome eccle- siastics and laymen was to be subjected to the confirmation of the Emperor : this was positively settled, and was in it- self established as a guarantee for the freedom and regularity of the election but the distance of the Emperor from Rome, the long delay, and the interests of the Roman parties, led to this arrangement being frequently unattended to. The state of affairs, so regulated, and so favourable to the Z 2 340 DEGRADATION OF THE PAPACY. Papal See, was not of long duration. The Carolingian house and its power went to destruction through internal discord, fratricidal wars, and constant territorial partitions, without there being any strong dynasty to fill its place. The splen- dour of the Empire grew pale, and in the person of Louis II. it was limited to Italy, whilst he no longer possessed the power of protecting Rome and the peninsula against the in- cursions of the Saracens from the South. And when, on the death of the childless Louis, the territorial empire came to an end, and the Popes, by the act of coronation, decided as to who was to be possessor of the Imperial dignity, without consideration as to the order of succession, an extremely impor- tant step was taken for the elevation of the Papal authority. Neither the Italians nor the Pope obtained any substantial benefit from enfeebled imperial shadows. The defenceless Pope could not prevent his cities being torn away from him and the Romish Church by Italian princes. And worse still were the proceedings adopted on the part of his Roman nobles, who, no longer restrained by the strong hand of an Emperor, took upon themselves the power of electing an oc- cupant for the chair of St. Peter and often filled it with their own tools, and made use of it for their own purposes. Thus began, with the close of the ninth century, that dark anarchical age when the Papacy was degraded and maltreated by powerful laymen. The Roman clergy of the time were destitute of a firm organization, and proved utterly power- less when opposed to the nobles. The Popes succeeded each other rapidly. They were elevated by one faction, over- thrown by another, imprisoned and murdered. The Romans did at that period all they possibly could utterly to destroy the Papacy, but the moral strength of the institution was invincible. Of the Papal States which had been created by preceding Popes and Emperors, there were now only frag- ments remaining. The towns of the Romagna were obliged, when the invasions of the Hungarians commenced, to do un- aided all they could to defend themselves. In Rome there ruled, after an intriguing woman, Marozia, her son Alberic, and he, through his family influence, his DEPENDENT CONDITION OF THE POPES. 341 riches, and by holding possession of the castle of St. Angelo, exercised, as " Prince and Senator of all in Rome," unlimited power until the year 954. The Exarchate and Pentapolis were in the power of Berenger, King of Italy. Alberic must, however, himself have felt that a temporal Princedom of Koine could not be of long duration, and he therefore se- cured the election to the Papal dignity for his young son and heir, Octavius. Thus had Rome, in the person of Octavius, or John XII., a spiritual prince ; but the Church a good-for- nothing Pope. Then appeared and invoked by the Pope himself the German King, Otho the Saxon, who became the second restorer of a Western Empire, which empire was now transferred to the German nation. He from that time forth exercised, both in Rome and with regard to the Pope, his imperial rights to their widest extent. He caused John XII. to be deposed by a Synod, and Leo VIII. to be elected in his place ; and when the Romans once more endeavoured to get possession of the Papal chair, by the election of Bene- dict V., he had him deposed and sent into exile in Germany. As to a real free election of a Pope, there was not a thought or talk about it, neither all this time nor during the whole of the following century. In Rome as well as out of Rome there was naught on which the Pope could rest for support. Without the Emperor he was a mere ball tossed about by the hands of the audacious nobility factions. Emperors, acting under the advice of their bishops and spiritual coun- cillors, had given more worthy Popes to the Church than the Roman chiefs, for whose selection there was no motive beyond the gratification of their own ambition ; and they sometimes preferred the most unworthy candidate, because they hoped to find in such a more pliant tool. Immediately after the death of Otho I. the disorders of the factious nobles again burst forth. Two parties, the Sabini and the Tusculani, struggled for power; the Popes were elevated sometimes by the one, and sometimes by the other party ; but, after a brief period of time, were deposed again, and ended their days in dungeons, or were murdered. It 342 GERMAN POPES. was not until Otho III. appointed his cousin, Bruno, and afterwards the celebrated Gerbert, as Popes, and protected them by an armed force, that the Papacy could once more obtain and exercise its influence and authority in ecclesias- tical affairs. After the early death of Gerbert, or Sylvester II., the House of the Tusculani, probably descendants from that Alberic who had formerly been the master and ruler of Rome, gained possession of power in the city, and also over the Papal See. A Pope of this house, Benedict VIII. (whose reign, although it only lasted for twelve years, had been the longest of any of the Popes for two centuries), could, when borne up by his family power, and strongly supported by the Emperor Henry II., command as master in Rome, and also exercise his power and authority in the affairs of the Universal Church. But his pontificate likewise served to secure power in his own family ; for after his death there succeeded two Popes of the same house his brother, John XIX., and his nephew, Benedict IX. But the crimes of the latter became intolerable. The evils of dissension were added to the disgrace and degradation of the Church, and then Germany at last came forward with thorough and en- during aid. The strong arm of Henry III., and the series- of German Popes he gave to the Church, purified and elevated the stained and degraded Roman See. The reformation of the clergy, which had become a matter of urgent necessity, and for which the congregation of Clugny had been making a prefatory preparation, could only now be commenced. The greater portion of the Papal States had, during the whole of this period (that is, from the year 800 until lOoOor 1060) fallen into the hands of laymen. Ravenna, and its territory, and the towns of the Pentapolis, had become the Emperor's. In Sabinum and Pra3neste there was a branch of the house of the Crescenti. 1 Southern Tuscany, with Spoleto and Camerino, was held by Ugo the Great, Duke of Etruria, but destined soon to fall into the grasp of the 1 See GFRORER'S " Papst. Gregorious VII.," v. 597. DEED OF DONATION OF OTHO III. 343 Emperor. The revenues of the Roman See consisted of rents paid by some holders of fiefs. Some light is thrown upon the state of things at the end of the tenth century, by the Deed of Donation of Otho III., of the year 999. l The Emperor animadverts in sharp terms upon the carelessness and fatuity of former Popes (for they, as the impotent creatures of the Albani and Crescenti, had been in the current century intruded upon the Church), who (as the Pope himself said, for tributes of a very small amount) had frittered away almost the whole posses- sions of the Church, both in and outside of the city, and had, to replace them, taken what was imperial property. He, therefore, bestowed, for the maintenance of the Papal dignity, certain fiefs belonging to him the eight countyships of Pesaro, Fano, Sinigaglia, Ancona, Fossombrone, Cagli, Aesi, and Osimo. In the following century these districts were again lost, and had again to be won back. In the dispute with the Emperor, Henry III., Benevento was taken away from the Pope, Leo IX., who gained, how- ever, for the Papal See, that which was far more valuable 1 1 entertain no doubt about the authenticity of this so much (and still in WILLMAN'S " Jahrbiicher des deutschen Reichs," ii. 2, pp. 233-43) disputed document (ap. PERTZ, "Mou.-Germ. IV.," B. 162). I am of this opinion with Muratori, Pertz, Giesebrecht, Gfrorer, Gregorovius, who also have decided on its authenticity, against Baronius and Pagi. Pope Sylvester himself complains in the feofment-diploma of Terracina of the year 999, that the Papal property had been dissipated from the Roman See, " Cum lucris operam darent et sub parvissimo censu maximas res ecclesiae perderent" (" Ap. CONTATORE Hist. Terrocin.," p. 41), and the real " Comitate" are mentioned in a letter of Otho's to the Pope as " qui sub lite sunt," (" GERBERTI Epistolae," p. 70). He has, says the Emperor, delivered them to the Marquis Ugo of Etruria, who also possesses the Countships of Spoleto and Camerino, out of love to the Pope, in order that the people may have a ruler, and the Pope may, through the same person, receive from the " Comitate" fitting services and dues. The Popes neither could nor should directly rule over the territories bestowed on them, but might enjoy the revenues in gold, or natural productions, and have military aid, in case of war. Consequently the supreme im- perial authority over the territories given to the Pope must be main- tained. The grounds, for upholding the authority of the documents which Giescebrecht and Gfrorer have cited, might be still further enlarged. 344 DEVELOPMENT OF SPIRITUAL POWER. than the possession of that territory and that was, the vassal- ship of the Norman conqueror of Lower Italy. That which Leo IX. had commenced with the brothers Humphrey and Robert, was continued with Robert by Gregory VII., and completed by Innocent II., in the year 1139, with King Roger. For what was still withheld from them, and the loss of which Nicholas I. continued to complain of (namely, their rich patrimony in Lower Italy and Sicily), there was, however, one compensation left to the Popes, viz. : that they were recognised as the Suzerain lords of a mighty kingdom that the princes of this kingdom did homage to them as vassals, and paid them tribute. Subsequently, indeed, it was precisely this very vassal kingdom that became the cause of the Pope's falling into a dependence upon France, and that led to the episode at Avignon, and, through it, to the great schism, the consequences whereof remain to this day unfathomable. In the long struggle concerning Investitures, the spiritual power of the Papacy developed itself in all its greatness, whilst the material basis of the temporal position upon which the Popes were placed was weak and insecure. Gregory VII. at first ruled in Rome with a firm hand ; but after a few years there sprang up an imperial party amongst the populace, and its constantly increasing strength induced Gregory to unite with the Normans in Lower Italy. The same party drove his successor, Victor III., out of the city, and compelled Urban II. to seek refuge for some time in France. The districts lately bestowed upon the Church, as a portion of its estates, were then, for the most part, in the hands of imperial feudatories of such persons as that Werner, or Guarnieri, who describes himself, in writing, as "By God's grace, Duke and Marquis of the Marche of Ancoua, and enlarged by the marquesates of Camerino and Fermo." 1 1 PERUZZI, " Storia d'Ancona," i. 280. [" E perciocche egli s' intitola, ed e intitolato ' Guarnerius Dei gratia Dux et Marchio,' se ne puo in- ferire, che non la sola Marca d'Ancona, ma anche il Ducato di Spoleto, fossero a lui sottoposti." MURATOBI, " Annali d'ltalia," a. 1016. Monaco, 1762, vol. vi., p. 350.] EOME IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY. 345 Urban II., one of the most powerful Popes out of Rome, was, in Rome itself, absolutely powerless ; and, being robbed of his revenues, was, for a long time, living upon alms. His successors, Paschalis II. and Gelasius II., were several times compelled to abandon Rome, on account of the pre- dominant sway of the noble families. The two mightiest houses now in Rome were the families of the Frangipani, and of Peter Leoni; and it was only when these two factions were at variance that the Popes could, by adhering to one of them as a support, maintain anything like an independent position in Rome. One of these families (it was by the elevation of a son of Peter Leoni's, under the name of Anacletus II.) plunged the whole Church into a long and lasting schism. Some years afterwards, in 1143, the Roman people revolted, appointed from amongst them- selves a senate, independent of the Pope, and a municipal chief, with the title of " Patricius ;" and Lucius II., in the attempt to make himself master of the city, met with a violent death. 1 The Emperor, Frederick I., forced the Romans, who then, under the influence of Arnold of Brescia, were dreaming of a restoration of the ancient republic, to deliver up all the regalia into the hands of Pope Eugenius III. ; and he who did this was of all the Emperors since Charles the Great the most determined opponent and champion against an independent Papacy, as well as of ecclesiastical states, as a basis on which it might be main- tained. And thus had the Popes, during the whole of the twelfth century, no fixed settled territory of their own in Italy. They were never able to maintain themselves in Rome, but for a short and transitory time ; and outside of Rome there was not one town of importance on which they 1 [The character of the Romans in the twelfth century is accurately described by Muratori in a few lines, when referring to an incident in the life of Gelasius II. " Egli (the Pope) non si potea fidar de' Romani, gente venale in que' tempi, e tante volte provati da' suoi predecessor! e da lui stesso per poco fedeli." "Annali d'ltalia," a. 1118. Monaco, 1762, vol. vi., p. 390.] 346 INNOCENT III. could with security calculate ; and hence it is that we see them so frequently turning towards France for a prolonged residence. After Urban II., this was done by Paschalis II., Gelasius II., Calistus II., Innocent II., Eugenius III., and Alexander III. After the death of the last-named Pope, Lucius III., and Urban III., preferred remaining in Verona, because the Romans would not submit to them. The gift of the illustrious Countess Matilda had afforded to the Popes a grand prospect of the secure possession of an extensive territory. Had the terms of this donation been literally complied with, the Popes would have at once become the greatest landed princes in U pper and Middle Italy. Liguria and Etruria, say contemporaries, were included in the donation; but as the imperial fief could not possibly be separated from the allodial property, the Emperor seized upon, and, under the pretext of relationship, laid claim to, and escheated the whole inheritance. The Popes were compelled to let this be done by Henry V. The Emperor Lothair, however, recognised their right so far as to submit, with Duke Henry of Bavaria, in the year 1133, to accept an endowment of the allodium of the Countess, from Innocent II.; in consequence of which, in the year 1135, a Marquis of Etruria, named Engelbert, having received a portion of this property from the Emperor, made an oath of fealty to the Pope, on account of the Matilda-endowment. The recurrence of the Estates to the Papal See, after the death of Henry, was, meanwhile, vainly sought and stipulated for. The Emperor, Frederick I., and his son, Henry VI., held fast by the inheritance, until Innocent III., at the proper moment of time, asserted, with his customary active vigilance, the right of his See; and thus, at last, the so-named " patrimony of St. Peter," namely, Southern Tus- cany out of the inheritance bequeathed by Matilda really came into the possession of the See of Home. Innocent III. (1198 1216) was not so much the restorer, as he was, practically, the first actual founder of the Papal States ; for, previous to him, no Pope can be named who actually reigned over a large territory. Previously, the FOUNDATION OF THE PAPAL STATES. 347 Popes had possessions from which they received taxes and feudal services, but not a single state that they governed. When he (Innocent), in the year 1198, entered into his Pontificate, all (belonging to the Church) was in the hands of strangers. The Swabian knight, Conrad, was Duke of Spoleto. In the Catnpagna, Henry VI. had distributed fiefs amongst his military followers. In Ravenna, the Marche and Romaudiole, the Seneschal of the Empire, Markwald, was in command; and in the Exarchate and Pentapolis, the cities (once the great commercial movement had extended over the whole of Upper and Middle Italy) had developed themselves as municipal Republics. The cities had well understood how to turn to their own advantage the dispute between the Emperor and the Pope, and, as Macchia- velli says, had employed the imperial power against the Pope, and then made use of the latter to obtain freedom, self-government, the right of election, and the yearly change of their chief magistrates, consuls, or podestas. Even in his first year Innocent had brought under sub- mission the important cities of the Marquesates of Camerino and Fermo, and of the Duchy of Spoleto ; and then Perugia, Montefiascone, Radicofani, and Aquapendente, along with the Countship of Benevento. The cities of the Romagna speedily recognised the supreme authority of the Church an authority so mildly exercised that they could scarcely perceive it. 1 The freedom and full autonomy of the cities were granted. Thus Innocent, in 1198, declared Perugia to be a property of the Roman See ; but he then also con- firmed the constitution of the city, its government by consuls, and the free use of the laws which the citizens had made for themselves. 2 In this respect the Popes gave more than the Emperor. The cities had only to pay a small yearly tribute, and, in case of necessity, to furnish men-at-arms ; and even this was not usual, for it was remarked of Viterbo, that, 1 VESI, " Storia di Romagna," ii. 224. ? See introduction to the Chronicle of Perugia in " Archivio-Stor.," vol. xvi., I., p. xxii., and IXXOCEXTII, u Epistolse," i. 375, 426. 348 CONFLICT WITH THE EMPEROR. before the fifteenth century, it had to pay nothing. 1 It was in Rome itself that the Pope had the toughest resistance to overcome, and he was sometimes obliged to quit the city, until at last he was able to induce the Romans to leave to him the nomination of the Chief Captain of the municipality, who was also now called " Senator." In the desperate conflict with the too powerful Frederick II. the most of that which had been won by the Popes was again lost ; and then, after the death of the Emperor and the downfall of his son Manfred, its gradual restoration had to be sought for. An injurious effect of the quarrel between the Emperor and Pope was the formation of the Guelph and Ghibelline parties, which penetrated into all the cities, and continued to abide in them. The Church-friends, the Guelphs, were everywhere the democratic party; whilst the in- terests of the nobles, as a class, in the success of the Imperialist Ghibellines, won for them consideration and power. Where the latter gained the upper hand the supreme authority of the Papal See could not be, even nominally, maintained ; and as to the Guelphs, they also, whenever they could, wished themselves to govern, and to wage war and make peace, according to their own will and pleasure. The Popes (with all the splendour of appearance which could be afforded by the victories of the Guelphs in a great part of Italy, and beyond the limits of the Church States), were still in such a position that no city was really subject to them, and they were often in embarrassment as to where they should take up their abode. Thus Clement IV., in one of his writings of the year 1265, says that, after he had conse- crated a church in Assissi, he would go again to Perugia, since he could not procure a dwelling-place anywhere else ; because the other cities of his Patrimony were entangled in feuds, or had not a sufficiency of provisions. 2 If he wished to make a city a permanent residence, he must have first entered into an agreement with the municipality, by which the Roman Court should retain a free, unhindered movement 1 Bussi, " Istoria di Viterbo," p. 47. * " Bullarium Franciscanum," ed. Sbaralea, iv. 29. RESTRICTION OF PAPAL AUTHORITY. 349 within its own sphere of action ; and it must also have been promised that the city would choose only for their consuls and podestas men who were faithful to the Roman See ; and also that they would not impede the Papal Marshal in the exercise of his judicial office over the personality of the court. 1 Thus nearly all supreme sovereign rights had passed away to cities, or to individual noble families a part of them also became vested in bishops and monasteries ; and the Papal authority in temporal affairs became little more than a supre- macy of dignity over a number of municipal republics, and of noble and princely signories. 2 The sovereign authority of the Pope was restricted to the exercise of a judicial power, that was, upon the whole, very much limited to the disposal of the pecuniary means and troops which well-disposed cities and dynasties furnished, and to acts of arbitration. The wonted method by ban and interdict no longer operated with an unerring effect upon Guelph cities, and far less upon Ghibelline. Rome, where the Savellis, Orsinis, and Colonnas now preponderated, was, as usual, a restless city, always suspicious and on the watch against the strengthen- ing of the Papal Government, and ever inclined towards the Imperialists and Ghibellines. 3 They were so, partly out of opposition to the Pope, and partly because of the theory then prevalent over all Italy : viz., that it was the people and the city who were the real heirs and possessors of the Imperial dignity and pre-eminence ; 4 so that the Pope could only in 1 Such are the terms of the treaty that was made in the year 1278, in the name of Nicholas III., with the town of Viterbo. See MARINI, " Degli Archiatri Pontificij." Rome, 1783, ii. 11. * CAXTU, " Storia degli Italiani," iv. 11 ; LEO'S " Geschichte der itali- anischen Staaten," iv. 423. 3 " Populus urbis (Romse), qui naturaliter imperialis existit." SABA MALASPINA, Ap. Murator, S.S. Ital.,vii. 842. 4 This was not merely a Ghibelline notion, as Dante describes it in his " Monarchia," but it was also that of the Guelphs, as Matteo Villani re- presents it, lib. iv., c. 77, and lib. v., c. 1, prologo, when he says, amongst other things : " L' autorita del popolo Romano creava gli im- peradori : e questo medesimo popolo, non da se, ma la chiesa per lui, in 350 ELEVATION OF THE HOUSE OF ANJOU. the name and by the authority of the Eoman people transfer the election of an Emperor to the princes of Germany. Rudolph of Hapsburg had in his interview with Pope Gregory X., at Lausanne, in 1274, solemnly granted and confirmed to him the full possession of the Papal State terri- tories, according to the then existing designation the land of Radicofani to Ceperano, the Exarchate of Ravenna, the Pentapolis, the Marche of Ancona, the Dnchy of Spoleto, the country of the Countess Matilda, and the Countship of Berti- noro. Even Corsica and Sardinia were included in this grant. 1 At the same time was abandoned the appointment of an Imperial Count, or Vicar of the Empire, who had hitherto, in the exercise of an imperialist jurisdiction, restricted very much the Papal power in the Romagna, the Pentapolis, the Marche, and Spoleto. In the year 1278, Rudolph actually sent a special envoy to Pope Nicholas III., for the purpose of having recalled and declared null and void the oath which his chancellors had caused to be sworn by the cities of Bologna, Imola, Faenza, Forli, Cesena, Ravenna, Rimini, and Urbino. 8 The appointment and elevation of the House of Anjou to the Sicilian throne was a momentous turning-point in history ; for by it was transformed the condition of Italy, the character of the Guelph party, and, beyond all other things, the position of the Papal See. The Guelphs ceased to be a national party, a party opposed to foreign domination ; a party essentially devoted to the Church. They became Angiovini, accessible thereby to French influence, and subservient to French interests. The Popes lost the leadership of the Guelph party, which had passed over to the Anjous, and to other princes of the royal family of France ; certo sussidio de' fedeli cristiani, concedette 1'elezione degli imperadori a sette principi della Magna." From this it further was concluded, u That the Tuscans were originally Latins, that is, Romans, and so were not subjected to the sway of the Emperor, and naturally still less to that of the Romans." See u Storia Fiorentina di Pietro Boninsegni," p. 437. 1 PERTZ, " Mon. Ger.," iv. 403, 404. * RAYNAIJ), ad a. 1278, 51. THE REIGN OP FRENCH POPES. 351 and so arose that bastard Guelphdom which Dante so much hated. Through it was the vast importance of the Empire to Italy, to the Pope and the States of the Church, attacked at its very roots, and by it was the imperial action in the Peninsula crippled. French cardinals, French popes (Clem- ent IV., Urban IV., and, chiefest, Martin IV.), did what they could to strengthen the influence of their nation, and of its two dynasties, the Capets and the Angiovines, in the Penin- sula. Martin IV. appointed Frenchmen attached to the suite of Charles of Anjou to be governors in provinces of the Papal States; he subjugated, with the hired arms of Frenchmen, the Ghibelline Forli ;* and he nominated Charles himself as " Senator of Rome." The latter placed there his own officers, whilst the Popes seldom permitted themselves to be seen in Rome ; and so much more did they prefer residing in Viterbo, Orvieto, or Anagni, that, when Innocent V., in the year 1276, said mass in St. Peter's Church, he observed that it was the first time a Pope had done so in the same place for the space of thirty years. 2 The relations of the Popes with the population of the Papal States, and especially of those who were French Popes, became more harsh, and more marked with rigid force. It became so particularly whilst the authority over the provinces lay in the hands of Charles of Anjou far more than in those of the Pontiff. Gregory X., the wisest and noblest of the Popes of that age, had everywhere endeavoured to reconcile the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, and to amalgamate the two parties ; but his successors, under the Anjou influence, turned away from the path he had pursued. The Ghibellines were driven to despair. Ban and interdict, employed as instruments of government, had become, from too frequent use, ineffective. The wars which the Popes had to carry on by means of foreign " condottieri," and by giving high pay to foreign hirelings, multiplied fiscal burdens on the people; whilst the unproductiveness of the revenues derived from the States of the Church compelled the Popes to maintain their wars with 1 " Chron. Pipini," ap. MURAT, ix. 720. * "Annal. Salisburg," ap. PERTZ, "Mon. G.," xi. 801. 352 TRANSFERENCE OF THE COURT TO AVIGNON. the revenues of the Church, and by the imposition of new ecclesiastical tributes. In the first years of the fourteenth century there was already to be found some unknown states- man to make the following proposal viz. : That the lands of the Pope should be given over to some powerful king in emphyteusis, under the obligation of leaving to the Pope the revenue derivable from them ; and thus the Pope might become the organizer and protector of the public peace, and no longer have occasion to wage wars, or to accumulate treasures. 1 The-French Popes believed they had discovered the means whereby they might, for a long time, be able to bring the Pontificate into French hands exclusively, and that was by naming Frenchmen as cardinals until they should become the majority. For them Rome and Italy were foreign coun- tries they wished to live on their native soil ; and so came the transference of the Court of Rome to Avignon, where it remained for seventy years. The States of the Church had now nigh lost all their importance. In Avignon they were treated and regarded as a distinct province, which need not be very closely looked after, and that might be governed through deputies. The influence of the Parisian Court was so powerful at Avignon, and in many cases it was so over- whelming, that the Pope did not appear to be master of one inch of ground in Italy. With the commencement of the fourteenth century had arrived the period of decay for the free States of Italy. These, with few exceptions, had, through civil strife, been changed into Principalities. This was the case, beyond all others, with those in the Romagna and the Marche, where the Polentas in Ravenna, the Malatestas in Rimini, the Manfredis in Faenza, the Ordelaffis in Forli, the Montefeltros in Urbino, and the Baranos in Camerino, had arrogated all power to themselves. The whole of the Papal States was broken up into fragments. In Rome and in the Campagna reigned anarchy and wild club-law so that, to use the words 1 "De recuperatione terrae sanctae," in the " Gesta Dei per Francos." BONGARS, ii. 324. UNIVERSAL REVOLT. 353 of Villani, "strangers and pilgrims were as lambs in the midst of wolves, and everything became an object of plunder and a booty." Then it was that the tribune, Cola Rienzo, his thoughts filled with images of the ancient Roman glories, succeeded in bringing back, for a short time, a transi- tory glimmer of a well-ordered republic, affording a guarantee for legal freedom. The rights of the Pope, as their only lawful lord, hud, indeed, been constantly maintained by him. But, then, he neither knew how to rule nor to fight; and, although appointed Senator by the Pope, and sent back to Rome after his fall, he was soon ruined through his own vanity and indiscretion. Then it was that Cardinal Albornoz (1353 1368), who had been sent from Avignon, showed that he was equally great as a warrior and a statesman, and gra- dually freed the towns and territories of the Papal States from their tyrants. At the same time, he became, through " the Aegidian Constitutions," which subsisted down to the latest time, the legislator and creator of public law in the Romagna. The arbitrary conduct and oppression of the French Legates soon provoked a universal revolt. Within nine days, in the year 1376, eighty towns and villages of the Papal States, excited by the Florentines, who were imbittered against Gregory XL, rose in insurrection, and either declared themselves to be free, or called back amongst them the tyrants who had been deposed by Albornoz. At that time, too, revolted Perugia a city which had long jealously pre- served its freedom, even though its Guelph and well-disposed inhabitants called themselves " the people of the Church." The city had only submitted to the Pope since 1370. After its revolt it was able to conclude a peace with the new Pope on its own conditions. 1 At that time grass was growing in the public streets of Rome, and the number of its inhabitants was only 17,000. The great revolt had enkindled a war which, according to the manners of the times, was carried on by a profuse appli- cation of ecclesiastical censures, combined with the employ- 1 MARIOTTI, " Memorie di Perugia," 1806, p. 81. AA 354 DISRUPTION OF THE PAPAL STATES. merit of foreign, brutal, barbarous, and mercenary troops. And then broke out, after the death of Gregory XI. (who had lately come to Rome from Avignon), that momentous schism in the Church, the consequences of which are incal- culable, and the effects of which are felt to the present day. " A Roman or an Italian at least will we have ! " exclaimed the people, before the windows of the Conclave. " We, Frenchmen will not let escape from our grasp the prize of the Pontificate, with all that depends upon it," thought in silence the French Cardinals; and, in opposition to the Italian Urban VI. elected that Cardinal Robert of Geneva, to whose hands was still adhering the blood of the luckless inhabitants of Cesena. With France, nationality was of more avail than the right and weal of the Church. The anti-Pope was recognised, and therewith the curse of schism was brought down upon the whole of Europe. The entire of Christendom and the Papal See, in their incapacity to help themselves and the Church, felt now the consequences of the Empire having dwindled into a shadow, and the office of " Protector of the Church and the See of St. Peter" having become a mere empty title ! The utter shattering of the Papal States into fragments was then at its acme : the old leaders again reappeared ; republics were formed, or new rulers sprung up in many places; and then Urban's successor, the money -needing Boniface IX., sold to the tyrants and republics, for im- mediate payment and a yearly tribute, the sovereign rights of which they were already in possession. When Martin V., at the termination of the schism, was elected as sole Pope, in 1418, and appeared in Italy, he found Rome and Benevento in the hands of the Neapolitans, a republic in Bologna, and the Romagna, with the Marche, and Umbria in the hands of different chiefs. Many places were won back, and again lost through new insurrections ; whilst several of the Princes recognized the Pope. The election of his successor, Eugenius IV., in the year 1431, was a decisive event for the future of the Papal States. He confirmed by oath a statute determined upon in Conclave in accordance ARBITRARY POWER OF THE BARONS. 355 with which all the Papal feudatories, vicars, and official per- sons in the Papal States should take the oath of fealty and allegiance, not to himself alone, but also to the College of Cardinals, to which, in cases of a Papal vacancy, the sove- reign authority of the country belonged. At the same time he bound himself to leave to the Cardinals the half of all the revenues he received ; and he obtained, by this means, the sympathy and co-operation of the College in the exercise of all the more important rights of his sovereignty. 1 This was a new constitutional law for the Papal States, and a very comprehensive limitation of the temporal power of the Pope was thereby created. It was, however, a matter that lasted but for a very short time. When the Spaniard Alphonzo Borgia, with the name of Callistus III., mounted the Papal throne in the year 1455, he found eight families of princes in possession of their fiefs the Manfredis in Faenza and Imola, the Ordelaffis in Forli, Alexander Sforza in Pesaro, Domenico Malatesta in Cesena, Sigismondo Malatesti in Rimini, and Frederick of Monte- feltro in Urbino, the Baranos in Camerino, and the Estes in Ferrara. All the other chiefs had been previously set aside. 2 In Rome and the Campagna the Popes of this age, like their predecessors, were able to do very little. To the arbitrary power and mutual hostilities of the Barons, who still per- petuated a state of open, unbridled violence, and who had their relations and adherents amongst the Cardinals, the Popes had no armed power to control or oppose. And then came frequent and short Pontificates, whilst the constant inter- ruptions of the Conclave would permit no thorough and per- manent measure to be adopted. A centrifugal impulse, a tendency to fragmentation, to the formation of many petty sovereignties, had been, for a cen- tury and a half, so predominant in Italy, that now at the close of the fifteenth century the Popes themselves were 1 See RAYNALD, ad a. 1431. 2 See RIGHI, "Annali di Faenza," 1840, ii. 204; " Compendio della Storia d'lmola," 1810, 241. UGOLINI, " Storia del Conti e Duchi d'Urbino." Florence, 1859, i. 340, &c. AA2 356 KESTORATION OF THE PAPAL STATES. seized with it. First amongst them, Sixtus IV. made one of his nephews Lord of Imola and Forli, and another Prince of Sinigaglia and Mondovio. The statute of 1431, providing for the rights of the Cardinals, proved itself to be, in such cases, utterly inoperative. Then came Alexander VI., and his son Cassar Borgia, to overturn all the principalities in the States of the Church, with the single exception of the Duchy of Montefeltro. Even the powerful barons of Rome and of the Campagna were expelled. Alexander wished to make his son prince over a considerable patrimony in fact, of one that would comprise the greater part of the Papal States. It was not to be accomplished. Julius II. took away from Borgia all that had been bestowed upon him. The work of restitution so commenced was persevered in. The Pope forced the Venetians to yield up to him those portions of the territory of the Romagna they had won in war ; he struck down the dominion of the Bentivogli in Bologna, and of the Fredduccini in Fermo; and thus became after Innocent III. and Albornoz the third founder and restorer of the Papal States. It was as a warrior and conqueror that the grey-haired Pope won back Parma, Piacenza, and Reggio. JN r ot long before then, every puny chieftain with a couple of castles and a hamlet could set at defiance the temporal power of the Pope ; whilst now it excited the greatest respectj even from the mightiest States. A well-ordered and united government had never long existed in the territory of the Papal See ; and now, as that which had been combined together, in consequence of the old disruptions, was only conjoined but loosely, or did not at all ad- here, so there sprang up, as suddenly as if they started out of the earth, several little chiefs and small tyrants. This was the case especially in the Marches. With the exception of one or two, Leo X. drove out all these petty chiefs, or had them executed. He, being bent, above all things, upon the aggrandisement of his house the Medici took the Duchy of Urbino from its Duke, Francesco Maria della Rovere, in order that he might bestow it on his nephew, Lorenzo de CONSOLIDATION OF THE STATE. 357 Medici. After Leo's death, however, Delia Rovere again reconquered and regained his Duchy. Ever since the close of the fifteenth century there was a transition going on all over Europe, from the manners and circumstances of the mediaeval to those of modern times : the change was coming in some places with a slow, and in others at a speedy pace. And so too was it with the Papal States. There began now to be carried out two objects that were in accordance with the spirit of the age. The first was an endeavour to draw more closely together the political bands, so as to make the whole State more uniform; and next to extend and exalt the Papal authority, even to the degree of its becoming an unlimited power. This appeared so much the more necessary because the old, and now quite senseless, factions of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines were still maintained, especially amongst the country people, and led to the perpetration of numerous crimes and acts, of violence. Leo X. had, for the most part, confided the government to Florentines, his countrymen, who, princi- pally for the sake of getting money, practised the greatest oppressions. The cities sent ambassadors, one after another, to make complaints. They did so in vain. At Rome they were far more intent upon taking away the freedom which many towns still possessed ; and such an intention was carried into full effect at Ancona, by Clement VII., 1 when he, by a sudden invasion and military occupation, got posses- sion of it in 1532. A similar purpose was accomplished by Paul III. in the year 1540, in Perugia, when the town, having re- volted on account of the raising the price of salt, was then compelled to submit, and lost all its rights and liberties. 2 In a similar manner had Ravenna, Faenza, and Jesi been pre- viously punished. Since the middle of the sixteenth century all had been completely subjected in the Papal States : cities and barons yielded an unconditional obedience. And yet the nepotism of some of the Popes led them, in harsh con- trast to the prevailing tendency of the times towards a con- 1 " Relazioni degli Ambasciatori Veneti," vii. 55. 2 MARIOTTI, pp. 113-160. 358 PAPAL WEAKNESS AGAINST FOREIGN COURTS. solidation of the State, to its dismemberment. Thus Paul III. made his son, Luigi Farnese, Duke of Parma and Piacenza; and that territory has been lost irretrievably to the Roman See. Paul IV. despoiled the Colonna family of the Duchy of Palliano to bestow it upon his nephew, Caraffa, who was, soon after the death of his uncle, subjected to legal punishment by the late Pope's successor, Paul IV. And herewith came to an end that species of nepotism which aggrandised the kinsmen of a Pontiff at the expense of the Papal States. After having lasted from the reign of Sixtus IV. to that of Paul IV., then came Pius V., who prohibited, in the most emphatic manner, every endowment of what was a property belonging to the Roman Church, no matter under what title or pretence soever it might be made; 1 and he forewarned by excommunication all who should but advise its being done : and the law forbidding these, as well as every temporary alienation, he had subscribed by all the Cardinals. From this time there occurred two important events in the exterior history of the Papal States the lapse of Ferrara, by the death of Duke Alphonso II., in the year 1596, and of the Duchy of Urbino, in the year 1631. With the eighteenth century came times in which the Popes had bitter experience of their weakness and helpless- ness, when opposed to foreign Courts times in which the States of the Church, so far from aiding to serve the Papal independence, were, on the contrary, regarded and treated as the very means by which a Pope could be forced to adopt measures which otherwise he never would have assented to. The Bourbon Courts imitated the example of Henry V., who, by laying waste the Roman territory, forced Pope Paschalis II. to yield up to him the " Investiture," for the maintenance of which the Papacy had been for thirty years contending. One might have considered it as an impossibility that a Pope would have laid a hand upon the destruction of a Society, against which no substantial or proved accusation existed, and with the downfall of which (apart from other reasons) was involved the ruin of the mightiest and most 1 Bulk " Admonet nos," 29. Mart., 1567. SPOLIATIONS OF THE BOURBONS. 35i> flourishing missions amongst the heathens, and at the same time the Church itself rendered the poorer by so many thousands of souls. But the Bourbon Courts knew well how to obtain what was apparently impossible. They caught hold of the Roman See by the Papal States. They seized upon Avignon and Venaissin, Benevento and Pontecarro, and threatened at the same time to take Castro and Ronciglioni. 1 And when they had tormented to death the steadfast Cle- ment XIIL, they managed, through their adherents amongst the Cardinals, that the man who offered to be the accomplisher of their will should be placed in the chair of the Apostles. And when two Popes, one after the other, Pius VI. and Pius VIL, calmly abiding in their own coun- try, allowed themselves to be made prisoners by French authorities, to be dragged away to France, and to be thrown into prison, then, indeed, a comparison might well be insti- tuted between times past and present. An Alexander III., or an Innocent IV., would have passed over into Sicily, and there, unattainable by Gallic tyrants, they would, under English protection, have continued to govern the Church. Not so the two Piuses. Both were excellent, conscientious men ; but they regarded the quality of a territorial prince more highly than that of the head of the Church. They would not forsake their dominions and their people ; they preferred, like the Roman senators of old, to await the Gauls, seated in their chairs, and the world knows how they were treated ! At the close of the eighteenth century happened a circum- stance, such as had not occurred during a thousand years. Pius VI., in the treaty of Tolentino, of 1797, had to resign to France not only Avignon and Venaissin, but also the three legations, Ravenna, Ferrara, and Romagna. For him remained Rome, the Patrimony, Umbria, and, he was per- mitted to hope, Ancona to be restored to him. It was, how- ever, easy to foresee that the remainder would soon be taken out of his hands. But Pius had recognized, as a matter of fact, that there were cases in which the Pope, although 1 THEINER'S " Geschichte Clemens XIV.," i. 97. 360 INTERNAL CONDITION. not the proprietor, but merely the depository or trustee of the Papal States, might nevertheless alienate a part of them that is, where the actual mission of the State can, apart from the portion that has been alienated, be still car- ried on. INTERNAL CONDITION OF THE PAPAL STATES PREVIOUS TO 1789. Macchiavelli's remark, that " the Papal States stood in no need of any defence against external foes, because they were protected by religion," is an observation that has, at subse- quent periods, been frequently repeated. There appeared to be a great advantage in the fact ; for a country so situated could require no standing army, and no costly expenditure upon the maintenance of fortresses; whilst its inhabitants, feeling themselves in full possession of undisturbed security, might, free from peril, devote their lives to industrial pur- suits. 1 From the time that Paul IV. had compelled King Philip of Spain formally to engage in a war, which was car- ried on with the greatest aversion by the latter, no portion of the Papal States had ever been intruded upon by an enemy, until Urban VIII., misled, like Paul IV., by his nephews, brought on the unmeaning war of Castro, which, ending with a dishonourable peace, became, through increased taxation, by the accumulation of debts, by the impoverishment of the country, and by the hateful employment of spiritual com- bined with temporal weapons, a long-enduriug calamity for the Papacy and the country. 2 A distinction has been drawn between two periods of nepotism of what were called " the great" and " small " nepotisms. In the former, Popes wished to found large principalities for their families ; .in the latter, which began 1 " Relaz. Venet.," vii. 407. 1 Cardinel Sacchetti expresses himself in very strong terms upon these results in a letter addressed to Alexander VII. This document has been frequently reprinted. It is last published by MASSIMO D'AZEGLIO, " La Politique et le droit Chretien." Paris, 1860, p. 165. NEPOTISM. 361 with Gregory XIII., and the bull of Innocent XII., but ended with the death of Alexander VIII. (1691), the exertion made was to raise the Papal families by means of rich endowments, and by elevating them in rank to an equality with the first and noblest houses of the land. Thus the Buoncompagnis, through Gregory XIII., the Perettis through Sixtus V., the Aldobrandinis through Clement VIII., the Borgheses through Paul V., and the Ludovisis through Gregory XV. ; but the enrichment of the Barberinis, through Urban VIII., surpassed everything that had previously occur- red. At the same time it frequently happened that a kinsman was, as " Cardinal Padrone," entrusted with the supreme reins of government. For a considerable time it was thought that a Cardinal's nephew could not possibly be wanting in the Papal Courts. If a successor to the See called the nephews of the antecedent Government to account, and prosecuted them, the memory of the preceding Pope would become dis- honoured, and a wound inflicted upon the authority of the Pontificate. The Popes of the eighteenth and nineteenth century have, on the whole, kept themselves clear of these faults and gross abuses. Pius VI., with his Braschis, forms the only exception. Nepotism on the part of the Popes is now extinguished, and lives only in history. But it is other- wise with the nepotism of Cardinals and the " Prelati." Had the Statute of Eugenius IV. remained in force the College of Cardinals would have constituted a beneficial restraint in the affairs of the Government. Nepotism could not have become so injurious ; whilst favoritism, and such deeds as those of a Camillo Astalli, Mascambruni, Don Mario, and a Coscia would have been prevented, or would have been rendered less pernicious. The country and its interests would also have had in the Cardinals authorised advocates and representatives. But that Statute had speedily become a mere dead letter. The Popes felt themselves to be, and acted as, completely absolute rulers. And even when Paul IV. announced to the Cardinals his spoliation of the Colonnas for the benefit of his nephew, and the war in which he had engaged against Spain and the Emperor, they listened 362 FREEDOM OF THE CITIES. to him with downcast eyes, but did not venture to say a word in opposition to his proposed policy. Since then the College has remained completely passive as a corporation. It serves merely to listen to Allocutions upon momentous events, and to be witnesses to the publication of treaties and important arrangements, to undertake the election of the Popes, and to represent the supreme power during the vacancies of the Papal chair. The newly elected Pope enters at the instant into the full enjoyment of a sove- reignty, the boundlessness of which has not its like in all Europe. Paruta describes, in the year 1595, the relations between the Pope and the Cardinals : " Since Pius II.," he says, " the authority of the Cardinals has been so depressed, that the Popes have attracted all to themselves. At present particular affairs are laid before the College only in the form of a promulgation, and not to ask its advice ; and if, in rare cases, the Pope should ever desire their counsel, or rather appear to desire it, they confine themselves merely to the laudation of whatever has been proposed by the Pope." 1 In the beginning of the sixteenth century, and under Julius II. especially, the cities enjoyed great freedom. The Pope was desirous, says Guicciardini, of acting in such a manner as to inspire the people with an attachment to churchmen ; so that at Bologna, when taking the oath of allegiance, upon its passing over to the Papal Government, it was regarded as a transition from the servitude which hitherto had existed (under the Bentivoglios), into a state of freedom, in which the citizens, in the peaceful possession of their native land, would be allowed to take part in its government as well as in its revenues. 2 And a contemporary of Julius, Macchiavelli, describes it as a peculiarity of the Papal States, that the sovereign was not required either to defend or rule over his subjects ; whilst they, on their side, had no desire to be ruled, yet never thought of separating from him. 3 In the course of the sixteenth century there was first 1 "Relaz. Ven.,"x. 413. 8 Lib. vii., c. 1 ; lib. ix., c. 5. " II Principe," c. 11. STANDING CONGREGATIONS. 363 formed an actual government of the State by ecclesiastics; and at the same time the administration was centralized in Home. Before 1550 there were laymen acting as chiefs in the administration. This at least very frequently happened in the Romagna. But it is remarkable that the cities them- selves often preferred "Prelati" as temporal governors, and expressly desired to have them. Fermo, until the year 1676, maintained its right to have a relative of the Popes for its governor ; and afterwards in his place came a congrega- tion of Prelati merely for this district. Bologna maintained many privileges, and especially that of having a President of its own in Rome, who sometimes offered an active and per- severing resistance. Upon the whole, however, there was (at least since the end of the sixteenth century) no more of corporate or individual independence either in the cities or amongst the noble vassals. Of the city of Rome, it is said, by Cardinal de Luca, that it presented merely the shadow of a municipal government. 1 It is, however, admitted that some of the large cities were allowed to govern themselves in a tolerably independent manner, and that the lords of the soil had also, within their own territories, full power of action. 2 Sixtus V., who has been regarded as the chief founder of the modern system of the Papal Government, estab- lished the institution of Standing Congregations, which was well calculated for that time, when it was an object to raise a barrier against nepotism and favorit- ism, and to have an Institution which would possess both uniformity and stability in the management of the public business, and be able to restrain the worst excesses of arbi- trary authority. In connexion with this institution was developed "the Prelature" the formation of a class of a 1 "Dottor Volgare," lib. xv., c. 34. 2 The Venetian Relation of 1615 (" Cod. Ital.," p. 358) remarks that in Rome there still remained the form of an independent municipal ad- ministration ; but that all these were things " che servono piuttosto per apparenza, che per assistenza di governo." Its regulations were alto- gether dependent upon the will of the Pope. 364 OPPRESSIVE NUMBER OF OFFICIALS. superior or higher order of officials in the Papal State. The commencement of this class is placed in the time of Gregory XIII. In the former periods ecclesiastical officials were named "Curiales." In a closer view of this body, the "Prelature" might be regarded as "a noviciate" a pre- liminary state of preparation, and a nursery for the occupa- tion of the higher offices in the State. Those who entered it had to prove they were possessed of an income of 1,500 scudi and thus all persons without means were excluded from this class, and the career which it opened to its members. A serious burden upon the country was the great number of Roman officials, whose places some of the Popes, when they found themselves in financial difficulties, had created merely for the purpose of selling them. The duties they had to discharge were insignificant, and some of them were merely titles without any office whatsoever. The purchasers paid either a yearly contribution or a lump sum at once, and could also sell their appointments again. There was no fixed salary attached to these appointments; but the occupiers received the profits and fees of their offices. In the year 1470 there were already 650 purchasable places. Afterwards Sixtus IV. created a whole College, merely to sell the places ; and at a later period succeeding Popes, and Leo X- in particular, imitated this example, There were under Paul IV. so many as 3,500 such places. With reference to this matter persons tranquillised their conscience with the consideration that by such means were obviated the neces- sity of burdening the people with new taxes. It was, in fact, a system of disguised loans in the form of annuities. The consequences made themselves chiefly felt in matters affecting ecclesiastical jurisdiction, for the purchases had main reference to the produce of Departments interested in Benefices and Dispensations. And in the administration of the Papal States its effects were also felt, for the Government situations were also sometimes sold ; l and the mere exist- 1 SABACINI, " Notizie storiche della citta d'Ancona," p. 335, mentions that the Governorship of Ancona was sold to Benedetto Accolti, for the yearly payment of 20,000 scudi IMMUNITIES OF THE CLERGY. 365 ence of a numerous class of officials who had purchased their appointments, and regarded them as articles of trade, could not but introduce at last a grovelling, griping spirit into the whole administration. 1 It was one of the merits of the excellent Innocent XII., that, in the year 1693, he abolished the selling of places, by restoring the purchase- money to the buyers. 2 But, assuredly, he could not do away with the consequences of a custom that had existed for more than two hundred years, and the results of which have been felt down to the most recent times. The ecclesiastics formed at Rome, in many different ways, a superior and privileged order, and such as cannot be found in any other country in the world. As clergy and laity were thus separated by a broad and deep chasm from one another, the laity were filled with jealousy against the clerical order, thus placed in a position so superior to their own, and defended on all sides by inviolable privileges ; and the con- sequence was that the feeling of jealousy often became one of decided aversion. On the one side, it was frequently maintained in the sixteenth century that there prevailed amongst the people a decided dislike to a government by priests; 3 and on the other side it was remarked by the cele- brated statesman and historian, Paolo Paruta (a seriously religious man), in the year 1595, that the preservation of the rights and immunities of the clergy was regarded as the first and most important of all affairs. He had, he says, fre- quently observed, and not without wonder and vexation, that even "Prelati," leading very unspiritual lives, were highly esteemed and rewarded, if they but defended the pri- vileges of the ecclesiastical order against the laity ; and that it was sometimes made a matter of reproach to a " Prelato" 1 MURATORI, " Annali," a. 1693, xvi. p. 237. Ed. Milan. 2 u Per la qual cosa si viene a riempire la corte d' uomini mercenarii e mercanti . . . non avendo detti mercenarii d'offici involto 1'animo che in cose meccaniche e basse. ... si che tolta 1'economia este- riore ogni altra cosa si reduce a deterioramento." Thus writes the Vene- tian ambassador Grimani, under Clement IX. "Tesori della corte Rom.," p. 426. * " Governo dei preti," an expression since then frequently made use of. 366 A STRIKING CONTRAST. that he favoured the laity too much. It seemed, he says, as if the clergy and laity did not belong to one and the same flock, and were not included in the one Church. 1 It was further noticed that Popes were no longer taken from the regular clergy (from Sixtus V., who died 1590, Benedict XIII., in 1724, was the first monk who sat in the Papal chair) and that since government by nepotism had become customary, the regular clergy were seldom promoted or employed. All was in the hands of the secular clergy, and especially of those who did that which the regulars could not do serve "the nephews" or who appeared better adapted for office by their juridical studies. 2 A very striking contrast was presented between the spi- ritual and temporal government of the Popes. The first bore throughout the stamp of dignified stability, resting upon fixed rules and ancient traditions ; whilst the government of the country was, on the contrary, a prey to continual changes of men, manners, and systems. 3 In comparison with the reigns of worldly princes, the pontificates were short. On the average, the reign of a Pope did not last more than nine years. 4 It seldom happened that a new Pope continued in 1 " Relaziom Venete," x. 375. 2 Grimani, who describes these circumstances, maintains, " Nelle con- correnze un pretuccio ignorante e vizioso otterra il premio sopra il religiose dotto e dabbene," and ascribes, amongst the injurious consequences of the system, the great want then felt of men of talent to occupy official posi- tions in the Papal States. With the cessation of nepotism (since Inno- cent XII.) circumstances in this respect must have improved. 8 The Relation ("Cod. Ital.," p. 358), "della qualitk e abusi della Corte di Roma," f. 127, remarks, u The constant changes in the Govern- ment astonish every one that comes to Rome, so much so, that some sup- pose the cause of it is to be found in the air, the climate, or the town itself." The fact, however, is universally remarked. Thus it is spoken of in an instruction to the Spanish Ambassador at Rome in the seven- teenth century, and which is annexed to the work, " La monarchia di Spagna crescente e calante," 1699, p. 7. " Questa corte (the Roman Court) e variabilissima, e cosi bisogna, come il buon piloto, mutar le vele conforme al vento che soffia," &c. See also CANTU, " Storia degli Italian!," v. 660. 4 Thus, for example, in two centuries (from 1589-1789) there were in CHANGE OF OFFICIALS. 367 temporal affairs the system of his predecessors. He came to power under a lively impression of the discontents that had been aroused by certain evils of the previous administration, and was therefore so much the more inclined to produce a favourable impression for his own government by the adop- tion of opposite proceedings. Thus it has been remarked, with respect to the cultivation of the Roman Campagna, that every Pope followed a different system; and the conse- quence has been that in that which was the main point to be achieved nothing has been done. / Beyond all other things to be remarked upon is the fact that persons were changed under every new Pope, which led to the most influential offices never remaining long in the. same hands and thus were men gifted to be statesmen, and with an aptitude for business, either prevented from having time to acquire due knowledge and experience, or if they had acquired both, then they were not afforded the oppor- tunity of turning them to practical account. Paruta alludes to the great disadvantage which this custom brought along with it. The new Popes were usually distinguished for their piety or learning; but they were unpractised in affairs of State, 1 and therefore needed so much the more old and ex- perienced ministers, and a firm, permanent council. Instead of this, there appeared to be nothing mpre pressing for the new Popes to do than to fill the principal offices with their nephews, favourites, and fellow-countrymen. 2 Clement IX. France five Kings, in Germany nine Emperors, in Spain seven Kings ; but in Rome, twenty-three Popes. 1 It is remarkable that the recent practice should be so different on this point from what prevailed in the Middle Ages, and when the Papal election was free from foreign influences. In the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, persons were constantly elected as Popes who had already filled, under one or two preceding Popes, the most important offices in the Roman Church. On this ground were elected Gregory VII., Urban II., Gelasius II., Lucius II., Alexander III., Gregory VIII., Gregory IX., Alexander IV. The Cardinal-State-Secretary is now peculiarly " the Government," and yet it is regarded as a regular rule that he is never to attain to the Papal dignity. 2 u Relazioni Venete," x. 420. 368 MANAGEMENT OF THE FINANCES. was the first who, to the great vexation of his countrymen at Pistoja. departed from this custom ; and, with the exception of a few high offices, retained in their position all those who had been appointed by his predecessor. 1 The management of the finances of the Popes, since the beginning of the sixteenth century, appears in an unfavour- able light, if we consider the figures and the expedients resorted to. Despite of the multiplied taxes, which were so much the more oppressive, as the prosperity of the population was by no means on the. increase, 2 the National Debt was continually increasing, whilst Popes, by the erection of the " Monti," as well as by the sale of offices, were adding to an alienation of the revenue. It was remarked that since Sixtus V. the Popes left nothing to their successors but debts. 3 They had amounted, under Clement VIII., to 12,242,620 scudi, or 17,751,799 rix dollars that is, three- fourths of the entire revenues of the State were required for the payment of interest. Innocent X., in 1685, left a debt of 48,000,000 scudi. The motive for such a heavy burden on the State (apart from the two useless Italian wars, and what was squandered in nepotism and favouritism) was one well calculated to increase the renown of the Popes. They could not withdraw themselves from the obligation of supporting the Catholic powers in the religious struggles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and especially from furnishing contributions in money, troops, and ships for the wars against the Turks. They had the task in Italy, in common with the Venetians, of serving as the bulwark of Christianity a task that had been transmitted to them from their predecessors and to maintain it against its hereditary 1 GRIMANI, " Relaz. in den Tesori," p. 417. * Of Clement IX. it is remarked by MURATORI (xvi. 92), " He was continually thinking of the means whereby he might relieve his people of many of the taxes imposed upon them by his predecessors. He insti- tuted a congregation for that purpose, but it was found, on account of the State debts, to be an undertaking impossible to bring to a successful issue." 3 GRIMANI, " Relazione," in the " Tesori della Corte Romana," 1672, p. 429. DISCONTENT OF THE PEOPLE. 369 enemy in the East. France, and the Poles, especially Hun- garians, the Imperial Court, and most frequently of all the Venetians, sought for and received large sums of money. All who were persecuted and despoiled in the south-eastern countries turned first to the Popes for aid, and regularly ob- tained from them generous assistance. 1 The burdens which the population had at that time to bear were imposed upon them as victims to the general weal of Christendom. But their sacrifices brought with them two evils. First, there was in the country no species of industrial pursuit in a thriving con- dition, and the cities, with few exceptions, remained small and poor : next, everything that was used came from abroad, 2 and thus the land, despite of the excellence of its natural productiveness, became constantly poorer. The administra- tion of finances was, as a matter of course, managed in secret, for there was not even a word said of a publication of the accounts ; and as none but a Cardinal could be a Treasurer, he, by reason of the privileges of his position, was above all responsibility! The people felt the pressure of increasing taxation, and were continually becoming more dissatisfied with a " Priest Government." Their discontent must, in Paruta's time (about the year 1595), have assumed a very serious aspect. 3 The evil became still greater in the following cen- 1 RANKE ("Die romische Papste," i. 422) says: "The Popes wished to govern their principality as if it was a large property, from which a portion of the rents should be applied for the benefit of their own families ; but the main part be especially allocated to the necessities of the Church." What he says with reference to a care for their own families can only be applied to Pontiffs before 1691, and, even then, is not applicable to them all. It is particularly not so to Clement IX., who might be called " admirable," if he had not been somewhat indolent and apathetic. 2 This is particularly dwelt upon in the Venetian Relation of the year 1615 (in " Cod. Ital.," f. 45, of the Munich library), " Quasi tutte le cose, che si usano, sono portate da paesi forastieri," &c. 8 " Relaz. Ven.," x. 396. Of the "gravezza quasi insopportabile dell' imposizion," Tiepolo had already spoken about the year 1570 ; see RANKE, i. 421. In the year 1664, Cardinal Sacchetti again complains of " il numero innumerabile delle gabelle," &c. We learn from Pallavicini that the people ascribed the pressure of taxation to nepotism, the dotation BB 370 DISORDERED STATE OF THE FINANCES. tury ; and, even though we should regard as an exaggeration the assertion of Cardinal Sacchetti, that in the year 1664 the population had been diminished by one-half, still it is positively true that numbers, to escape the burden of taxation, had emigrated. In the year 1670, the debt had increased to 52 million scudi, and absorbed even the dataria rent, which otherwise should, as usual, have been appropriated to the necessities of the Papal Court. Under Clement XII., the deficit was 120,000 scudi. It was better at the time of the death of Benedict XIV., in the year 1758. The deficit had then been reduced by more than one-half, but the interest on the public debt swallowed up the half of the income. After this, the storm of the French Revolution burst over the Papal States ; and then there was a Roman Republic, which, after the capture of Pius VI., dragged on for a few years a miserable existence ; and with it came a state bankruptcy, which set aside the paper money created by Pius VI. 1 In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the condition of the country is usually described in gloomy colours. The foreign ambassadors believed " that, if a temporal monarch had the government of the Papal States, they might be raised to a high degree of prosperity, and even of wealth ;" 2 as all the conditions for attaining both were to be found in the soil and the population. The causes assigned, in expla- nation of the general decay, are very various. Above all things was, as a matter of course, the constantly disordered state of the finances, which was now, indeed, not merely ascribed to nepotism and favoritism, but the grounds for which were found to lie much broader and deeper. To the drainage of money occasioned by the absence of domestic manufac- tures, there was to be added that which passed away into foreign countries, as payments upon the interest of the debt, and enrichment of Papal families " Populus, qui prse multis vectigalibus humeris sibi ferre videbatur recentiores pontificias domos tot opibus onustas," &c. In the MS. Life of Alexander VII. 1 COPPI, u Annali d'ltalia." iii. 219. 1 So says the " Venet. Relation" of 1615. LAWS CONCERNING TRADE. 371 as the chief creditors were Genoese and Florentines. According to the remark of the President de Brosse, 1 pay- ments to the Church in Home, that came from foreign countries, were never sent in cash, but in bills upon bankers, who immediately met with them the demands of the foreign creditors of the state. The laws concerning trade were so inconceivably perverse, that the suspicion was expressed that they had been purposely calculated for the suppression of skill, and the destruction of industry. As to the absurd duties levied in the interior of the country, they operated in the same direction. To these must be added the arbitrary proceedings with respect to the corn-trade, (the institute of the " Annona,") and the introduction of monopolies in the most important necessaries of life : matters concerning which there had been long and frequent complaints. 2 There was, too, a 1 " Le President de Brosse en Italic, lettres," &c. Paris, 1858, ii. 452, et seq. These letters were written in 1739 and 1740. 2 The author, in a subsequent passage, again refers to the baleful effects of the Roman u Annona," or Corn Law. Mr. Lyons, in a letter ad- dressed to the Marquis of Normanby, from Rome, July 30, 1856, makes some remarks on the same subject: "I have," says Mr. Lyons, "the honour to transmit to your Lordship two printed copies and a translation of an Edict published yesterday, by which the exportation, from these States, of corn of all kinds, is suspended until further orders. The second paragraph of the Edict, declaring that the circulation of corn within the State remains perfectly free, is supposed to have been occasioned by an absurd and mischievous Notification, issued, on the 22nd instant, on his own authority, by Monsignor Amici, the lately appointed Extraordinary Papal Commissioner for the four Legations, and Pro-Legate of Bologna. This Notification is couched in language more calculated to excite and to justify than to allay the popular irritation, and contains a number of minute and vexatious regulations, intended for the prevention or punish- ment of the imaginary offence of ' engrossing,' or buying up large quan- tities of corn. The prejudices and ignorance of the mass of the people in these States on the subject of the corn trade may, perhaps, require to be treated with a gentle hand ; but it might have been expected that the acts of a public functionary, in the high situation occupied by Monsignor Amici, would have been directed rather towards correcting them than towards fostering and sanctioning them. The Government at Rome has BB 2 372 DEFECTIVE CHARACTER OF THE GOVERNMENT. complete absence of all representation of the interests of the people. An individual city might make its wishes and complaints known in Rome ; but then anything analogous to a provincial representation in the Papal States, much more a representation of the whole country, was never even thought of. 1 The President de Brosse considered that the administra- tion of the Papal States (about the year 1740) was the most defective of any in all Europe, but, at the same time, the mildest. The mildness degenerated into weakness and negligence, and so contributed to the impoverishment of the country, by permitting all things to go to decay, in the hands of aged and infirm sovereigns. He likesvise thought that the Pope would be one of the richest monarchs in Europe, if he raised as much money from his subjects as other sovereigns, and if his finances were tolerably well managed. 2 Such was the opinion also entertained in Italy, with reference to the defective character of the Papal government. Becattini, in his eulogistic biography of Pius VI., confesses : "That, with the exception of Turkey, the country beyond all others the worst governed was that of the Papal States. The .baleful disapproved Monsignor Amici's Notification ; but his proceeding does not afford a favourable specimen of the enlightenment, or of the administra- tive capacity of the ecclesiastics selected for high civil employment. The practice adopted by the Papal Government of regulating the corn trade by successive temporary Edicts, issued according to the circumstances of the moment, has, in addition to its inherent evils, the great disadvantage, in these States, of giving rise to all kinds of suspicion against those in power. Every change is popularly attributed to direct corruption, or to a desire to favour the speculations of particular persons, supposed to be connected by ties of family or interest with men high in office. Whether these accusations are, in truth, founded or unfounded, there can be no doubt that they are believed in to an extent which materially injures the reputation and authority of the Government." " Despatches from Mr. Lyons respecting the Condition and Administra- tion of the Papal States." London, 1860, pp. 26, 27. 1 " Gegenwartiger Zustanddes piipstlicheu Staats." Hehnstadt, 1792, p. 217. See the " Riflessioni" of Cardinal Buoncompagni, in the year 1780, partly translated in LE BRET'S " Magazin," ix. 452-527. 2 u Lettres familieres," ii. 452, 465. ABSOLUTE POWER OF THE POPES. 373 annona, or corn-law, the tormenting and demoralising " vic- tualling tribunals," the want of manufactures, the increase of smuggling caused by the high duties on imports ; the enrichment of state-farmers (farmers-general), to the great injury of the public treasury ; and the number of homicides : such were the circumstances pointed at as characteristics of the condition of the Papal States. 1 And one is, in fact, in considering them, strongly reminded of the expressions of the old chancellor, Clarendon. 2 The mildness of the Papal government has also been lately remarked upon by an Englishman very familiar with Italian history. 3 Strangers who have been in the country, and who have taken the trouble to acquire a knowledge of the manner in which its government has been carried on, have most gene- rally been at first astonished at the absence of all restraints upon, and then the omnipotence of, the sovereign. Thus speaks Grosley, who visited the Papal States about the year 1760, 4 "The Papal is the most absolute of all the govern- ments in Europe. Of all the restrictions that are to be found in monarchical states, such as fundamental laws of the realm, a coronation oath, regulations made by prede- cessors, national or provincial assemblies, powerful corpora- tions of all these there is to be found not one in the Papal States." One looks with wonder at an institution like to that of " the Uditore Santissimo" which, in the name of the Pope, can interfere arbitrarily in the administration of justice, in every department, and can withdraw both suits and suitors from the jurisdiction of the regular judges ! Upon a closer examination it is, however, found that this absolute power is much modified by custom by that, above 1 CANTU, " Storia degli Ital.," vi. 126. 2 u He observes, that of all mankind none form so bad an estimate of human affairs as churchmen." HALLAM'S "Constitutional History of England," iii. 330. 3 u Whatever objection there may be to the Papal sway, it cannot, in fairness, be regarded as otherwise than mild." DENNISTOUN'S " Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino," 1851, iii. 233. 4 " Observations sur 1'Italie." Paris, 1774, ii. 329. 374 THE POPE AND NAPOLEON I. which a Pope never, or scarcely ever places himself that it is also modified by many considerations, and by the utmost possible forbearance towards persons; a forbearance that has become a principle of government so that, in truth, this mild despotism is found to exist more in appearance, and in theory, than in fact, or practical life. THE PAPAL STATES FROM 1814 TO 1846. When Napoleon I. despoiled Pope Pius VII. of the Papal States, his primary and principal motive for so doing was not because he desired to have possession of the country, but because he would not allow the Pope to be in that position of independence which the government of those states secured to His Holiness ; and because the Emperor wanted to make of the Pope an instrument wherewith nations might be subjected to the imperial sway. Napoleon has acknow- ledged this. " I did not despair," he says, " of obtaining by some means or other the guidance of the Pope for myself, and then what an influence it would have been!" 1 He wished to establish the Papal Court at Paris to make it a French and Imperial Institution, and by these means to get possession of the Papal influence over all Catholic popula- tions and so be a ruler over their souls as well as their persons. 2 He did not succeed in this ; for the Pope, although a captive, and, according to the captor's own expressions, " gentle as a lamb, and an angel in goodness," would neither be led, nor allow himself to be made use of. The momentary weakness which the tortured, enslaved, and outwitted Pius had manifested in his signature to the Concordat of Fon- taiuebleau, in the year 1813, with an implicit renunciation of his temporal powers, was very speedily repaired ; and at the end of a few months he was able, as a steadfast sufferer, and 1 " Memorial de Ste. Helene," v. 326. 2 u S'en servir comineunmoyen social pour reprimer 1'anarchie, consolider sa domination en Europe, accroitre la consideration de la France et Tin- fluence de Paris, objet de toutes ses pensees." " Memorial de Ste. Helene," 1. c. PAPAL ADMINISTRATION. 375 now peaceful victor, to return, and pass through the provin- ces of his restored dominions to his capital, amid the most sincere expressions of joy from the whole people and from those, too, of the Romagnole, that had been so long separated from him. His return was a grand triumphal procession. The whole of the Papal States, such as he had never before possessed them, were transferred to him by the Treaty of Vienna ; and, in the person of Consalvi, he had at his com- mand a statesman of rare endowments, to aid him in solving the difficult problem of re-establishing in part the traditional mode of Papal administration, instead of the French hitherto existing. That the form of the solution should have entangled the State and the Papacy in new and insoluble difficulties, or such difficulties as up to the present time never have been solved, was a fact that could only be subsequently learned by experience. In the preliminary observations to the " Motu Proprio " of 6th July, 1816, by which was regulated the government of the Papal States, Consalvi declared -" That formerly an ag- gregate of various customs, laws, and^privileges had existed in the State ; and that it was an advantage and a Divine dispensation, that by the interruption of the papal reign, and during that interregnum all those inequalities should be re- moved, and unity with uniformity introduced. For," as he said, " a government was so much the more perfect the more it approached to a system of unity." This statesman did not take into consideration that an ab- solute government can only be rendered endurable, and can alone be saved from sinking under the burden of its enor- mous responsibility, when it not merely tolerates and ac- knowledges a variously organized life, protected by custom and precedent, but also permits it to move freely within its subordinate sphere. His lauded unity and uniformity were destructive, and he also had to acquire by experience a knowledge of the fact that it is far easier to destroy than it is to construct or to create, in the management of public affairs, the spirit, strength, and vigour of a healthy existence. 376 CONSALVI'S INSTITUTIONS. Thus, there was not a single one of the old municipal and provincial institutions re-established. The Gonfaloniere and the Anziani of the Communes, retained no more their indepen- dent positions ; and even Kome and Bologna had but a sha- dow of municipal government. The local laws and statutes which, in sooth, granted very various, and, for the purposes of justice, very inconvenient privileges, as well as all the rights of the Communes, with exemptions and immunities, were abolished. Consalvi entered, therefore, willingly upon the inheritance which the Revolution had left to him as an incarnate Napoleonised government ; and he was thankful to the latter, because it had prepared the way so energetically and unsparingly for his administration, and so completely smoothened a path for him and yet, he in one respect de- parted completely from the French system, by again placing power in the hands of " ecclesiastics." The Papal States were to be an absolute government by officials, in accordance with the French pattern, but then the highest orders of officialism were reserved for the " Prelature." This form of a clerical, omnipotent, bureaucratic, administering, governmental offi- cialism, was essentially a novelty, far and away different from the state of affairs in the olden time, and, above all, absolutely different from what existed during the Middle Ages. Now, the whole of the kingdom was divided into seventeen Dele- gations, or Legations, where a cardinal was placed at the head of affairs. The Delegati, corresponding in position with the French Prefects, must be members of the Prelature. They had to decide upon everything; and to assist them, they had merely a deliberative council, the members of which were nominated at Rome. To these Delegatl belonged the appointment of the magistrates who carried on the govern- ment of the Communes, nnd amongst whom sat clergymen, who took precedence of the lay members. Below the Delegati were persons named Governatori, but having an inferior juris- diction. In Rome, the old supreme authorities were again re-established the Congregations delta Consulta, del buon Governo, economica, dell' Acque, degli Studii; and then the Camera Apostulica, endowed with the most heterogeneous at- COMPLICATED SCHEME OF GOVERNMENT. 377 tributes, and divided into twenty-one subordinate depart- ments, or Circles, with a Cardinal Camerlingo (chamberlain) and Tesoriere, or treasurer. To these were to be added fif- teen different courts of judicature. At the head of the Go- vernment, both spiritual and temporal, was placed the Car- dinal State-Secretary. The nursery-school from which the Government took its officials was from that class of Roman Abbdtes, who, with insufficient judicial and without any poli- tical economic knowledge, were better taught than educated, and might more fitly be entrusted with the arrangement of ecclesiastical ceremonies than with the management and in- terests of everyday life ; but who, relying upon the favour and patronage of a Cardinal or " Monsignore," could win for themselves even in Rome but very little respect, and in the provinces were, for the most part, objects of the smallest love and regard. Of all the systems of government established in Europe, the Roman was indisputably the most complicated so much so, that in some cases a circumlocutory and time- wasting correspondence must be carried on preliminary to the ascertainment of the simple fact as to which one of the several authorities a matter should be submitted for its set- tlement. And by some of these authorities, meanwhile, would it be observed that it was only in accordance with its name and title that they could take any cognizance of it. And yet, some of the institutions of Consalvi proved themselves to be both judicious and beneficial; as, for in- stance, the DeJegati placed by the side of the permanent go- verning Congregazioni, an imitation of the French Prefectoral Council. It was also generally recognized that the Tribunal of the Sacra Ruota was an admirable court of judicature, with an exemplary mode of legal procedure. In the German Ecclesiastical States the spiritual was separated from the temporal government ; but in the Papal States they were intermingled with each other. This was declared to be an indispensable necessity. It was maintained that the double position of the Supreme Head must be re- peated and imitated amongst those of inferior rank. 1 There 1 RANKE, in his u Historisch-politischen Zeitschrift," i. 682. 378 FINANCIAL AFFAIRS. is as little of propriety in the fact, as there is of justice in the assertion. Because a king is at the head of the military de- fences of a country, as its commander-in- chief, and at the same time the head of the civil government, must it also necessarily follow that there should be the same combination of military and civil life amongst all the subordinates of his government ? On the contrary, it is well known that in every properly-regulated State, the most complete separation of the civil from the military administration is maintained without the slightest difficulty. And so also could it be in the Papal States the spiritual could be dissevered from the political, the ecclesiastical divided from the civil ; and, de- spite the union of both in the one Head, they might very well be distributed amongst different members of the same nation. Financial affairs were found by Consalvi to be in a state of the most absolute ruin. They had been so of old ; and their condition was to be traced to transactions in preceding centuries, to the robberies of the French, and the urgent necessities of the Napoleonic domination. In 1846, the de- ficit amounted to 1,200,000 scudi, or 1,740,000 rix dollars. At the same time the revenue had, in consequence of the French system of government, been nearly trebled. It was a matter of course that the taxes imposed by the French must be substantially maintained. The whole body of the French system of administering justice, in all its branches, with its modes of procedure, was put an end to by the Papal Delegate Rivarola, previous to the Pope's arrival at Rome ; and, at the same time, all pro- vincial statutes and peculiar municipal privileges of cities were abolished. The vacancy thus created was filled up by the Canon Law and Papal constitutions of the olden time making altogether an incomprehensible, confused, and partly self-contradictory conglomeration of enactments. A calamitous confusion in all branches of the administration of justice was the immediate consequences of this change. And this con- fusion was increased by the rivalry of the Episcopal Courts, which drew before their bar every matter in which a clergy- AUSTRIAN DOMINATION. 379 man was concerned. Then, too, were re-established the old tribunals of the Fabbrica di San Pietro for all religious legacies, and the Cherici di Camera for all matters connected with the domain lands. Then new codes were promised. Upon the whole, the power of ecclesiastics in temporal matters became infinitely greater than it ever had been before. So many barriers to it had been struck down ; and, in addition, every- thing connected with education, and a very rigid censorship, (the last being most reluctantly endured by the higher classes,) were vested in the hands of ecclesiastics ! And yet, notwithstanding all this, Consalvi was regarded by the numerous and powerful party of the Zelanti (the zealots), to which the majority of the Cardinals belonged, as a dangerous innovator ! so much so, that Cardinal Mattel, Dean of the College, and Prince of Velletri, caused a pro- clamation of the State-Secretary's to be torn down in Velletri by his own bailiffs ! Italy was treated like Poland at the Congress of Vienna : it was regarded as "a geographical expression." Nations, their wishes and their wants, were not there taken into con- sideration. Austria then dominated not only where her own interests and sympathies were involved, but her word of command influenced and controlled the other Italian States. Nought was to be conceded to the people, in the form of rights and institutions, but what appeared to be conformable to the interests of the Austrian Bureaucracy as those in- terests were then comprehended at Vienna. The conse- quence was that in the course of a few years Italy was covered over with a net of secret societies. The cherished desire of the higher classes was to shake off the yoke of Austria. The French had, when in Spain, been able to win a party for themselves the " Af rancesados ;" but Austria could never once gain for herself a similar party in Italy. The occupiers of lands in the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom might rejoice at living in security under a well-regulated government; but in the cities all were Anti- Austrian, and all for " national independence." The youths studying in the Universities were soon drawn into the whirlpool of a secret 380 LEO XII. and mighty movement. And then came literature, with its irresistible weight, to impart its influence. Every prohibition of a book produced a greater sale for it ; and persons were more eager to read an author, and reposed more confidence in what he wrote, once he had become an object of political persecution. The secret societies the Carbonaris, Adelfis, Guelphs, Sublime Masters those, who had formerly made themselves partly known by their anti-Xapoleon tendencies, now rendered their existence from time to time remarkable by a political assassination or by an assassination to which a political colouring was given. Consalvi, hated by two opposite parties by those resolved upon a political revolu- tion, and by the Zelanti must be overthrown, and a Spanish Cortes Constitution, or something like it, proclaimed. The flame was, however, then opportunely smothered by the speedy suppression of the insurrection in Naples and Pied- mont. With the death of Pius VII., and the elevation of Leo XII., came to an end the ministry of Consalvi a virulently- vituperated individual. 1 Under the new Pope, Leo XII. (the elect of the Zelanti), an opposite system to that which had hitherto prevailed came into operation. Leo had been chosen partly on account of his opinions, and partly also be- cause he was sickly, frail, and had the appearance of one likely to die very soon. 2 He made Cardinal della Somaglia his minister a man eighty years of age, and not of active habits. And so, at a most difficult and perilous period, when there was much required to be done, to be regulated, to be created, the destiny of the country was placed in the hands of two grey-haired valetudinarians, weary of life, and just dropping into the grave ! The Pope had been pressed, at 1 For an opinion of the Romans respecting him, see COPPI, " Annali," vii. 334. He is there reproached as having been " corteggiatore degli stranieri potenti ed imperioso sui sudditi pontificj." 2 This is said by the French Consul in his despatch in ARTAUD, " Hist, de Leo XII.," i. 130, and by Chateaubriand himself in his " Memoires," viii. 215, ed. de Berlin. Delia Genga was, in fact, not elected until after Austria had interposed its veto upon Cardinal Severoli. UNPOPULARITY OF HIS GOVERNMENT. 3S1 the commencement of his reign, to nominate a Congregation of Cardinals for affairs of State ; and they, it was thought, would be able substantially to carry on the government ; but Leo soon put an end to this expectation by the declaration that he only intended to summon them occasionally, and then merely for the purposes of consultation. The weak, sickly Pope toiled on incessantly. The tendency of his measures, opposed to those of Consalvi, was in accordance with the wishes of the Zelanti. The Provincial Councils, one of Consalvi's best institutions, were again abolished ; and not only was the Inquisition re-established, but there was also introduced an extensive spy-system, both for the supervision of the conduct of officials, as well as the morals of the population. 1 It was the firm belief of Leo that safety alone was to be found in the restoration, so far as it was possible, of ancient institutions and manners. There- fore was everything connected with instruction more abso- lutely than before transferred to the clergy; "inoculation" was put an end to, and the immediate result was a greater number of deaths. Even the Latin language was again introduced into the proceedings of some of the courts ; and Leo's Government became the most unpopular that there had been in Rome for a century ; and the people made him feel this, by the cessation of the usual plaudits that are given to a Pope when he appears in public. And yet Leo was animated with the very best intentions. He felt the untenableness of the new circumstances and institutions ; but he fell into an error as to the proper remedy to be applied, and in making the attempt to breathe fresh life into that which was dead and gone by for ever. He recognized clearly enough that the whole system of officialism was rankling and rotting with a grievous defect, and that in such a circumstance lay a serious danger for the existing order of things. He had long before then remarked that a clerical official organism must be destitute of a rigid 1 COPPI, " Annali," vii. 337. I may here remark that Coppi, so often referred to by me, is an esteemed Roman clergyman, who has often been consulted upon affairs of State, as he himself mentions, vii. 146. 382 LAY GOVERNMENT OFFICERS. and settled discipline, mainly because its members are priests, and, therefore, endowed with the privileges of their order ; that there is no law and no means by which they could be kept in check ; and that they were alone to be operated upon by a hope of promotion. "Rome," says the French Ambassador, in a dispatch of the year 1823, 1 "is a republic in which every one is a lord in his SiKdGTripiov. Consalvi had tried to change this ; but upon the first rumour of his downfall, all these little autho- rities instantly re-established themselves." In a Government so constituted as that in which ecclesiastics hold. all the higher appointments and offices of honour, and in which to laymen alone is permitted the retention of a number of small situa- tions, inferior places, and lower pay, there must ever be want- ing that moral motive power, without which modern bureau- cracy cannot exist : it combines a feeling of official honour, with the influence of a corporative spirit things through which the multitude, who may not be actuated by high religious feelings, will yet be impelled strictly to adhere to the path of duty, and faithfully to discharge all the require- ments of their respective positions. Thus the lay government officer (and the Italians are but too well-inclined so to act) has regarded his situation as a maintenance, as a benefice for himself, and of which he ought, for the advantage of himself and his family, to make out as much pay and profits as he possibly could. Leo sought a remedy against such an abuse, in the establishment of a " Congregazione di Vigilanza"* whose duty it was to receive and examine into all accusa- tions that might be preferred against the Government 1 In ARTAUD, " Hist, de Leon XII.," i. 134. * " Bisogna far per la famiglia," is a common saying amongst the lay officials. I was told, by a distinguished individual in Bologna, that it ia their excuse for every act of corruption and embezzlement. There, too, is to be heard another common saying, characteristic of a glaring want in administrative discipline, " Da noi, Tuna meta commanda e 1'altra non ubbidisce." This naturally may be said in a State where the ecclesiastics, as formerly in some lands, and still, for example, in Hungary, the nobility, regard themselves as a privileged, and therefore as the governing class. SECRET SOCIETIES. 383 officers, and which the Pope declared, to his great grief, he had found to be both numerous and well founded. Its only result, as Coppi remarks, was, that the spy system, with its deleterious consequences, was much increased. 1 The newly-elected Pope, in 1829, nearly resembled his predecessor. The pure and pious Castiglioni, or Pius VIII., was a sickly, tottering old man, who had but a few months to live. Still, he instantly suppressed the " Congregazione di Vigilanza" and the spy system, which his predecessor had organized. He earned praise by having done so little, when Leo had done so much. The secret societies had meanwhile threatened to make an attack on the Papal States. In the Romagna several political assassinations were perpetrated ; and the Cardinal Rivarola, having been, on that account, dispatched thither, had 508 persons capitally convicted, amongst whom were 30, nobles, 156 occupiers of land, or shopkeepers, 74 employes, and 38 soldiers ; but on none of these was the punishment of death inflicted. And yet, all that had been so accomplished was but to crush a single head of the hydra, and then soon to see others and new rise up in its place! The mischief of secret societies, which, for nearly the last fifty years, has been the greatest national plague of Italy, is generally regarded as being an Italian, and peculiarly a Southern Italian, malady. But, first, it is to be observed that, in a country where there is a complete subjugation of the press, and where a suspicious police dominates over a people dissatisfied with their condition, the formation of secret societies is as much in accordance with natural circumstances, as that there must, in the human body, if ('av07j/tara) pustules upon the skin be violently driven in from the surface, interior sores inevitably produced. Secondly, the formation of a secret society is the natural production of that impulse towards social activity, which an intellectual and lively population feels, when placed in a position where the necessaries of life are easily, and with little trouble, attainable. Now, when the Italians found that 1 COPPI, vii. 374. 384 OUTBREAK IN THE PAPAL STATES. they were excluded from the regular gratification of this impulse, through their exclusion from a participation in public affairs, and cut off from all opportunity of discussion, through the operations of the censorship, so they sought to indemnify themselves through the occupation and personal importance which the membership in a secret lodge conferred upon them. It must, however, in truth, be said that these combinations, in which even morally professing individuals eagerly entered, became but too often so many cloacas of the worst corrup- tion, and a curse to the entire country. This system of secret associations rendered the present time intolerable, and the future hopeless ; whilst it forced those in authority to have recourse to measures of rude violence, in the place of carrying on a peacable and well-ordered government. The Papal authorities, in the difficult position in which they found themselves placed, had recourse to a very hazardous remedy : they promoted the establishment, of the Sanfedisti, a volun- tary, but, at the same time, a non-legal association, composed mainly of the poorest and lotoest classes, which soon got beyond their control, and, in some districts, became, in fact, master over the Government. The successor, at the close of the year 1830, of the deceased Pius was a Carmelite monk, Mauro Capellari, who was made a Cardinal in 1826, and who, up to the time of his election as Pope, had lived a total stranger to state affairs. Gregory XVI., a monk, a scholar, and an author, was, to the end of his days, devotedly attached to literature ; but his knowledge of ecclesiastical affairs was as solid as his compre- hension of worldly matters was slight. And so reigned over the Papal States a series of Popes, who, in all that related to the Church and its concerns, were not merely faultless, but pre-eminently excellent ; and yet, as temporal princes, possessed naught beyond their just intentions. The Revolution of July in Paris acted as a signal for popular insurrections ; and in the course of a few weeks the greater part of the Papal States, as well as Modena and Parma, were in a flarne. The outbreak took place whilst the Conclave was still sitting. The people were won over to the MEMORANDUM OF THE GREAT POWERS. 385 cause of the insurrection by the removal of the imposts upon salt and flour; and the insurgents, confident that France would not permit any intervention on the part of Austria, hastily gathered together a Congress of popular representa- tives, by whom it was declared " that the Pope was deprived of his temporal sovereignty." Rome remained loyal ; but outside of Rome the Papal officials in most places abandoned their posts hastily and recreantly a proof in itself how insecure is the basis upon which rests a State destitute of all popular institutions. The revolution was as short-lived as a child's game. The bloodless advance of the Austrians re- placed, with very little trouble, the old government, upon the condition of a general amnesty, with the exception of thirty of the insurgent leaders. A Conference of the Great Powers, in which Prussia, Russia, and England participated, presented to the Pope, on the 31st May, 1831, the celebrated Memorandum upon which a great portion of the history of the Papal States has ever since then turned. That Memorandum recommended, in the first place that improvements should be introduced, not only into the provinces that had revolted, but also into those that had remained loyal, as well as into the capital itself; secondly, that the laity should be admitted into all offices connected with the Government and the administration of justice. Further, that there should be an independent local administration of the communes, through Elected Councils, a restoration of the Provincial Councils ; and, finally, " internal security against the changes incident to an elective sovereignty." 1 Coppi, who was charged to draw up a plan of reform in correspondence to these requirements, states that Gregory and the majority of the Cardinals rejected every important change ; that they were for maintaining the old monarchical and ecclesiastical principles, and for conceding nothing to the popular or lay party " because if anything were voluntarily conceded there would be no right afterwards to recall it." 2 1 See u Memoires de Guizot," 1859, ii. 432. COPPI, viii. 143. 2 COPPI, viii. 148. CC 386 NECESSITY FOR REFORM ACKNOWLEDGED. Two things in particular were absolutely not to be assented to : there was to be no election of Communal and Provincial Councils, and there was to be no lay Council of State by the side of the Cardinal College. The Cardinal Secretary of State, Bernetti, who had, at first, spoken of "a new era commencing with the existing Pontificate," addressed a despatch to the French Ambassador, in which was announced that which, in the general expecta- tion of many, was about to be accomplished, without, how- ever, specifically binding himself as to any fixed institutions or positive changes. But still there was promised " the new establishment of a government, with complete publicity as to its acts; such an improvement in the administration of the finances as no longer to afford an opportunity for suspicion as to their allocation; and the introduction of conservative institutions." 1 The Government was afterwards bitterly reproached, both at home and abroad that, although fifteen years of the Pontifi- cate had parsed away since these promises had been made, yet not one of them had been fulfilled. An attempt was, on one occasion, made to sustain the Government by the enlistment of 5,000 Swiss, since reliance could no longer be placed on the native soldiers ; but the English plenipotentiary, Seymour, now declared, " That the financial condition of the Roman Government did not capaci- tate it to take into its pay so many foreigners, whose services could be required solely for the purpose of keeping down a whole discontented population : and since his govern- ment could no longer entertain the hope that any good could be effected through it in Rome, he had received in- structions at once to leave the city." 2 And yet there can be no question as to the fact that Gregory candidly acknowledged the necessity for compre- hensive reforms. I. Bernardi has recently declared that, to his astonishment, he heard, in "the year 1843, the following words come from the lips of the Pope himself : "The civil administration of the Roman States stands in need of great 1 GUALTERIO, " Document!," i. 94. * Ibid., i. 102. OPPOSITION TO BE ENCOUNTERED. 387 reform. I was too old when I was elected to be Pope. T did not expect to live so long, and had not the courage to begin the undertaking. For whoever begins it must carry it through thoroughly. I have now only a few years to live perhaps only a few days. After me they will choose a young Pope, whose mission it will be to perform those acts without which it is impossible to go on." 1 But in such matters as these, even the most resolute will of a Pope, when he has only a few by his side, and in the different departments of the public service, entertain- ing his own views, he can neither do much, nor can what he does be maintained for any length of time. Up to this period it had been inexpressibly difficult to carry out certain reforms in the Papal States. A Pope, with the purest inten- tions and most resolute will, must be baffled when he had arrayed against him the still, dogged, combined opposition of those who found their advantage in the maintenance of the old and settled state of things. The Pope must fail when the right men for carrying out reforms are not at hand to assist him. And so formerly had Adrian VI. and Clement VII., notwithstanding their thorough good-will to effect an improvement in ecclesiastical affairs, been able to effect nothing. It happened in Rome, as it was wont to occur in Arragon, whenever the King gave a command that was displeasing to the people : the Arragonese expressed, in a settled form of words, their allegiance to the sovereign and their resolution not to obey him. 2 The measures of reform sanctioned by Gregory, and which were brought forward in the months of July, October, and November, 1831, were looked to as being something more than one could expect, after the Pope had refused to enter into any fixed engagement. That which was particularly 1 " Rivista Contemporanea," 1860, Febr.. p. 97. The same things were told to me by a celebrated Roman scholar some time before they were printed in the " Rivista". I have thus not the slightest doubt as to the authenticity of the fact. 2 " Se obedezca, pero no se cumpla." Let the order be attended to, but not acted upon. cc 2 388 UNPOPULARITY OF THE GOVERNMENT. sought for was an improvement in the administration of justice. There was, for instance, that monstrous institute of the Uditore Santissimo, the mere existence of which was regarded by every statesman and lawyer as a scandal to the Papal See. It was in 1831 completely put an end to. 1 As to the population, they, indeed, who had been expect- ing and anxious for other matters quite different from this, were not appeased by these edicts ; and Count Pellegrino Kossi, afterwards the minister of Pius IX., wrote, with reference to what was then passing, in the following manner, to Guizot: " We must yield to no delusion on this subject. A revolutionary spirit, in the sense that the present system of the Roman Government is utterly intolerable to the popu- lation, has penetrated to the very heart of the country. It is only when there has been a complete and comprehensive change in the manner of dispensing law, and that a reform in the entire mode of making laws has been effected, that any hope can be entertained of reconciling the people to the Papal Government." 2 Scarcely, however, had the Austrians withdrawn their troops, when the uproar broke out anew. The moderate party would have been content to see the Memorandum acted upon ; but they, as it ever happens in revolutions, were speedily overborne by the Radicals ; and the afflicted population welcomed with shouts of joy the Austrians, upon returning amongst them. Then speedily arrived the French, and took possession of Ancona, so that the field should not be left to the Germans alone. The edicts, which had been but a short time before promulgated, were now recalled in Rome, or they were permitted to remain inoperative. This naturally produced general discontent ; and from that time forward the position of affairs every year became worse. The " Papal Volunteers," enlisted out of the lowest classes, exercised a gross terrorism ; political assassinations, com- menced by the revolutionary party, became more frequent; the Government was, in consequence, rendered more sus- 1 See with respect to it GUIZOT, " Mernoires," ii. 436-442. * GUIZOT, 1. c., p. 449. A MILITARY COMMISSION ESTABLISHED. 389 picious and persecuting ; and its whole support was thus placed on the fourfold weapons of the Austrian, French, Swiss, and its own troops, on the Sanfedisti and the Volun- teers. Espionage doubly detestable and dangerous under a priestly government, because the people become thereby sus- picious of the misuse of a religious medium was now gene- rally resorted to. The opponents of the Government had meanwhile, and mainly through the influence of Mazzini, divided themselves into "Liberals" and "Radicals" (the Young Italy party.) The latter were peculiarly and exclusively " the destructives," who wished to annihilate all governments, as well as the Church, and to change the entire of Italy into a single Republic, in accordance with the pattern of 1793. In Middle Italy they were, however, still without influence ; and after fifteen years, although they had seduced a number of students, still, upon the population itself, the real people, they had, according to their own con- fession, made no impression. 1 In the year 1838, the French withdrew from Ancona, and the Austrians from the Legations. The Swiss troops were gradually increased. The number of 1 7,000 men, which I find given, must either be an exaggeration, or it must com- prise the whole of the military force. Certain it is that these foreign soldiers were a heavy burden upon a failing exchequer, with a yearly deficit of a million of scudi. Gregory XVI., old and sickly, became inaccessible to strangers, and those who were about him endeavoured to conceal from his knowledge whatever might be disagreeable for him to hear. His understanding failed him for the com- prehension of state affairs ; and thus all came into the hands of the Secretary of State, Lambru^chini, and of the " Mon- signori," who were acting as Legates and Delegates in the provinces. A standing Military Commission, which decided upon complaints of political transgressions in an arbitrary 1 In the " Archivio triennale delle cose d'ltalia" (Capolago, 1850, i. 191) a Mazzinianer thus writes : " Noi dovevamo confessare che, in quindici anni, non eravamo riusciti che a propagare nella gioventu studiosa la passione politica, ma nel vero popolo mai." 390 TWO MAIN CAUSES OF DISCONTENT. manner, maintained, with the help of Swiss regiments, public order: and so contributed, with the deeds of violence com- mitted by the Sanfedisti, to nurture the general discontent. The Government seemed to be unconscious what bitterness of feeling was produced by the conviction that the country was compelled to bear a heavy burden of taxation, in order that pay might be given to foreign soldiers employed for the purpose of keeping the people down, and at the same time of enabling those in authority to refuse compliance with what were the wishes of the nation. 1 There were at that time two main causes for the spirit of discontent that prevailed, and the desire to shake off Papal domination. The one lay in the hatred against Austrian rule, and the policy of Vienna, which oppressed the whole of the Peninsula, and overpowered the nation. It was believed that the Papal Government was totally devoted to Austrian influence ; and that it was only through means of Austria it could itself be maintained. The other cause lay in internal circumstances, which existed not only from 1824 to 1846, but still are again partly to be met with, from the time of the restoration of Pius IX. These circumstances, such as they were and are since 1850, require to be looked at somewhat closely. It must, first of all, be remarked that the Papal States, as well as Italy generally, suffer from one great evil and that is a want in the requisite orders of society. There is to be found there no self-independent peasant-proprietor class ; and there is no landed aristocracy. There is but a citizen class in the towns, and patricians ; and these latter, for the most part, incompetent, degenerate, and demoralized indivi- duals. Leo XII. recognized this evil, and intended to elevate a nobility class, by his concession to it of certain rights ; but the attempt failed, as it could not but fail, where there was an ecclesiastical body who, with their prerogatives, over- shadowed the social position of every one else. By the side 1 The Italians have an energetic proverb, which was, at this period, to be often heard in the mouths of the people : " Pagare il boja che ci frusti." COMPLAINTS AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT. 391 of them an independent nobility could not possibly be elevated. And yet the people in the Papal States are not, judging of them by those endowments which they possess in common with other Italians, difficult to govern. A German, writing from the Campagna of Rome, in the year 1857, 1 says: " Amongst all those thousands that passed me by, and of all the processions that I came up with after the completion of the festival, I never could observe even the slightest trait of rudeness in their conduct. In fact, the purity of manners of the country people in this district, and especially as regards sobriety, and propriety of behaviour towards women, might well excite the envy of more thoughtful nations. There, for instance, they have not the slightest notion of that doleful practice which is the curse of Ireland, namely, that a land- lord can, whenever he pleases, drive a farmer out of his holding." 2 The rural population was by no means so hostile to the Papal Government as were the townsfolk. 3 Complaints were made, not only as to the incapacity and negligence of the Government for not affording sufficient protection to the dwellers in the country around from bands of robbers, but also as to the high and oppressive fees persons were compelled to pay to the ecclesiastical autho- rities, and especially in the Episcopal Courts. This state of feeling was in complete accordance with that of the town populations, who were, in general, indisposed to "priests' government ;" and who, too, had also to endure a number of grievances and annoyances. Beyond all other afflictions, that, however, which was felt to be the most galling was the exclusion of laymen from the higher offices of state ; for all such were absolutely reserved for the " Prelati." The offices in the public service were so distributed between clergymen 1 " Allg. Zeitung," 5th Jan., p. 75. 4 HELFFERICH, " Briefe aus Italien," ii. 57. * Cardinal Massimo, in his report from Imola in 1845, says, that there was there " una parte ben piccola della classe agricola, noil ancor guasta del tutto nelle campagne," devoted to the Government. u Documenti sul Gov. pontif.," i. 66. 392 EXCLUSION OF LAYMEN FROM OFFICE. and laymen, that the former were the rulers, and the latter the mere instruments by whose means the administration was carried on. The Secretaryship of State, the Sacra Consulta, the Camera Apostolica, the Buono Governo, the Congregazione Economica, the Police, the Treasury, the War Ministry, 1 the Legations and Delegations, the management of judicial affairs, and of instruction all! all were in the hands of Cardinals and Prelati. Every lay official was thus made aware that his progress in life was hemmed in by certain barriers he never could pass over ; that, no matter what number of years he had been in office, or how use- ful and faithful had been his services, still he could not obtain promotion to the highest position in his department ; that an ecclesiastic, no matter how inferior in competency, would still be preferred to him ! Human nature in the Papal States is not different from what it is in all other parts of the world ; and so the whole of the lay employes were utterly discontented, and perfectly ready, as recent circumstances have shown, to give in their adhesion to any other form of government. But the very mode in which appointments to public offices were made constituted in itself a subject of grave complaint. The system that pre- vails in other states, where there are long preparatory studies, and repeated examinations, to secure the just distribution of public offices, was unknown at Rome. A layman, to arrive even at the lowest situation, must belong to a religious con- fraternity, or be the protege of a " Prelato? or a Cardinal, or of some order of friars. Thus the official laymen were frequently the compulsory and, but too often, the needy clients of " Prelati" The consequence of all this was that the best, the most intellectual, the most independent, and those who 1 " Das Kriegsministeriutn," DOLLISGER, p. 572. This statement is not in accordance with the report of Mr. Lyons, who says : " All the Ministers, except the Minister of War (or of Arms, as he is called), are ecclesiastics." And again: ''All the ministers, except the Minister of Arms, are prelates." " Despatches from Mr. Lyons respecting the Con- dition and Administration of the Papal States." London, 1G60, pp. 5 and 8. Note by TRANSLATOR. NEGLIGENCE AND VENALITY OF EMPLOYES. 393 had a fitting respect for their own reputation turned away from the service, and, by so doing, condemned themselves to a life of torpor and idleness and so, too, added to the masses of malcontents, and, when the opportunity arrived, of conspirators ! In a letter to the author, from a German nobleman, whose fame is European, as a keen and profound observer of the condition of foreign nations, and who lived a considerable time in the Roman States, it is observed : " There is a deep depravity of the middle and higher classes, and of the employes who spring from such classes, and whom the Papal Government has done so much to degrade. The negligence and venality of these persons can only be compared to what prevails amongst Russian officials. Amid 5000 officials there are to be found between two and three hundred eccle- siastics. These latter are far better than the others they are almost never corruptible, for the sake of money ; but they are inefficient, without energy, and slothful. And then, as to the lay officials, they are undoubtedly, almost without a single exception, corruptible." To these circumstances was to be added the feeling that, from the want of inviolable ordinances, the freedom, property, and honor of individuals were at the mercy of persons armed with power ; for the laws afforded no security, as they could, in particular cases, be set aside by the supreme authorities. Bailiffs, or constables (sbirri), required no special warrant to break into a dwelling, whether they chose to do so by night or by day. 1 The three main causes of discontent with the administration of justice in the Papal States were, the civil jurisdiction of the Bishops ; the privileged exemption of clergymen as to the courts that should have jurisdiction over them, as well as to the dissimilarity of punishments inflicted 1 AGUIRRE, u LTtalie apres Villafranca," 1859, p. 10. The author is, or was, an inhabitant of the Roman States. He is one of those who wish to maintain the temporal sovereignty of the Pope, and who be- lieve in the curability of existing evils. The picture, however, that he presents of the system of Government hitherto prevailing is a very sad 394 ORDINANCES OF THE CLERICAL POLICE. upon them ; and, lastly, by the tribunal of the Inquisition. 1 The Bishops, who had their own prisons, decided upon and inflicted pains and penalties in all questions affecting the persons and property of ecclesiastics, in matters concerning relations between the two sexes ; 2 and in cases of blasphemy, and the transgression of the laws respecting fast and festival days. The Cardinal and Bishop of Sinigaglia, in the year 1844, issued an ordinance forbidding young men and maidens from sending presents to each other ; and if a father should be found not complying with this order, then it was directed, in cases of transgression, that the father and son, or father and daughter, should be imprisoned for fifteen days. 3 The Bishops, at the Provincial Synod of Fermo, in the year 1850, threatened with punishment every innkeeper who supplied their guests with flesh meat on fast-days, unless they could produce two witnesses, one of whom must be a physician, and the other a curate. 4 A new and peculiar sort of punishment was devised, and by it 229 persons in the Romagna were, at one and the same moment, made to suffer. This was the " Precetto Politico " of the first class. The person upon whom this punishment was imposed was compelled to reside in his birth-place ; he must be in his own house by a certain hour in the morning ; every fourteen days he must present himself before the police-inspector ; and every month go to confession, and he must shew, by witnesses, that the priest, with whom he had been at confession, was a Father-confessor approved of by the police! and, then, every year, he must make a Spiritual retreat of three days, in a monastery appointed for him by a Bishop ! Neglect of any one of these regulations became punishable with three years of compulsory labour ! In Italy there were many who opined " There are few countries in 1 MOXTANELLI, u Memorie sull' Italia," ii. 79. * Cause di stupro e di illegitima pregnanza. 3 This document is printed by GENNARELLI, " I lutti dello stato Romano." Florence, 1860, p. 160. 4 " Document! sul Governo pontificio," ii. 299. EDICT OF THE INQUISITION. 395 Europe where such a commingling of the police officer with religion would be patiently submitted to." The Bishops and the Prelati-police have hitherto penetrated too deeply into domestic and family-life ; and yet there was superadded to both the judicial jurisdiction of the Inquisi- tion ! This was, notwithstanding the mildness for which it was famed, 1 still detested and dreaded, because the principle upon which it was based was this: that every one who knew of a misdemeanour being committed was liable to punish- ment, if he did not denounce it ; and, then, he who became the denunciator was shrouded in mystery, whilst the accused was never permitted to know the names either of his accuser, or of the witnesses against him. 2 In the year 1841, the Inquisitor at Pesaro, Fra Filippo Bertolotti, issued an Edict, by which he required, under a threat of various punishments, excommunication amongst the rest, that every one should give information of all ecclesiastical offences coming to his knowledge ; such, for instance, as that of a person, who had not received permission to do so, eating flesh or using milk upon fast-days ! 3 Foreigners dwelling in the Papal States have, in amazement, asked : "If the servant- men and maid- servants employed in the kitchens of the ' Sanf Uffizio ' would make it a matter of conscience, if they had chanced to cook any meat for their masters on a fast-day, to denounce them, and involve them in legal proceedings ? " 1 If I am not mistaken, there never was, in the Papal States, since the end of the sixteenth century, a single capital execution enforced through the instrumentality of the Inquisition, or on account of a religious trans- gression. 2 As a proof of the bitter feeling of the people against the Inquisition, see the letter of the Chevalier Tommaso Poggi of Cesena to the French Ambassador in Rome, Saint-Aulaire, printed by GUALTERIO, "Docu- menti," i. 274. Amongst other things, it is there said, u The innermost secrets of our conscience, and of our families, form the subject-matter of their hateful prosecutions and dark sentences. So little is there a thought in Rome of the Government reconciling itself with the population and public opinion " J " Documenti," i. 303. 396 LAW ADMINISTERED BY PRIESTS. A clergyman, when he is armed with a double power, the judicial and the adminstrative, must always find the effort exceedingly difficult to reconcile his personal opinion and his subjective judgment upon individuals, and to prevent his tenderness and his inclination from winning an influence over him in the discharge of his official duties. As a priest, he is the servant of all, and the herald of grace, of pardon, of the remission of punishment ; and he therefore too readily forgets that in human concerns the law is " deaf and inexorable," and that tampering with a law to favour one person is an injury to another, or it may be to many others, or it may be to the whole frame of society ; and that he who may thus begin with the best intentions, gradually will find himself placing his own will above what is the strict law. As it is, Italians are but too little disposed either to comprehend or to practise the impartial, passionless administration of the law, without consideration as to its consequences. The path of descent being once trodden, leads him, who has entered upon it, unavoidably to a precipice. For then come the sub- altern lay employes of the Courts, who for the most part are indebted for their appointments to favour and ecclesiasti- cal patronage, and who, receiving a scanty salary, have wives and children to maintain, and before their eyes the example of their superiors, who have been dealing with the law ac- cording to their will and pleasure. Hence follows corrup- tion and arbitrary conduct in law proceedings, which Cantu has declared to have been the characteristics of all legal processes under Gregory XVI. 1 But still more critical and perilous is the exercise by priests of the powers of a police. Here is an employment which requires things to be done that in a Christian point of view had better be avoided. The police, in an absolute go- vernment, is armed with a po_wer that is essentially omni- potent, and in its contact with others, in the struggle of everyday life, and in a time of political excitement, and nu- 1 " La giustizia era corruttibile non solo, ma espoeta agli arbitrij de' superior!, e alle interinmabili restituzioni in intero." " Storia deg i Italiani," vi. 684. ARBITRARY POWER OF IMPRISONMENT. 397 merous conspiracies, makes a cruel use of its omnipotence. It leaves unpunished things which, judged of according to the Gospel, are mortal sins ; and it punishes others in which a Christian can discern nought that is sinful. Is it then to be wondered at that the people find it impossible to discover what can be a justification for this contradiction between the priestly character and the police-officer's active vigilance ? In strong and dark contrast with what was a characteristic of the Papal Government, with that mildness for which it was justly praised has been the arbitrary power of impri- sonment, filling the gaols with captives for whom no one as in other countries would be permitted to go bail. Cardinal Morichini, in his Finance Report, expatiated upon the wretch- ed state of the prisons, and the unavoidable demoraliza- tion of persons confined in them. 1 Even in this matter financial difficulties rendered it impossible to effect a com- prehensive reform. In the doleful times that have passed since 1848, there grew up a system of incarcerating masses of persons in unhealthy gaols, and from that system sprang still greater rancour against the authorities. The " Gover- natore" of Faenza, Luigi Maraviglia, made, in the year 1853, this representation of facts : " A great number of persons have, without a hearing, without process, perhaps, even, with- out the suspicion of crime but merely from precaution been dragged to prisons, where they now are, for a full year, still remaining! More that 450 processes are already pend- ing for four or five years. By such modes of proceeding can no love for princes be implanted in the hearts of the people." 2 It is to be understood that such circumstances as these oc- curred without the slightest knowledge on the part of the Pope. Had he been made acquainted with them, his own goodness of heart and love of justice would, most assuredly, have impelled him to oppose and put an end to them. For full thirty years misfortune after misfortune has fallen upon the Papal Government in the States of the Church ; but of all these calamities the most lamentable assuredly is, 1 " Document! sul Gov. pontif.," f. i. 578. 2 " Document!," i. 42. 398 PRIVILEGED POSITION OF THE PRIESTHOOD. that it should be deemed necessary to transfer to ecclesiastics the judicial condemnation and punishment of political offences. When, as it has often happened, the opinions and sentiments of an individual, admitted by the rulers themselves to be those universally prevailing, were brought forward as subsi- diary proofs, and used as grounds for inflicting the severest punishment upon a man, against whom there were not other- wise sufficient proofs for a conviction where these things could be done, there indeed must the breach between the people and the clergy be still further widened. 1 The exceptional and privileged position of a very numerous priesthood gave rise to another complaint. The Cardinal de Luca had laid down the principle that the enactments and laws of the Pope, as a temporal prince for the clergy, were not binding, if it was not expressly said, or was not to be presumed from the contents, that he had issued the ordinance as Head of the Church. 2 The clergy also had their privileged lt forum," so that, if a priest and a layman were participators in the same crime, they must be tried by two different courts of justice. Even the punishments inflicted upon them were different. Priests convicted of crime had still the privilege of being subjected to a milder punishment than if they were laymen. 3 " An inverse proportion of punishment would be the more righteous," was the opinion expressed by Massimo d'Azeglio. A highly critical case of this sort, and one that was hailed by the English journals and periodicals with a malicious joy, whilst it excited a painful surprise in all Europe, was brought prominently before the public in the year 1852. In the law proceedings in London, instituted by the Roman Dominican monk, Achilli, who had become a Protestant, it appeared 1 See in the second volume of the " Document! sul Governo pontificio," the printed acts of the prosecutions and sentences, passim. 2 " Dottor volgare." lib. xv., c. 1. 3 Thus runs the definition of the law: " Ove pero possa aver luogo la pena stabilita pei laici, si accorda loro (ai cherici) nei delitti communi un grado di minorazione di pena." And " Se la pena stabilita della legge e 1'opera o la galera, trasmettono il condannato al luogo ove trasmetterebbe il Tribunale Ecclesiastico." CHANGE IN THE POLICY OP ENGLAND. 399 that he was a man who had been charged with shameful crimes, such as in Germany would have assigned him to an infamous punishment in a convict prison, but that, having been arraigned before the ecclesiastical courts in Rome, he was there treated with an indulgence such as it would be impossible to meet with in any other country; and it also appeared that, despite of the condemnation upon him by the Provincial of his Order, he had been taken as an as- sociate and attendant in visitations, and that he was after- wards made a Professor in the College of Minerva, at Rome, and then sent as a preacher to Capua !' And here a passing remark may be permitted to the author. Surprise has frequently been felt with respect to the complete change that has taken place in the policy of England, with reference to the Papal States in particular. England had energetically co-operated in the restoration of those States to Pius VII. For a long time, the Roman Government regarded the English as a kindly disposed and friendly power. Gregory XVI. declared to Lord Nor- manby, in the year 1844, that it was his ardent desire England should enter into direct diplomatic correspondence with the Roman See, and send an ambassador to Rome. In the month of April, 1847, the Papal Nuncio, in Paris, 1 It was in the " Dublin Review," of June 1850 a Catholic periodical, published under the patronage of Cardinal Wiseman that these facts were first brought to light. Then followed the celebrated prosecution of ; ' Achilli," versus Dr. Newman, by means of which the testimonies of the witnesses to these facts became more widely known. The subject filled for weeks the English journals. The costs of the prosecution against Dr. Newman were defrayed by a general subscription in Catholic coun- tries. The report of the case, published by Mr. Finlason, passed through several editions in a very short space of time. What conclusions were drawn from this case on the side of the Protestants, and what reproaches against the Papal See were grounded upon it, may be surmised from one article (amongst numberless others) published in the " Christian Remem- brancer," vol. xxiv., pp. 401-424. Neither in England nor in Rome was an answer attempted to be given to the scathing, and, under the circum- stances, naturally severe reproaches of the " Times." 400 OPPOSITION TO THE PAPAL GOVERNMENT. Fornari, said to the same Lord Normanby, that it was the constant wish of the Roman Government that England might, through such means, afford a more active and ener- getic support, and thereby also promote an improvement in the social condition of Italy. 1 Lord Palmerston, who was then Foreign Minister, sent Lord Minto to Rome, with instructions to promise to the Pope the most determined support of England in carrying into effect the Memorandum of the Powers in 1831. At that time, the statesmen of England had no thought of doing anything calculated to hasten the overthrow of the temporal sovereignty of the Pope. But all that is now, in sooth, very much changed. 2 Since 1851, the English Government has become the open adversary of the Papal States, and has thrown all the weight of its influence into the scale of Piedmont. It does so under the pressure of public opinion in England a power to which every cabinet there must submit. Even a Tory ministry would be compelled to pay attention to the potency of this popular feeling in its Italian policy. The public opinion now prevailing there has been formed, fashioned and moved by the statements of English individuals re?iding in the Papal States, which statements have appeared in the daily papers ; as well as by the work of Farini, which has been translated into English by Mr. Gladstone, the Chan- cellor of the Exchequer. 3 And now the will of the entire nation, and the policy of its government, are alike arrayed in a most hostile manner against the maintenance of the Papal State. With a portion of the population and it is only a portion the Protestant hatred against the Papal See has been sharpened into still stronger animosity, on account of the rage excited by two recent measures of Rome first, 1 See the Blue-book, " Correspondence respecting the affairs of Italy," 1846-47. London, 1849, pp. 36, 38. - * See Lord Minto's report of his interview with the Pope, January, 1848. " Correspondence," Part ii., 1848, p. 44. " Lo stato Romano, dalT a. 1815, all' a. 1850," 4 vols. Farini's work has been noticed in Rome itself for its preciseness in matters of fact, and trustworthiness. Coppi has made considerable use of it. CONDITION OF THE PRIESTHOOD. 401 the establishment of an Episcopacy in England, and, secondly, by the rejection of the Queen's Colleges, with their mixed education in Ireland. The policy of the English Cabinet is also influenced by a wish to see a powerful Italy formed a power capable of maintaining itself upon a firm basis and which, under the guidance of England, may serve as a coun- terpoise to the threatening ascendancy of France. As to the state and social condition of the clergy, it has called for a deeply penetrating reformation. That the clergy have been, on the whole, morally blameless, is universally admitted ;' but the conditions for entering upon the priest- hood have been placed upon too low a scale. A person, notwithstanding his thorough want of knowledge, and mean capacity, easily becomes a priest ; and then there have been for those persons such a number of benefices, affording nei- ther sufficient occupation nor a becoming subsistence. The consequence has been that an immense multitude of idle ecclesiastics were to be seen wasting their days in coffee- houses, and loitering in the street, passing their time in an unpriestly manner, so that a reverence for the entire order had very much diminished amongst the population. 2 In the country parts, a great number of the pastors were in a state of lamentable poverty, 3 and for this reason, therefore, as well as from innate dulness, they left the people without in- struction. 4 The higher orders of the laity wish that the pres- 1 FARIXI, i. 164. See also u Appendice al libro d'Azeglio," 1846, p. 57. AGUIRRE, p. 112. 2 Those who have been in Rome well know what is meant by the ex- pression, " preti di piazza." Something like the same thing is to be seen in Russia. * " I curati che sono generalmente poverissimi, ed hanno il peso de' poveri," says Cardinal Morichini, in his Report, p. 575. 4 " Appendice al libro d'Azeglio," p. 56. The author, a Romagnese, says : "II clero pontificio e il piii ignorante di tutto il clero cattolico salvo poche eccezioni." In other parts of Italy it is, in fact, not one whit better, as bishops grant ordination with a facility of which no one in Germany can have an idea. See what is said upon the incredible ignorance of the Piedinontese clergy, by the distinguished teacher, Pro - fessor DOMENICO BERTI, " Rivista Italiana," 1850, i. 123, 124. DD 402 PREVENTIVE CENSORSHIP. sure of the censorship was either put an end to, or mitigated. " The state to which we are brought," say intellectually gifted persons in the Papal State?, " is this that in the finest, and, mentally, most richly endowed part of Italy, we are absolutely without any literature nothing now appears but a few volumes on archaeological subjects, and local histories not a line of the slightest importance upon science and general literature." In fact, Leo XII. had, through the Dominican monks, rendered still more severe the existing preventive censorship ; and his timidity compelled him to do this, as his aim was that no publication contain- ing an expression calculated to excite the displeasure of foreign powers, or to give rise to important disputes, should be allowed to be printed, except with the direct sanction of the Secretary of State. 1 People felt themselves cribbed and hemmed in upon all sides. The inhabitants of Forli wished to establish an Agricultural Association. After a long delay, they at last obtained permission to do so, from the " Congregazione degli studi," but it was upon the condition that all the members should first be approved of by the president of the Government ; that they should assemble together for no other purpose than to speak upon agricultu- ral affairs ; and, furthermore, that at each of the meetings there should be read a lecture, which had previously received the approval of the Censorship. 2 The whole project was, of course, on the instant, abandoned. The Government suffered much, too, in public respect, and in the confidence of the people, through the utterly disordered state of its finances. Loans were contracted upon the most unfavourable con- ditionsupon one occasion, a bargain was made with Roth- schild, at 62^ per cent, upon the nominal value. There was a yearly deficit of more than two million of guilders, and, at the same time, gross confusion and disorder prevailed in the palace expenditure. There was scarcely a country in Europe in which there was to be found so fathomless an arbitrary power in financial matters. The treasurer, Tosti, was 'regarded as a pattern of the worst finance minister that could 1 COPPI, ix. 76. 2 " Document!,'' i. 540. REPROACHES AGAINST THE PAPAL GOVERNMENT. 403 by any possibility be ever discovered. When Galli entered into this department of the ministry, in the year 1848, he declared in an official report : " that, as to the past, he could not undertake even the smallest share of responsibility there were so many accounts unsettled, and there were so many vouchers wanting ; and then the authorizations for ex- penditure were partly not to be found, or those that were discoverable were so overladen with charges, additions, and deductions, as to render the authentication of them impracticable." ' In addition to all this, it was made a matter of reproach to the Papal Government, in every part of Italy, that it, by means of the lottery, at which priests felt no scruple in taking an active part, had nurtured and incited a vice the rage for gambling to which the common race of Italians are already but too much addicted. Alexander VII. and Benedict XIII. had formerly forbidden lotteries, under pain of ex- communication. Cardinal Morichini, in his report upon the state of the finances, declared it to be urgently advisable to sacrifice the income derived from the lottery, "as a victim to public morality." 2 And joyfully would the Pope have as- sented to this ; but the deficit and the new calamities that befell the country rendered it impossible for him to do so. 3 The temper of the provinces became still more gloomy and embittered. The cities addressed strongly-worded petitions to the College of the Cardinals. These petitions state : " The intervention of the Great Powers has been of no avail to us. Of their proposals not one has been carried into effect ; whilst the concessions that had been made have been recalled. The people are never, even once, permitted to lay their wishes before the Government. 4 About two thousand individuals have had sentences of condemnation passed upon 1 AGUIRRE, p. 141. 2 See what is said upon this point by AZEGLIO, " Raccolta degli scritti politici/' 1850, p. 67. TOMMASEO, u Roma e il mondo," 1851, p. 243, and almost all who have written on the circumstances then occurring. * Document! sul Governo pontif., i. 577. 4 GUALTERIO, " Document!," p. 184. DD 2 404 DEFECTIVE LEGISLATION. them ; and of these some are now in prison, or, as outlaws, wander in foreign lands. And in what description of prisons are the incarcerated ? In pestiferous dungeons, where the convicted are huddled up with the unconvicted those charged with political offences with those who have deprived others of property or of life. 1 In our legislation there is neither unity nor harmony. No one can know whether an obsolete or a new law, a ' Motuproprio' or an Edict, will, in any given .case, be brought forward against him or for him. 2 In our Penal Code all is vague, uncertain, and contradictory. A lawless police pushes its arbitrary power to the extremes t point, and meddles in everything. 3 Appointments and pro- motions in the public service are dependent upon the favour and dislike of a few in power ; knowledge, science, ex- perience, and substantial services are of no use to the possessors. 4 We will not be allowed to have railroads ; whilst trade is struck down under an oppressive system of prohibitions. We are exhausted by means of monopolies and tax-farming, which enhance the prices of the indis- pensable necessaries of life, enrich a few at the cost of the State and the people, demoralise one part of the population, and bring down upon the Government the hatred of many thousands. 5 Through the operation of an absurd system of excise, our country has become the classic land of smugglers and contrabandists ; and as to our native industry, it is not permitted, either by law or circumstances, to develop itself. 6 And we are on the road to universal pauperism by the enormous disproportion between our imports and exports. 7 1 " Appendice al libro d'Azeglio," p. 51. AGUIRRE, p. 134. * " Un capo di polizia appunto perche non vi e un codice, pub far tutto," &c. " Appendice," p. 47. 4 What is here expressed in mild terms is represented in very dark colours by the Italians for instance, in the " Appendice," p. 79, by AGUIRRE, AZEGHO, and others. 4 " Appendice," p. 68. 6 " L'industria rimasta in culla fra noi nel mezzo del progresso di tutta 1'Europa," says Cardinal Morichini, in his Report, p. 377. ' Imports, 92,000,000 francs; exports, only 31,000,000 francs. ZELLER, u Histoire de 1'Italie," 1853, p. 558. MANIFESTO OF 1845. 405 We are, forsooth, told that we pay fewer taxes than other populations ; but this does not disprove the fact that we are far more poor than others, and that we are compelled to bear oppressive communal toils, and such other burdens." fhe Military Commissions, and the conduct pursued by them in the Romagna in 1843 and 1844, increased the feel- ings of animosity and discontent. A party of insurgents took, without opposition, possession of the town of Kimini, and then made their escape into Tuscany. In the year 1845 there was published a Manifesto, addressed to the sovereigns and people of Europe, in which the following concessions were required: "1st, An amnesty. 2nd, The promulgation of civil and criminal codes in conformity with those in force amongst other civilized nations, and including publicity in the proceedings, in the hearing of witnesses, and in the aboli- tion of confiscation of property and punishment of death for political offences. 3rd, The releasing of laymen from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition and of the Ecclesiastical Courts ; and, further, the free election of Municipal Coun- cils ; the institution of a Council of State at Rome ; the bestowal of all civil, military, and judicial offices upon lay- men ; an amelioration of the censorship ; the dismissal of foreign troops ; the management of education by laymen ; and the establishment of a National Guard." Farini was the author of this Manifesto ; but, at a later period, even he seemed to regard some of the demands made in it as un- reasonable, or as going somewhat too far. The Papal Government declared, in an official reply, 1 that it rejected all these demands. The exclusion of laymen from the higher offices in the State was, it maintained, consider- ably ameliorated by the fact that a person could be a " Prelato" without being a priest as all that was required was wearing the dress of an ecclesiastic and keeping the vow of celibacy. 2 Then, as to the Inquisition its proceed- 1 The document will be found in MARGOTTI, " Le Vittorie della Chiesa." Milano, 1857, pp. 490-507. 3 Few persons could feel satisfied with this reference to the part assigned to the "Prelati," whose only participation in the sacerdotal 406 PUBLICATIONS ON THE PAPACY. ings were conducted with great mildness and tenderness ; but still it would not be fair to confine its jurisdiction to clergymen, and to leave laymen free from its operations. As to the Universities and literature they were in a prosperous condition (but it must be owned that all Europe maintained the very opposite of this assertion). Such was the opinion then put forward by the Secretary of State : it affirmed that the averments as to existing evils in the Papal States, and a necessity for reforming them, were nothing more than the wicked invention of some malcontent and uneasy spirits. In the whole of Italy a conviction the very opposite to this prevailed. Men whose words had the greatest weight with the nation spoke out distinctly, " that affairs could not remain as they were in the Papal States." A great sensa- tion was caused by the writings of Massimo d' Azeglio. Even Cesare Balbo, an ardent Guelph, and the historical venerator of the Papacy, 1 rejoiced that the publications of Azeglio and Galeotti had appeared, because they exposed the defects and malpractices in the Government of the Papal States ; and it was his opinion that the literary work of Azeglio had not been without influence upon the Conclave by whom Pius IX. was elected as Pope. 2 The Marquis Gino Capponi a man honored and respected beyond all others in Italy thus expressed his opinion : 3 " In the Papal States there never will be peace, unless the govern- ment be taken out of the hands of priests and transferred to character was, that they wore the habit of a priest, and took a vow of celibacy, and were thus made to appear as laymen concealed under a priest's mask. It is comprehensible how such a double character should have given rise to the suspicion that an amphibious position like this was only assumed from ambition or avarice, and that those occupying it should not stand very high in public opinion ; whilst the married lay employes, who saw those half-priests promoted over their heads, could not but feel still more bitterly against them on account of their own advancement being prevented. 1 " lo son gran papolino, al solito," was his own expression respecting himself in the year 1848. RICOTTI, " Vita di Balbo," 1856, p. 265. 1 " Lettere di politica e letteratura," 1855, p. 356. * Anonymously in the " Gazzetta Italiana." See, with reference to it, MOSTANELLI, " Memorie," i. 84. DISSATISFACTION WITH SACERDOTAL RULE. 407 laymen ; and that it bears in mind how, in the Middle Ages, the Papal sovereignty reposed upon the power of ah idea, and the prestige of a name, whilst it was on all sides con- trolled by the conflicting jurisdictions of the people and the nobility. The existing mode of government this sacerdotal, all-intermeddling, tax-imposing, catch-poll system of admi- nistration, is a novelty of modern times. The Pope must bring back his sovereignty to what it formerly had been, and gradually constitute a different description of Ministers, different institutions and laws ; or else the Tiara will be stained with blood, and at last rolled in the mire." Difficulties, abortive efforts, humiliations, and defeats be- fell the Government, and daily overwhelmed it. There was no end to the incongruities, inextricable embarrassments, and collisions in which the governing "Prelati" and priest- hood found themselves involved between their ecclesiastical status and the fitting discharge of their official duties. These grew upon them, as polypi are generated out of one another. The instruments of government broke to pieces in its hands. The Papal soldiery became such objects of contempt that the people would not enlist in their ranks ; and when a few were, by the temptation of high pay, brought together, they soon again were disbanded, and it was necessary to call in the Austrians to protect the Papal troops from the scorn and assaults of the population. In the year 1843 the Government received a report from Ferrara, " That the whole of the population of the Romagna was inimically disposed towards the Government." 1 From Imola the Cardinal-Legate, Massimo, reported, on the 1 2th August, 1845 : " The pride of the population makes a priests' government intolerable to it. From the patricians down to the lowest shop-boys, they are all sworn to protect every one who is prosecuted, and to save him from punishment. Many of the officials and clergy are inclined to be on a good understanding with the innovators. The whole of the pre- 1 " I pochissimi amici del Governo non hanno voce in queste provincie, perche appunto sono pochi e TUniversale e nemico." " Document!," i. 70. 408 PIUS ix. sent generation, from the age of eighteen and upwards, must be regarded as lost ; for they are completely inimical to the Government, and always to be found in an attitude of hos- tility against it." l The Governor of Rome, Marini, in his answer, says : " From many other places the reports are to the same effect ; but the main-spring of all this evil is to be found in the fact compulsory idleness, a want of contented industry; and both of these are concomitants of the present sjstem of government." 2 Many of the ecclesiastics, such as Cardinal Massimo, were disposed to trace the main cause of the melancholy state of things and aversion to the Papal Government, to the seeds of indifferentism and infidelity which had been spread amongst the people by the French troops when in occupation of the country. 3 But laymen, like Aguirre, Tommaseo, and Azeg- lio, replied : " It is the gross faults and abuses of the civil government which make the people falter in their faith, and shake their confidence in the Papal guidance of the Church. The unfavourable opinion fostered by the condition to which the priests' government of the Papal States has reduced them, opens a path for erroneous doctrines in religion." 4 Pius IX. 1846-1861. Out of a Conclave one that had only lasted three days, and was the briefest that had occurred for nearly three hun- dred years came forth Pius IX. The arrival of foreign Cardinals had manifestly not been expected. What was par- ticularly aimed at was to guard against Austrian influence, and the Austrian negation. Cardinal Mastai, that Gregory himself had desired to have as his successor, 5 and who was 1 " Document!, " i. 66. At the same time the Cardinal admits the de fective mode of administering the law : "Si rende forinolaria ed ineffi- cace." * " L'ozio e il niun sfogo che hanno gli amor proprii eccitati dall' esempio degli esteri," 1. c., p. 67. 3 "Document! sul Gov. pontif.," i. 66. 4 AGUIRRK, p. 174 ; TOMMASEO, " Roma e il mondo," p. 73 ; D'AZEGLIO, "La Politique etle droit chretien," p. 115. s So says SILVIO PELLICO, " Epistolario," 1856, p. 324. PROMISING COMMENCEMENT OF HIS REIGN. 409 then but fifty years of age, appeared to be the fitting man. As Xuncio in Chile, he had looked upon the world outside of the Papal States, and he had made a comparison between the condition of other lands and his own. To continue to govern in the spirit of his predecessors, and especially of Lambruschini, was simply an impossibility ; but Pius had not the slightest inclination to do so. He saw a greater amount of disorder than he could cure ; but he brought the purest motives, the most unbiassed will, and the most uncon- ditional self-devotion with his summons to the throne ; and he avowed his mission to be that of a reformer in the govern- ment of the country, and a pacificator between the ruler and the ruled. In the firm belief that love alone can beget love, and beneficence gratitude, Pius commenced his reign with a comprehensive Amnesty. By so doing he freed him- self, in the most decided manner, from the mode and policy of administration hitherto pursued ; but he also, at the same time, and by the same act, as Prince Metternich said, " threw open the door of his house to the professional robbers" he permitted the Radical Conspirators who had, until then, carried on their plots in foreign countries to make his own land the seat and centre of their manoeuvres. In the purity, and in the moral nobility of his own disposition, Pius never hesitated, although he was not unaware as to the conse- quences of what he had done. He held it to be his duty to grant the Amnesty, not only as a political act of conciliation, but also as a reparation for wrong that had been inflicted. The Prussian ambassador, Herr von Usedom, quotes the words spoken by the Pope on this topic : fl To grant an Amnesty was not only a political necessity, but it was like- wise my duty. The hatred which the old system had pro- duced against the Papacy must be assuaged ; and in a word, the old must be retrieved by the new, and amends made for the past." 1 Pius conceived himself forced at last to carry into effect the promises that had been made in 1831. On the 23rd April, 1848, he declared in an Allocution to the Cardinals: 1 " Politische Briefe und Characteristiken," 1849, p. 254. 410 LEGISLATIVE AND PRACTICAL REFORMS. " That in the latter years of Pius VII. the Great Powers of Europe had represented to the Papal See that it could, in its civil government, create institutions which would be more in correspondence with the wishes of the laity." At the same time, he supported himself altogether upon the Memorandum of the Powers in 1831, which had declared the introduction of Provincial Councils, and the admission of laymen to ad- ministrative and judicial offices, as vital questions for the Papal Government. His predecessors had done a few things in that direction, and had promised others ; but their ordi- nances had neither corresponded with the desires of the Great Powers, nor had they given satisfaction, nor secured the public weal and tranquillity of the State. 1 Commissions were then established for an examination into the whole system of government, for an improvement in legislation, and for a more suitable classification of the various branches of the executive. The selection of Gizzi as Secretary of State met with general approval. The lay- ing down of railroads, which had been refused during the reign of Gregory, was now sanctioned. The Government permitted that in the same place where only a few months previously every word relating to political affairs must be suppressed, a political journal might be established, and that the wants and circumstances of the Papal Kingdom, as well as of all Italy, might be discussed. A Censorship-edict, de- claring the establishment of a Censorship College, was an improvement in the antecedent state of affairs, where every- thing had been left to the arbitrary judgment of a few monks. Now discussion upon scientific matters, contempo- rary chronicles, and questions upon agriculture and trade, were left free. 2 The greatest joy was excited by a Decree of the 19th April, 1847, which announced a convocation of notables from the provinces to a State Consultation. A council of ministers was formed; Rome had a communal representa- tion; several other reforming decrees appeared, and the 1 " Document!," i. 405. 2 COPPI, ix. 78. POPULARITY OF PIUS IX. 411 State Consultative Assembly met, and propounded moderate propositions. In a few weeks Pius became the idol of all Italians ; and every voice gave utterance to the same language respecting him. His name was then a talisman ! Nought was rightly done, but what was done by him ! All hopes were centred in him, and he was hailed as the national hero of Italy ! He was as their " Priest King" to break the chains of the nation, and other governments would be forced to act in imitation of his example ! " Then," says Montanelli, " was the pres- tige of the Pope the sole defensive bulwark between us and the arms of Austria." l Laymen and priests vied with each other in tendering their homage to the reforming Pope. " Pius," says Count Balbo, 2 " is only now reigning for six weeks, and in that brief span of time has become the most active reformer in this eventful century. The great majority of ecclesiastics in the Papal States are thoroughly aware that it is only by such a course as this that the hatred of the town population against their entire order can be put an end to. It is hoped that the time has now for ever passed away, in which tribunals could be seen composed exclusively of priests con- demning to death or the galleys persons accused of political offences and doing that, too, without affording to them the means of defending themselves. 3 That which was the feeling of all intelligent and religious Italians at the time, was no more than truly expressed by Count Cesare Balbo, when he addressed these noble lines to Pius : " Tu non ci maledici ! Tu sei figlio Di nostra eta, e 1'intendi e la second! : Perdura e avanza ! a te bramando mirano Ormai due mondi. 1 " Memorie sull' Italia," ii. 180. * " Lettere," p. 3G6. 3 Compare the letter of Poggi 4 to Saint-Aulaire, in GUALTERIO, " Docu- menti," p. 273. 412 DEMAND FOR NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE. "Tu principe, tu padre, tu pontifice, Ogni via gik t' apristi, ogni speranza ; Ora dal volgo di color che dubbiano Ti scerni e avanza." l And not only in Italy, but in the whole Catholic world, there was universal joy, and Pius became the " Amor et deliciaa generis humani." The clergy in all countries, the religious Catholics, each and all were rejoiced that at last the reconciliation of the Roman See with the ideas of freedom amongst modern nations could be announced and ratified ; and that the stain could be wiped away which had been brought upon the whole order of the priesthood by the misdeeds and unpopularity of a clerocracy in the States of the Church. 2 It is well-known that, contemporaneous with the com- mencement of the reign of Pius IX., the demand for national independence, and for a free Italy, arose from one end of the Peninsula to the other. " We will," it was said, " be a nation ; we shall possess the strength and dignity of a nation our weight shall be felt in the scale of nations, and our im- portance in the world's history; we will no longer be en- chained by the external interests of Transalpine powers." The movement was no longer confined to the lodges of the secret societies it prevailed over all Italy it was felt by all the educated classes of society it was participated in by all the higher and the middle ranks. All desired national inde- pendence the overthrow of Austrian rule in Upper Italy the abolition of Austrian supremacy in the whole peninsula : all longed for political freedom. Even in Rome those who were then about the Pope did not recoil from that universal spirit which then exhibited itself for shaking off the yoke of foreigners, as well as for the establishment of an Italian Kingdom ; and it is even reported 1 Thou cursest us not ! Thou art a son of our own age, and thou dost understand it, and thou helpest us. Hold fast, and Onward ! Two worlds now look with longing love upon thee. Thou Prince, thou Father, thou Pontiff every path is open before thee, all hope is in thee. From the common crowd of doubters separate thyself, and Onward ! 1 The applause bestowed upon the reforming Pope, especially by the French bishops, is worth remembering. THE "STATUTO FOND AMENT ALE." 413 that Pius himself had given expression to these words : " If victory should favour the army of Charles Albert, then was he himself ready with his own hand to crown him King of Upper Italy. 1 One of Rosmini's plans for the organization of an Italian Confederation met with the approval of the Pope. A Diet of all the Italian States in Rome should con- sult together, and determine upon war and peace, tolls, treaties of commerce, and other matters of common interest to them all. Rome would thus become the Frankfort of the Italian Confederation of States. But then came Rome to be oppressed by the disastrous machinations of political clubs (the Circolo Romano), and of a civic guard, which soon proved itself to be here, as every- where else, inefficient, useless, and evil-disposed, when its services were required for the maintenance of order, and a protection to the Government. Radical demagogues inflamed and fanaticised the populace with endless street demonstra- tions, and the Government could no longer count in Rome upon obedience to its orders. 2 Under the mask of public demonstration of respect and gratitude, the attempt was made to degrade the Pope into a tool of Mazzini, and to force him into a war against Austria. Pius was to be compelled, not merely to take a part in the war, but, as the first, the foremost herald of hostilities, to place himself at its head. 3 The ministries, for the most part composed of laymen, rapidly succeeded each other in office. At the beginning of the year 1848, and when revolutions had already taken place in France and Sicily, appeared the " Statute Fondamentale " a constitution, in the preamble to which Pius declared : " he would not less prize his people, nor show less confidence in them than had been done in neighbouring states, where the population had been regarded as sufficiently sagacious to be entrusted, not merely with a representation having the capacity to consult together, but also with power to resolve, and to have their decrees carried into effect. Such preroga- 1 GIOBERTI, " Rinnovamento civile d'ltalia," i. 210. COPPI, x. 368. 2 RANALLI, " Del riordinamento d'ltalia," 1859, p. 298. * RAXALLI, " Del riordinamento d'ltalia," p. 298. 414 IMPERFECT POLITICAL EDUCATION. tives he would confide to two Chambers one to be named by himself, and the other to be elected. As to those points not specified in this Statute, and in matters affecting religion and morals, he reserved for himself and his successors the full exercise of their sovereign authority. 1 There was an essential difference between the " Statute " and any one of the modern constructed constitutional forms of Government. For there was still left the College of Cardinals, as a wholly independent corporation one, too, in some measure participating in the sovereignty ; and it was to remain not only by the side of, but above both the Chambers. Thus there were, in effect, three deliberative assemblies. It was natural ; perhaps, it was unavoidable, that the "Statute" should be assented to by Pius. Still, as the result has shown, and as, indeed, it might easily have been recognised and foreseen, the people had been but insufficiently prepared or educated for a right use of the political functions bestowed upon them by the " Statute." What was beyond all things needed, and was indispensable for them to possess, was more of civil freedom in their dealings with officials less subjec- tion to the arbitrary conduct and vexatious proceedings ot the police more practice and experience in municipal and provincial self-government. The preliminary conditions to normal constitutional life were altogether wanting. Beyond all things, there was required an absolute separation between lay and ecclesiastical powers and attributes. When, for instance, the Cardinal Vicar, who supplied the place of the Pope in his character of Bishop of Rome, had his police of morals, and when he, with his episcopal authority, exercised a civil jurisdiction, with his own tribunal and his own agents, it is not easy to perceive how such an institution could be maintained along with a representative government. How- ever much the representation of the people and their rights might be limited, and the powers of the government strength- ened, it is still inevitable that the mere existence of an Assembly, the creation of the free choice of the people, must give to the lay element a vast preponderance in the State, 1 COPPI, x. 183. PROGRESS OF REVOLUTIONARY PRINCIPLES. 415 over the clerical. And then this occurring when there was in the administration an inverse order of things prevailing when the lay members were doomed to be stationary, were absolutely excluded from the higher offices, and made depen- dents upon clerical superiors when such an absurdity as this was persisted in, a peaceful solution of all these difficulties was neither to be looked for nor expected, nor even thought of. At almost every Elected Assembly it was determined to withdraw from the clerical jurisdiction the powers exercised by it to seek and find the means for the abolition of the Inquisition, of the civil jurisdiction of the Bishops, and the legalised immunities and privileges of the clergy. And yet it was a commission of the " Prelati " a commission from which all laymen were excluded that devised the "Statute;" and that same "Statute" the College of Cardinals had, as it is known, upon the assurance of Pope Pius himself, unani- mously approved of. 1 Had the inevitable consequences of the "Statute" been then foreseen"? or was it determined to let a gradual change take place, when the declaration might be made that it had proved in operation to be absolutely objectionable? No one now can answer these questions. Soon afterwards the Censorship was made more stringent upon writings touching on theology and religion. Mean- while Rome had become the central point of the Mazzinists and Revolutionists ; whilst it is to be remembered that the movements of 1831, 1843, and 1845, had left a burning flame beneath their ashes. 2 The resistance of the Pope against a participation in the war against Austria was made use of to despoil him of all power, and to force upon him the revolutionary ministry of Mamiani. Then it was that the Pope's new Minister, Pellegrino Rossi, formerly the French Ambassador, seized, with a strong hand, the reigns of govern- ment ; and it seemed as if order would be restored, and the fast-advancing steps of revolution checked, when the heads 1 " L'intero sagro Collegio vi ha convenuto di buon grado ed unani- mamente," were the words of the Pope to the Roman ^municipality. FARINI, ii. 5. 2 RANALLI, " Istorie Ital.," i. 36. 416 THE REPUBLIC. of the anarchical party, Sterbini, Ciceruacchio, and others, resolved upon, and carried into effect, the assassination of the man who was the most formidable opponent of Unionism, and of a " one and indivisible Italian Republic." Then fol- lowed the storm of the Quirinal, and the flight of the Pope to Gaeta. And this time, too, despite of the personal respect, and of the veneration for Pius IX., the Papal power in the whole country was easily overthrown. The utter incapacity of a population, of whom ninety-nine in every hundred had never, either before or after the Revolution, taken a book or newspaper in their hands, made the task attempted to be performed by the Triumvirate and their adherents much more easy of accomplishment. During the sixty-nine days of the Republic created by the Garibaldists and Mazzini<ts, the inhabitants of the Papal States must have drained to the very dregs the intoxicating cup of revolution. The birds of prey quickly gathered round the fallen body of the State, and the people were, under the name of a Democratic Republic, composed of the anarchists of every country, tyrannised over and despoiled by a plundering faction. Of " democratic speech-makers," and of empty-headed chatterers, there was a superfluity ; but of all things else a deficiency. When the French appeared, for the purpose of restoring the Pope, General Oudinot mentions what he then found to be the prevailing spirit amongst the population : " There is for Pius IX. a personal affection entertained ; but everyone is afraid of a clerical government." 1 He transferred the conquered city to the commissioners appointed by the Pope Cardinals Dalla Genga, Vanicelli, and Altieri on 1st August, 1849. It was not until the 4th April, 1850, Pius IX. made his entry into Rome. In the Allocution of the 20th April, 1849, Pius declared that it never had been in his thoughts to change the nature and character of his government ; that he had distinctly 1 That a vast majority of the population in Rome wished for the return of the Pope is a fact attested by an eye-witness, HELFFERICH, in his '* Briefen aus Italien," ii. 56. COURSE OF PAPAL GOVERNMENT. 417 pointed to the fact of the " Statute," with its representative constitution, as perfectly compatible with the character of the Papal sovereignty. But now came into the possession of power those who regarded the salvation of the State to consist in the speedy restoration of all that had been pre- viously overthrown. Even the Inquisition was revived; a "moderate" party, such as there was in 1847, and on which the Pope might now, as then, rely for support, was declared to be no longer procurable. All who were around the Pope desired that the institutions and concessions of 1847 and 1848 should be put an end to. Cardinal Antonelli governed in this sense, as Secretary of State, and became the sole leader of the administration, whilst the other five ministers were but the first official servants of government. Count Balbo had been sent to Gaeta, for the purpose of impressing, in the name of the Piedmontese Government, upon the Pope and his minister, the wisdom of holding fast by the " Statute ;" but his appeal proved to be of no avail. 1 Pius was convinced that the incorrigible would only make use of every concession that was granted to them to carry on their plots as enemies to all social order and positive religion. A restricted amnesty, with but a few, and these unavoidable, exceptions, was granted. By the institution of the " Staats Consulta" laymen had the right of giving an opinion upon domestic concerns ; but the decision upon them was reserved for the " Prelati" in whose hands were again placed all the higher offices. The munici- palities, however, were promised a certain sort of independ- ence. The Communal Councils were to be chosen out of electoral bodies of Council men, sixfold in number to those nominated ; and the Pope reserved to himself the nomination of the first. For ten years (1849 1859) did the Government of the Papal States, supported by the Austrian occupation in the Romagna, and by the French in Rome and Civita Vecchia, pursue, upon the whole, a peaceful and equable course. Seldom, indeed, has a government begun and ended its wearisome day-work under such disheartening circumstances 1 RICOTTI, " Vita del Balbo," p. 273. EE 418 RAYNEVAL'S MEMORIAL. surrounded on all sides by bitter, malignant, self-seeking, and skulking foes, and nowhere having a firm support, and in no one a cordial, steady, and reliable friend. The Report of the French Ambassador, Count Rayneval, in the year 1856, defended, in most points, the Government of the Papal States, under the present Pope and Cardinal Antonelli, against the reproaches of the Italians, and the wide-spread opinion in England and France regarding them. The Report cert56es that dissatisfaction and discontent con- tinue to prevail amongst the population ; but the cause for this state of things " is to be sought," it says, " not in the faults of the system of government, but in the defects of the national character," and especially in the then existing situation and temper of the Italians. The English Envoy, Mr. Lyons, who was in Rome at the same time, has, in his Report, made frequent reference to Rayneval's Memorial, which he maintains was drawn up in agreement with, and according to, the data supplied by the Papal Government, for the purpose of influencing the Paris Cabinet to favour the continuance of the French Protectorate, and to shew that the Pope ought not to be pressed to make changes in his mode of government. He disputes, in many points, the correctness of M. Rayneval's representation. And, yet, both the one and the other, Rayneval and Lyons, coincide in some main points. Both give the assurance that no blame should be cast upon the existing Government for the general discon- tent and desire of the population for a change in the supreme authority over them. There are, as Mr. Lyons affirms, but two descriptions of men in the country ; the first are unflinching, active, and irreconcileable enemies of the Go- vernment, whose watchword is, " No more government by priests ! " These can never be won by reforms in particular matters ; all they would do with every concession made to them would be to employ it as a weapon against the Govern- ment. It is not reform, but the overthrow of the Government, that they aim at. The others are indifferent, tepid, unreliable, and, in a moment of danger, the Government would not find in them the slightest support. They would not lift a finger in aid RELATIONS OF GOVERNMENT AND PEOPLE. 419 of the assailed ruler. The supposition thus made by the Eng- lish Envoy was, in the year 1859, but too accurately verified, and too fully justified. Even the lower classes of the Papal employes were, as Mr. Lyons declares, notoriously disaffected to the Papal sovereignty, 1 and they were also described by him as being lazy and corrupt. There are two matters which must not be overlooked by any one who would pass a sound judgment upon the condition of the Papal States. The first is the reflection that those who are rulers are, essentially, of the population, and parti- cipate in the popular virtues as well as popular defects. A want of energy and activity cannot reasonably be made a matter of reproach against a Government, when in it is dis- cernible a national trait. Secondly : when once the fitting relations between a people and their Government become disturbed, then mutual confidence between them disappears, and a malcontent population is disposed to make their rulers responsible for all the wrongs and crimes of which they are themselves guilty, and which, whether they be sins of com- mission or omission, are characteristic of them, as a nation. In what an extreme degree this is the case in the Papal States, has been remarked upon by Count Rayneval. The inhabitants of the Papal States are, in some respects, like to the Mexicans, of whom it has been said by a keen observer, lately arrived from that country, that " they blame the Government if their coat is torn ! " This mode of reasoning in the Papal States, it must, however, in candour, be admitted, is the natural consequence of the tutorship system of government, which restricts both a discussion upon, and a participation in, public business. Hence, too, flows a fatal distrust. " They dream," says the French Ambassador, " of naught else than dishonesty and extortion. They complain that the State does not engage in carrying out great under- takings, which, if it did, they would at once make those undertakings an object for their attacks." 2 1 Despatches from Mr. Lyons respecting the Condition and Adminis- tration of the Papal States." London, 1860, p. 53. 2 " Allg. Zeitg.," 1857, p. 1666. EE 2 420 SECULARIZATION OF PUBLIC OFFICES. The first and most pressing problem of all, is that affecting the relation of the ecclesiastical and lay holders of govern- ment situations ; or, in other words, the question of " the secularization of public offices." Many hold this as being the most difficult to determine as actually insoluble. It involves not merely the point that almost all the higher offices are in the hands of ecclesiastics, and that such offices are so regulated as to be inaccessible to laymen ; but the Government says, 1 "That the Pope is an ecclesiastic, and that under the Pope, as sovereign, the direction of the administration must be essentially ecclesiastical. Besides that, we have only a very small number of laymen from whom we could make a selection, and the cities themselves (for instance, Orvieto and Camerino a short time previously) had desired to have ecclesiastics for their governors." To this it was replied by laymen, and the ambassadors of foreign powers : " The Government should be secularized, so that laymen of talent, honour, and ambition may have opened to them a path, and a hope of promotion, to the higher offices ; and that it may thus plainly be made worth their while earnestly and seriously to prepare themselves for admission to the public service. So long as this is not the case, capable laymen will hold themselves aloof ; laymen and ecclesiastics will be separated into hostile classes and the former being constantly discontented, will wish for, and conspire to effect a change in, the form of the govern- ment. Moreover, situated as things now are, an accom- plished and independent-minded layman would find himself, upon all occasions, compelled to sacrifice his judgment to that of his ecclesiastical superiors that which would be done by very few, and these not the most competent or reliable persons." To these objections was to be added another, " that," as a shrewd French observer remarked, 2 " the priests stand like sentinels, at the opening of every 1 Cardinal Antonelli, in an interview with Mr. Lyons, " Despatches," p. 17. * H. v. METZ-XOBLAT, in his " Varia, Morale, Politique, Literature." Paris, 1861, p. 433. CESSATION OF CASTE GOVERNMENT. 421 public career, to examine the candidate's testimonials of piety, and fulfilment of ecclesiastic duties ; for without these no one is permitted to enter the Government service." " We will have," declared an Italian, lately, " along with the wished-for secularization in the Papal States, not merely the exclusion of priests from government offices, but also the cessation of a caste-government, and the establishment of equality in the temporal hierarchy, as well as a participation in the government of the country and the management of its affairs." 1 Count Rayneval coincided in the view of the Government, for he directs attention to the fact " that the people exhibit towards the lay employes of the Government no marks of respect, and are much less tolerant of their superiority over them 2 in rank and position, than they are as regards ecclesi- astics. And such feeling is so much the more plainly recognisable in the fact that many more violent personal assaults have been made upon lay than upon ecclesiastical officials." But he remarks, at the same time, that " the cry for a complete secularization of the Government is applauded by the people." What we then see is this : a condition of circumstances in which they who are in reality " the people " are accus- tomed to find the ecclesiastical officers both more capable and less avaricious than the lay official subordinates ; and then, even though they may be, in general, dissatisfied with the administration, still they are unwilling to speak against the " Priest-Government." On the other hand, the higher orders, that is, all those who believe that they themselves, or their kinsmen, have a claim to participate in the service of the State are discontented; they feel that they are excluded from office, and, therefore, demand that all situations and offices should be occupied by laymen. If this be laid down as a principle to be rigidly enforced, it is, in fact, an opening to the speedy secularization of the Papacy itself. On the other side, it is clear that if things remain as they now are, 1 " Rivista Contemp.," viii. 470. * u Denkschrift, Allg. Ztg.," 1857, 17th April. 422 ASSUMPTION OF ARBITRARY POWER. a reconciliation of the two classes, and consequently a peace- ful and beneficent maintenance of the Papal States, is scarcely to be hoped for. The disproportion lies, however, not so much in the number as in the outrageous contrast of social positions the disparity complained of makes the clerical a governing, and the lay a subordinate class ; it appears in public and private personal conflicts between a layman and an ecclesiastic, for it places every advantage within the reach of the latter, and renders the defeat of the former almost a matter of certainty. In other countries, we see ecclesiastics and laymen in the same description of employment standing well and amicably, as well as working harmoniously together; as, for instance, in Universities and Gymnasia, and as employes of the Government. Such a state of things would also be attainable in the Papal States, if the conditions were: *' Equality of rights and of duties, free competition acces- sibility to official life the capability and suitableness of the individual, but not the paramount privileges of the class in society to which he may belong." There is another difficulty to be found in the want of a rigid conformity to law. From the reports received on all sides, a person must feel convinced that one of the greatest defects in the condition of the Papal States is to be found in the want of conformity to law. There is unknown there the peaceful, firm, and, for rulers and for ruled alike, the equal binding and unapproachable sanctity of law. There is too much confided to the power, and too much is made dependent upon the wilfulness, of particular officials. It is remarked by Mr. Lyons, "that the Court of Rome .... shows an ex- traordinary disregard to laws and forms in its dealings with its subjects, and seems almost always to assume an arbitrary power to act in each matter according to the circumstances of the moment." 1 There is an instance of a governor de- claring " that, for want of proofs, the accused could not be convicted, but still he should be punished with imprisonment for eight days, upon bread and water.'" 2 And then there was 1 " Despatches," p. 61. See AGUIRRE, p. 124. 2 "Document!, sul Gov. pontif.," ii. 580. CONSTITUTIONALISM AND THE PAPACY. 423 Cardinal Bernetti, the Secretary of State, who declared, with respect to an individual against whom there were not suffi- cient proofs, " that upon his first transgression he should receive, in addition to whatever might be the legal punish- ment of his offence, five years hard labour." 1 This exercise of an arbitrary power, this licentiousness on the part of the Administration and the authorities, who, on every occasion, are prepared to evade the law, has been branded by Count Ray- neval, when he declares, " L' interpretation de la loi 1'emporte sur la loi elle-meme." The mischief is, that a sound political life can scarcely be developed when a government is carried on in this manner. The example of those in power renders it impossible for a people who live under the constant im- pression of arbitrary proceedings to have a due respect and reverence for the objective power, the law ; on the contrary, the idea will gain ground with them that men in such a country are not the subjects of the law, but of the individual caprice of a certain number of persons, whose conduct is in- fluenced by their passions and the interests of their order. 2 It is perfectly manifest that u constitutionalism," as it is or- dinarily understood and acted upon, could not be applied to the States of the Church. It would not be tolerated that a warlike faction could, by refusing the supplies, force the Pope, " the supreme shepherd of nations," to go to war with a Christian power, as they sought to compel him to declare war against Austria. The Pope must be in possession of a real and not a nominal sovereignty, so that he may be seen, as well as seem to be, in his ecclesiastical power and actions, fully and completely free. It can be a matter of not the slightest import, if he is under coercion, whether that coercion be exercised by a foreign power, or by a haughty and de- spotic parliamentary majority. But such a sovereignty, and a clerical-bureaucratic omnipotence tutoring everybody, and intermeddling with and managing everything, are two con- ditions of government as wide asunder from each other as the two poles. The autocratic sovereignty of the Pope is compatible with a participation of the people in legislation, 1 " Document!,' 1 ii. 595. z Marsuzi de Aguirre, p. 166. 424 ELECTORAL SYSTEM. the autonomy of corporations, a moderate freedom of the press, and the separation of religion from the police. For- merly, it was Austria and the different Governments in Italy that were subjected to the guidance of Austria, that had, under the pretence that the principle of popular elections was irreconcileable with due order in their States, opposed the adoption of elective Provincial and Municipal Councils. 1 In accordance with the Motu Proprio of 1850, these elections were to take place, and the Frencli defenders of the Papal See, Montalembert and De Corcelle, have appealed to the fact. The Italians reply : " That the Electoral system of Municipal and Provincial Councils is good in theory, but that Cardinal Antonelli had, in a circular of 29th April, 1854, ordered the Electoral Colleges not to be called to- gether. 2 The Government could cite in its justification the remark of the English diplomatist, that it must conduct it- self in accordance with the law of self-preservation ; for, as he remarks, " the natural unwillingness of the Government to allow its own enemies a place in them " (the Communal Councils) "is unfortunately sufficient to exclude in many districts the men otherwise best qualified." 3 In fact, the number is far too great, as the British diplomatist says, of those in whose eyes " the standard of value for a scheme of reform is the means it would supply for throwing off the yoke of the Holy See." These are the persons who " would be sorry to have fewer causes of complaint sorry for any- thing which would diminish the extent or the intenseness of disaffection." 4 Another circumstance, and one of far too common occur- rence, has contributed to the contempt into which the Go- vernment has fallen with its own subjects, by increasing the conviction that they live under a pure despotism ; and that circumstance is the promulgation of laws which are after- wards permitted to remain a dead letter." 5 1 GALEOTTI, " Delia sovranitk del Papi," 1846, p. 339. See remarks of H. v. ECKSTEIN, " Allg. Zeitung," April. 1860, p. 1803. 2 FARINI, in the " Rivista Contempor.," 1857, ix. 19. 1 LYONS, " Despatches," p. 19. 4 LYONS, " Despatches," p. 20. Particular attention has been attracted towards this point by the THE INQUISITOR AIRALDl's EDICT. 425 The Pope himself has long since admitted that an intel- lectually-gifted and extremely energetic people like the Italians could not endure the suppression of all public dis- cussion, and an exclusion from all active participation in public life ; that their impulsive activity required that there should be beds and channels into which it might be poured, and then, within due and prescribed limits, it might flow on beneficially. That by the side of public deliberative assem- blies there should be a rigid preventive censorship prohibit- ing all discussions, as well as that there should be maintained certain institutions and privileges which have long since dis- appeared out of every other part of the world that the duration of these contradictions could be prolonged is an impossibility. And hence concessions are refused by those who are for perpetuating the old systems, and who, as it has often been repeated, labour their very utmost to prevent the establishment of elective and consultative colleges, although in so doing they are acting contrary to the wish of the Pontiff, and inflicting pain upon him. 1 They who act thus well know that the chimney cannot be left stopped up once a fire is kindled on the hearth. In the year 1856, the Inquisitor, Airaldi, issued a long Edict, in which, under a threat of the severest censures, he called for the denunciation of every ecclesiastical and reli- gious offence that might be known by anyone to have been committed by others he declared it to be the bounden duty of such to make certain sins known ; as, for instance, a maid- servant incurred excommunication and became liable to pun- ishment, if she neglected to inform the Inquisition of anyone in the house in which she lived having eaten meat on a Friday or a Saturday evening ! All the newspapers 2 the anonymous Italian author of " Memoires du Comte Aldini," in the "Revista Contemp.,"viii. 469. 1 The author of an article in the " Rivista Contemp.," 1856, viii. 470, maintained, upon what he said was the best authority, that Pius himself complained of the conduct of the Government then existing. 2 It was first brought to notice in the " Correspondance Italienne lithographiee," 19th October, 1856. 426 PUBLIC OPINION ON THE PAPAL QUESTION. " Siecle" leading the van instantly got possession of this do- cument, and it was printed in full. What commentaries were made upon it in France, England, and Italy ! what inferences were drawn from it as to the character of the Papal Government, and what little hope of reform to be looked for from it ! Of all this it is not now necessary to say a word. The numberless enemies of the Papal See could scarcely be tendered a more welcome gift. The hope, how- ever, was entertained that something might be done to remove the impression caused by this circumstance. One journal brought the intelligence that Airaldi had been re- moved from his office, but the " Ecclesiastical Journal," pub- lished in Rome, instantly contradicted that statement, and declared that " Airaldi had only done his duty ! " } It would seem, in point of fact, as if persons in the narrow circles at Home had either no precise notion, or some idea far removed from the truth, as to the gigantic powers of " journalism," and of that u public opinion " which is formed through or reflected by journalism. Every one who is ac- quainted with the present condition of Europe, and the rela- tions between existing powers, is well aware that three such events as the case of Achilli, the Edict of Airaldi (and others antecedent to and like it), and the affair of Mortara, have weighed more in the balance, on the question of the Papal States, than a battle lost or won. The question here is, not how each of these circumstances should be judged of by its intrinsic merits, but in what manner they contributed to in- fluence an irresistible public opinion in Europe. At present, all are living in glass houses, and it is not sufficient to treat with governments, for behind them are the peoples upon whose fixed opinions depend the resolutions of those in au- thority. How unfavourable in Italy, in England, in the greatest part of France, Germany, etc., is public opinion, for the continuation of the temporal sovereignty of the Pope, every one, who will only make use of his own eyes, can but too plainly discern. It cannot appear to be a matter much to be wondered at, 1 The u Civiltk Cattolica," in its number of 20th December, 1856. HOSTILE SPIRIT OF THE POPULATION. 427 that, wherever the co-operation of laymen is needed in Rome, all should go wrong, and that the Government (as all the foreign diplomatists testify) should nowhere find a support in the population. At great cost, and with inexpressible diffi- culty, there was incorporated anew, in 1850, a small Papal native army; but the events of 1859 shattered into pieces this instrument, and destroyed this hope. The facts proved that these troops were completely untrustworthy, and recourse was unavoidably had to foreign soldiers. Prelati and Delegati were constantly sending in reports of the systematically hostile spirit of the population of their dogged repugnance to enlist in the Papal military service of their refusal to undertake any communal office which would bring them in contact with the Government, and render it necessary for them to carry out its orders. The Delegate Folicaldi wrote from Ferrara, in the year 1849: "The Liberals say, ' The Austrian rather than the Papal,' only for the purpose of expressing their hatred against the Papal Government." l From Bologna, the Prelato Bedini wrote to say that he could only discover a few persons who would undertake the office of " Censor." It was the same at Ra- venna and Ferrara. At Faenza, no one would accept of any kind of office ; and the Delegate Lasagna, writing from Cesena, 1858, says: "In this district there are only a few persons well disposed towards the Government." 2 Nevertheless, the administration of Pius IX. is wise, bene- volent, indulgent, thrifty, attentive to useful institutions and improvements. All that proceeds from Pius IX., person- ally, is worthy of the Head of the Church it is elevated and liberal in the best sense of the term. No sovereign spends less on his Court, and his own private wants. If all thought and acted as he does, his would be a model State. Both the French and the English envoys affirm that the financial administration had improved, that the value of land was in- creasing, agriculture flourishing, and that many symptoms of progress might be observed. 3 1 " Document!," i. 57. * " Document!," i. 210. 3 LYONS, " Despatches," p. 54. 428 CHARACTER OF PIUS IX. Whatever can be expected of a monarch full of affection for his people, and seeking his sole recreation in works of beueficence, Pius abundantly performs. " Pertransiit bene- faciendo." These words have been spoken of One, far, far higher, and yet, when applied to Pius, they are but the simple truth. In him, we can clearly perceive how the Papacy, even as a temporal State, might, so far as the cha- racter of the Prince is concerned, through judicious elections, be the most admirable of human institutions. A man in the prime of life, after an irreproachable youth, and a conscien- tious discharge of episcopal duties, is elevated to the highest dignity and sovereign power. He knows nothing of expen- sive amusements, he has no other passion than that of doing good, no other ambition than to be beloved by his subjects. His day is divided between prayer and the labours of govern- ment ; his relaxation is a walk in the garden, a visit to a church, a prison, or a charitable institution. Free from per- sonal desires and from terrestial bonds, he has no relations and no favourites to provide for. For all, there is the like claim, and the like access to him. For him, the rights and powers of his office exist only for the sake of its duties. His abstinent and thrifty palace-expenditure affords to him abundant means to relieve want and mitigate suffering on all sides. He, too, like most of the Popes, has had buildings erected ; yet his are not splendid palaces, but works of general utility. Grievously outraged, maltreated, repaid with ingratitude, he has never harboured a thought of re- venge, never committed an act of severity, but ever forgiven and ever pardoned. The cup of sweetness and of bitterness, the cup of men's favour and disfavour, he has not merely tasted, but drained to its very dregs ; he has heard, too, the cry of " Hosanna!" and he has heard it soon followed by the cry of "Crucify him!" The man of his confidence, yea ! the first great mind of his nation, had fallen beneath the dagger of the assassin ; and the bullet of an insurgent struck down the friend by his side. And yet no feeling of hatred, no breath of anger, could ever obscure, even for a moment, the spotless mirror of his soul. Untouched by EFFORTS TO MISLEAD PUBLIC OPINION. 429 human folly, unmoved by human malice, he proceeds with a firm and regular pace on his way, like to the stars in heaven. Such I have seen the action of this Pope in Rome such it has been described to me by all, whether near him or afar ; and if he now seems to be appointed to pass through all the painful and discouraging experience that can befall a monarch, and to continue, to the end, the course of a prolonged martyr- dom, he resembles in this as in so many other things the Sixteenth Louis ; or rather, to ascend still higher, he knows that the disciple is not above the Master, and that the pastor of a Church, whose Lord and Founder died upon the Cross, cannot marvel and cannot refuse that the Cross should be laid upon him also. At present, the utmost efforts are made, in Italy and France especially, to mislead public opinion. One Italian after another comes forward to show that the Papal See is, according to the principles on which it is based, not in a condition to comply with the demands which the genius of the age, and the prevailing tendencies in social and political life, make upon those who are in authority. The same has been maintained by the English Minister, Gladstone, in the British Parliament, in the year 1856, and ever since then. 1 The Pope, it is said, is, as a Sovereign of the Church States, bound by the Canon Law, and, therefore, fettered down to the conditions and legal customs of the Middle Ages. Hence, it is said that, as there has been a complete change effected in all the relations of civil life, it is manifestly im- possible that a people of the nineteenth century can be ruled by the principles of the thirteenth ; and so the temporal sovereignty of the Pope is a contradiction in itself a perma- nent state of war, that can only be maintained by force of arms ; and hence it is doomed whether sooner or later to die ! All the friends of the Church, and of the Papal See, 1 See the work of MONTANELLI, " L'Impero, il Papato, e la demo- crazia," Florence, 1859. The essays of MINGHELLI, VAINI, and of an anonymous writer, u Patrizio Romano," in the " Rivista Contemporanea," 1861 ; the treatise of GEKNARELLI, " I Lutti dello Stato Romano," 1860, and several others. 430 ELASTICITY OF THE PAPACY. are called upon to oppose such an opinion ; for it is only that Avhich, according to the Catholic doctrine, is of Divine Insti- tution, and what is essential for all times and unchangeable, to which the Pope is bound. Happily, the sovereignty of the Pope is of a very elastic nature, and it has already gone through many different forms. If a comparison be instituted between the use which the Popes made of their sovereignty in the thirteenth or fifteenth century and the form of government which Consalvi introduced, it will be seen that few things could exhibit a stronger contrast with one another. There is no reason, therefore, to doubt that it will now, after a violent interruption, assume the form best adapted to the character of the age and the requirements of the Italian people. Let it be but seen that the Papal Government possesses a vast advantage over all other forms of sovereignty ; and instantly the people will willingly again place themselves under the dominion of the Papacy. What is there to prevent us from thinking that a state of circumstances may arise in which, when elections to the Papal dignity occur, the persons chosen shall no longer be decrepit, aged individuals, but men in the prime of their years and their strength a period, too, in which the people shall be reconciled to their government by free institutions, and share in the conduct of their own con- cerns whilst the upper classes are satisfied by the opening of a suitable career in public affairs 1 In such a condition of circumstances, the public and speedy administration of justice would win the confidence of the people ; an honourable esprit du corps, a feeling of self-respect, and a pride in their integrity, and in the dignity of the class to which they belonged, would animate the Government employes ; the hostile separa- tion between ecclesiastics and laity would be put an end to, by an equality in their privileges and their duties ; the police would no longer prop themselves up by religious means, and religion would no longer hobble like a cripple, and rely for support upon the crutches of a policeman. The Pope and his territory could then be placed under the protection of the Catholic Powers the same Powers that have guaran- A RIGHTFUL REQUISITION. 431 teed the neutrality of Belgium and Switzerland. The Great Powers that have become security for the integrity of the wretched, self- collapsing empire of the Turk, could also shield the dominions of the Pope. Defended by such a buckler, and the ruler over a peaceful, contented people, the Pope's hands would be completely free. The barriers to material and intellectual intercourse which have until now maintained, by an unnatural separation, different portions and districts of Italy apart from each other, would then be thrown down. International affinities and certain free ad- missibilities, such as are enjoyed by University professors in Germany, might leave open to the ambitious in their own land a career for employment in the civil and military service in other parts of Italy. The Pope would have no enemies to fear, either at home or abroad ; his subjects would be released from the detested conscription ; the State-budget would be without the burden of army estimates, and for the mainte- nance of public security all that would be required would be a few brigades of a Gendarmerie. For the execution of works of general necessity sufficient funds would not be wanting. And this is no vain, empty fancy-sketch. Abstracting those misfortunes and faults which every one of good will, and right intentions, and unprejudiced feeling will admit to be curable, and supposing that peace and order prevail in Italy, then might the Government of the Papal States be a model Government a pattern worthy of imitation by all other States and administrative authorities. That it should be such a pattern for others has not only been declared by Tommaseo, but also by the Bishop of Orleans, whose work has been declared by the Pope himself to be the best of all that have appeared in defence of the sovereignty of the Papacy. Even he (the Bishop of Orleans) marks it as a rightful requisition, that the lands of the Church should be more prosperous and better governed than others, and that their people should be more contented with their lot than any other population. 1 Monseigneur Diipanloup likewise an- 1 " Si la perfection doit se rencontrer sur la terre quelque part, ce doit 432 FREEDOM OF RELIGIOUS WORSHIP. n ounces that those who, " under the pretence of dogmas, main- tain that the Pope cannot put his Government in harmony icith modern times and the legitimate wishes of the people, are per-sons who thereby declare the destruction of the Papal power to be unavoidable" Let it now be considered what high authoritative approval the book has received in Rome which contains these words, and there will then be found that they are full of hope and of cheering promise. There are persons now in Italy who urge, as regards the temporal sovereignty of the Pope, a pressing difficulty, and which they declare to be insoluble. It is a perfect freedom of religious worship. 1 They say : Religious freedom in a double sense freedom for all religion, and freedom to choose, and openly profess and practise a form of religion different from that which is the predominant faith as well as the creed of the majority of the nation. This is a requirement from which no state in Europe will dissent. The principle has been introduced into other parts of Italy ; but the Pope will never permit it. I regard this assumed difficulty as insignificant that is, that it has already practically been solved, or is still in process of solution. Life, that concrete actuality, with its unavoidable demands, is accustomed to cut through those knots which to many have seemed inextricably involved. Attempts have already been made in the States of the Church, as in so many other places, by gold and eloquence, to win proselytes to Protestantism. Hitherto, these efforts have proved fruitless. 2 But admitting it had been otherwise, and that in reality several conversions had taken place, would it then have been in the power of those in authority to employ any means of punishing the converts, and, above all, to maintain a last- etre dans les etats de TEglise. J'admets cette exigence comme un hom- mage involontaire qui nous honore, et avec lequel nous devons compter." " La Souverainete Pontificate," 1860, p. 570. 1 MONTANELLI, " L'Impero, il Papato, e la Democrazia in Italia," 1859, p. 29. * See on this subject, ODDO, " L'Independenza, il Cattolicismo, e 1'Italia," 1859, p. 34. PROTESTANTISM IN ITALY. 433 ing coercion as regarded them ? We all know thoroughly well to what a high state of perfection the art is carried now- a-days of patting a pressure upon an unpopular government how it works through the medium of diplomacy, or by agita- tion, or by open attacks in the press, and by speeches in Parliament until its power may at last be compared to that of an armed intervention, and its final success is inevitable. It is notorious that the case of the Jew boy Mortara has been to the enemies of the Church and of the Roman See one of the most welcome circumstances that could have occurred, and they have known how to make a large capital out of it. But if the event were now to occur that an Italian, having become a convert to Protestantism, were to be denounced to the Inquisition, and imprisoned by that tribunal, &c. what would be the consequence? A cry of indignation would be raised from Norway to Sicily news- papers, popular meetings, Parliaments and Chambers, would occupy themselves with the affair a powerful agitation, such as we have witnessed with respect to the Florentine Madiais, would be renewed and brought before the world in still more huge dimensions ; and certain Powers, which it is needless for us to name, would seize with delight upon the pretext thus afforded them to rob the Pope of all that still remains to him of his temporal sovereignty. And where are the hands that in such a circumstance would be raised in defence of the Pope? There is now much talk of the introduction of Protestantism into Italy. Should this talk become a reality, and Protestantism gain a strong position, and have an influence upon ideas and feelings in Italy, then would most assuredly the situation of the Papal See be, in an incal- culable manner, embarrassed, and the reconciliation of the Pope with the popular spirit be rendered, perhaps, an impos- sibility. But nothing practical will ever come of such a movement. Even in the century when Protestant ideas possessed their greatest strength, and had attained their mightiest powers of attraction and when they were in the north of Europe truly popular, and dominated over the minds and hearts of all even then Protestantism in Italy was only FF 434 PROTESTANT TESTIMONY OF ITALIANS. thought of by a few scholars and ecclesiastics ; whilst the people were never seriously affected by it. The peculiar Pro- testant spiritual testimony of Italians,and the contingent which they, on behalf of Italy, gave to the religious movement of the sixteenth century was Socinianism ! It is not to be expected that the ideas which three hundred years ago, in all their youthful freshness, had such mighty attractions for mankind, and yet whose ardent power was wholly lost upon the Italians, will, at this period of the world's history, be able to make any considerable impression upon the people of Italy even though they cotne recommended by the influence of the Piedmontese Government and the enticements of English coin. "The Italians," said to me a man of whom all Tus- cany is proud, a few years since in Florence, " can never be made believing Calvinists or Lutherans. All that these English and German labours will, or can, ever be able to effect is this that a number of persons will be estranged from all religions, and plunged into infidelity. With us, Protestantism can never be anything more than a power of destructiveness, and the founder of social disorders and dis- sensions. 1 So has the English preacher, S. W. King, who visited Italy in the year 1858, likewise admitted that the labours (which had been richly supported by English money) of the "Waldenses, and other preachers of Protestantism in Italy, had for the most part proved to be ineffective ; that in Pied- mont, where there had been the greatest exertions, Protes- tantism had made but little progress ; and that outside the Valleys of the Waldenses there were not 1,000 Protestants in the whole kingdom. 2 It astonished him to find the opponents of the Church able to quote quite glibly passages from 1 " In the same spirit speaks." GIURIA, " Silvio Pellico e il suo tempo," 1854, p. 81. 1 " The Italian Tallies of the Pennine Alps ;" London, 1858. See GIAC, ODDO, " I/Independenza, il Cattolicismo e I'ltalia," 1859, p. 40. lie holds that the notion, that Protestantism can ever become a power in Italy, is absolutely groundless and absurd. Such, too, is the opinion of MASSIMO D'AZEGLIO. REFORM OF THE PAPAL SEE. 435 the Bible against the Catholic religion, whilst they showed that they themselves had no faith in the Bible, nor in the passages they cited ! a circumstance that is quite intelligible to those well acquainted with Italian affairs. Recently, too, at a meeting of " the Protestant Alliance," at Geneva, the paid agents of "the Alliance," the Messrs. Bert, Valette, and Mazarella, felt it necessary to let down, in a very modest, moderate style, the high hopes that had been enter- tained of the glorious consequence to follow from "the Gospel in Italy," and to admit to an audience hungering for far different tidings, that, as yet there had, in reality, very little been done ! The French Government has proposed, over and over again, to the Papal Administration, both general and particular reforms. Even Austria, in the year 1859, declared herself ready again to take up the negotiations with the Papal Government for reforms, which had been entered upon, in 1857, by France, and subsequently abandoned, 1 or to make new representations on the same subject at Rome. The Roman Cabinet has, upon its part, never absolutely rejected these reforms. On the contrary, in the year 1860, it stated " that the Holy See regarded the question of reforms as one that was in principle conceded, but maintained its right to postpone the announcement of them until it was again put in possession of those provinces belonging to it which had been annexed by Sardinia." 2 At an early period, the Pope had declared that he was ready to introduce the reforms pro- posed by the Great Powers, but under the stipulation (as well as an unavoidable condition) that the integrity of the Papal States should be guaranteed. This was refused in Paris ; and by that refusal may be measured the candour, sincerity, and fair-dealing involved in the proposed demand made for reforms. With this, also, is combined another matter, made known by Lord John Russell's declaration in Parliament, and the knowledge of which will astonish no one namely, "that 1 " Malmesbury Correspondence," p. 155. 1 Report of the Duke of Grammont, 14th April, 1860. " Allg. Ztg.," 1861, p. 718. FF 2 436 LAMENTABLE SITUATION. the Courts of Vienna and Madrid had tendered a proposal in Paris, that the affairs of the Papal States should be made the suhject of a united consultation and decision ; but, in Paris, this proposal had been declined, under the pretence that, in the arrangements of the Vienna Peace, with respect to the Papal States, England, Prussia, and Sweden had been participators ' M an expression that sounds very like a mockery, considering all the circumstances that have occurred of late years ; and what things have been contrived between Paris and Turin, in which, most assuredly, the opinion of Prussia or of Sweden was never asked for. And then, almost at the very time that those events became known, the Pope was compelled to have solicitations made at Paris, " that France should not hasten the withdrawal of the troops in occupation of Rome." 2 In regarding a situation so very lamentable as this, one feels sorely tempted to wish that a crisis might come even though it be in the form of a catastrophe but still one that might, at least, put a stop to the continuation of such ceaseless sorrows, combined with such deep humiliations. From the facts of the immediate past can probabilities as to fast-coming events be clearly surmised. The Ro- magna, which, in 1846, desired to be annexed to Tuscany, wished, in 1859, upon the withdrawal of the Austrian gar- 1 " Weekly Register ;" London, June 22, 1861. [The precise words used by LORD JOHN RUSSELL are thus reported in ' Hansard" : a I have re- ceived a communication from the French Ambassador in London, inform- ing me that a proposal has been made to the French Government by th.e Austrian and Spanish Ambassadors in Paris, in general terms, that the Roman Catholic Powers should act in concert with regard to the temporal power of the Pope. There was no mention of armies, or of protecting by arms the temporalities of the Pope. It was a general proposal, and to that proposal an absolute negative was given by the Government of France. I may, perhaps, state that the ground on which the proposition was refused was, that the general arrangements with regard to the temporalities of the Pope were settled at Vienna by Great Britain, Prussia, and Sweden, as well as by the Roman Catholic powers." HANSARD'S u Parliamentary Debates" (third series), vol. clxiii., pp. 1:327. 1328. June 20, 1861.] * " Allg. Ztg.," 1861, 25th June, p. 2872. "THE POPE AND THE CONGRESS." 437 rison, to become Piedmontese ; and 121 Deputies one half of them consisting of nobles voted unanimously for annexa- tion to Piedmont. The French Emperor, too, wrote to the Pope r 1 " That the Legations could now only be retained in obedience to the Papal See by means of a prolonged military occupation ; and that this could give rise only to a continual state of rancour, discontent, and fear. The Pope, therefore, would, for the sake of the peace of Europe, make a sacrifice in the loss of those Provinces." The same motive can be made equally available, whenever the moment may come, when the Pope will be required to renounce his sovereignty over the remainder of his territories. " There is," said Napoleon III., in another letter to the Pope, "an inexorable logic in facts." Shortly afterwards appeared in Paris the well- known pamphlet, " The Pope and the Congress," of which it was said by Lord John Russell, " that it had stripped the Pope of more than the half of his dominions." It proposed "to leave to the Head of the Church the city of Rome and a garden." At the same time, however, Cavour said in his Parliament, at Turin, that this was the demand of Italy viz. : " Rome is precisely the very thing that we want ; and Rome we must have, as the capital of our kingdom." The conduct pursued was utterly unprecedented. The Pope was required to disarm his own troops, at the very moment that his territories were overrun with foreigners, and his subjects called upon by them to take up arms. Without any Declaration of War against him, his dominions were invaded, an Ultimatum was presented to him, his little band of soldiers was overwhelmed with an army ten times their own in number; and at the same time furious proclamations were issued, threat- ening with death and extermination " the Papal hordes " and then! Cavour declared (llth October, 1860), in Par- liament, " that all these memorable circumstances are the necessary results of our policy for the last twelve years!!!" What are to be the guarantees for this (Sardinian) Go- 1 The letter is published in the "Moniteur," llth January, 1860. 43S ROME AND PIEDMONT. vernment? Would it not itself deride the credulity of those who placed faith in its promises ? It will remain consistent with its character. It unites the shameless tyranny of a Convention, and the impudent sophistry of a Government of advocates, with the ruthless brutality of a military despotism. Far more secure could Pius feel upon the Turkish soil, and in his dealings with the Sultan, than in the neighbourhood of the Piedmontese beast of prey, or in the power of a Ricasoli, or a Ratazzi, or, above all, of those lawyers and literati, those land-plagues that, with trumpery, pompous rhetoric, and hollow-sounding phrases, are now and mayhap for some little time longer may be permitted to swim upon the surface of society. (Rather than trust to these) Pius may imitate the example of the great Popes of the twelfth century. They, confiding in the spiritual power of the Papacy, have sought for and found, on the other side of the Alps, that freedom and independence which were denied to them in Italy. Germany, Belgium, Spain, the Ionian Islands, Catholic Switzerland he can select any one of these he chooses, certain that his arrival will be greeted by a joyful and reverential population, in the midst of whom he will find full freedom of action. If Piedmont, with the connivance of France, should wrest from the Papacy Rome, and the remainder of the Papal States, then will the rightful possession of them by the Pope be interrupted, but not abolished. The Papacy has seen many monarchies created, and then dissolved into atoms. The See of St. Peter will outlive the Kingdom of Italy, and many other sovereignties. It can, with patience, wait : patiens quia aeternus. " The strength of the Papacy," writes Lord Cowley, the British Ambassador at Rome, on the 19th January, 1859, "lies in his weakness, and we may well ask what can you do with a man who, the moment that pres- sure is put upon him, exclaims, ' Do with me what you will drive me from Rome ; but, remember, I am as much the Pope, whether seated on a barren rock, or on the throne of St. Peter?'" 1 1 u Official Correspondence on the Italian question, by the Earl of Malmesbury." London, 1859, p. 22. FRANCE AND ROME. 439 Let this fact also be borne in mind, that Rome (as it has been already remarked by the Marquis Gino Capponi,) stands much more in need of the Pope, than the Pope does of Rome; and that, with a continuous absence of the Pope from Rome, the decay of that city inevitably begins. " In Rome," says Cernuschi, one of the Roman Revolutionists of 1849, but whose opinions have changed since then "in Rome, above the Catacombs, in the midst of the Basilicas, and by the side of the Vatican, there is no room, space, nor place for a democratic tribune, much less for a king." Rome may yet have to learn, whether it is for its greater advantage to be the domicile of Victor Emmanuel, the titular capital of a kingdom in which the centrifugal ten- dency is much stronger than the centripetal ; and whether the preference so given to it is a compensation for the rank and importance it had previously enjoyed as the metropolis of all Catholic Christendom as the first religious city of the entire world. We shall see what was seen in the fourteenth century. Roman envoys will seek out the Pope, and earnestly entreat him to return to " his faithful city." There is one fact to which persons cannot now close their eyes, and that is, that the Pope and the whole "curia" are at this moment dependent upon the French Government. The mere threat to withdraw the French garrison, and to yield up to their fate the Pope, and the remnant of the Papal States still left to him, must force Rome to yield to the threatener everything that it would not be a sin to concede. And the demand might fairly be submitted to, when with it would be involved the duty of self-preservation. But such a state of circumstances, it is plain, must be in the highest degree alarming for other nations. But for the absolute confidence which every one has in the exalted conscientiousness and pure truthfulness of the present Pope, and the lucky circumstance that there is now no ecclesiastical complication which the Parisian Court could use for its own selfish ends only that these things are perfectly plain, the existing relations between France and Rome could not be patiently endured by the Catholic world. But then these 440 POLICY OF THE EMPEROR. relations may suddenly change, and as, sooner or later, they are sure to change, so can no one seriously desire their much longer continuance. No Catholic could or would find such relations to be tolerable, if they became permanent. The French garrison is not in Rome, having for its main object the defence of the city against an attack on the part of Piedmont a word of command sent by the telegraph from Paris to Rome would be of sufficient potency to effect that purpose. The French are in Rome to protect the Pope against his own subjects, and the GaribaliHan free corps. Already has the French Government, in principle, abandoned the maintenance of the dismembered Papal States. It had declared itself in favour of a Confederation, as the best form of political existence for the peninsula; and in so doing, had given a guarantee for the preservation of the temporal sovereignty of the Pope. But on the 25th of June, 1861, France recog- nised the new kingdom of Italy ; and a few days afterwards, the Piedrnontese Government publicly announced : " That persons should not let themselves be deceived by appearances that Piedmont would, at the fitting time, and with the assent of France, make its entrance into Rome, constitute Rome to be the residence of the King, and incorporate the remnant of the Papal States with the new kingdom." For the present, it is the interest of the French Govern- ment to see the Pope so weak that he cannot dispense with the support of France, and that whatever may be desired from him should be rendered impossible of refusal, by the threat that the Pope would be left as a defenceless prey to his Italian enemies. If the withdrawal of the French garrison were to have the effect of removing the Pope and Court into France, then would the French sooner give up to-day than to-morrow the city of Rome, and all that remain of the Papal States, to the Piedmontese. That the Pope should become a dependent upon Piedmont, is one of those plans which does not lie within the contemplated policy of the Emperor. But if the transference of the Court of Rome to France could be effected, thus would the greatest triumph of CaBsarism be accomplished. The nephew, the heir and STRUGGLE OF THREE GREAT NATIONALITIES. 441 executor of the ideas and plans of " the uncle," would then, by " pacific " means, and the avoidance of direct force, attain what the first Napoleon was never once able, even with the stress of imprisonment, to extort. There is now in Europe no Power which either will or can afford to the Pope effective aid in the preservation of the territories that are still left to him. Three mighty races, three great complex nationalities, are now struggling for dominion over the world ; and all three are seized with the fearful travail throes of new formations. These are the Roman world, under a French ijy^wf, as leader the Sclavonic, with a Russian primacy and the Germanic, with England's preponderance. In the last of these the Protestant interest is, through England and Prussia, the most predominant. The consequence is, that England shows itself to be hostile to the continuance of the Papal States, and for the last two years has taken an active part aiding in their destruction ; whilst in Prussia the majority are moved towards the same view from a double interest first there is the religious notion, to which the weakness and depression of the Roman See is agreeable ; and then there is the political feeling, that regards with com- placency .the principle of annexation effected by a vote of the plebiscity, and which it is considered desirable to have imported into Germany. At such cost are persons quite prepared to sacrifice the common interest of all sove- reigns, and contentedly to look on until the overthrow of the principle of legitimacy and of all public law in Europe is completed. The Sclavonic world stands partly under the influence of Russia, but partly also distinct from it, and contemplates every question with a view to see how it may affect the great interests of nationality and so doing, shows itself disposed to sympathise with Italian nationality against an isolated Church sovereignty over a distinct state. As to Catholic Germany, it is, by reason of the weakness of Austria, completely destitute of any political centre, and of all influence beyond the borders of Germany it is upon this question powerless, and must confine itself to addresses, and 442 MISREPRESENTATIONS OF THE FRENCH PRESS. innocuous announcements of the notions that it entertains. France, in the year 1849, as a Republic, restored by force of arms the Pope who had been despoiled and driven away by the Revolution. At that time a great majority of the French nation was favourable to the cause of the Pope. His liberal government affording a willing hand to every just demand of his subjects, and his exertions to introduce re- forms, had won for him the applause of all Europe, and made him the most popular of princes. But when he was rein- stated by French arms, and that event was followed by a complete re-establishment of an ecclesiastical adminis- tration, and when the Statuto, and, with it, self-government and popular representation, were abolished, and a con- dition of circumstances was renewed which it was supposed had been for ever got rid of, then it was that the feelings of the French with respect to the Papal Government were changed. The daily journals those newspapers that are the most read have now had for ten years time opportunity and unrestrained freedom to depict in the darkest colours the condition of the Papal States, and to portray the clerical government as an irremediable mass of corruption. The great amount of good that has been effected, or is in process of accomplishment, they have never mentioned; they have carefully suppressed all notice of it, or they have misrepresented it, whilst they have, at the same time, given an exaggerated description of every abuse. And so it has come to pass that episcopal pastorals and the most eloquent writings of the first men in France have in these latter years been able to produce no favourable influence upon national feeling in support of the maintenance of the Papal States ; and, consequently, if the Emperor were to withdraw his troops, there would be apparent no very strong movement in France, and none at all of a character threatening danger to its Government. 1 D 1 A correspondent of the " N. Preussischen Zeitung " (26th Sept., 1861), who has shown himself to be generally well informed, says : " The Catholic population (of France) are absolutely incapable of understand- ing how it can be necessary for the Head of the Church to be also a Sovereign ; and the French episcopacy have contributed to the adoption of ITALIAN OPPOSITION TO THE PAPACY. 443 The feelings of the people in those portions of his terri- tory still remaining in possession of the Pope are in favour of their being incorporated with the new Italian kingdom. 1 In consequence of directions received from Turin, all there remains tranquil ; but when the two governments of Paris and Turin have made up their minds, and they consider that the time for action has arrived, then we may be sure there will be an insurrection of the inhabitants and a plebiscite to give to the attack of the Piedmontese the appearance of being nothing more than a compliance with, and a fulfilment of, the popular will. And so, then, we at last come to this, that it is the Italian nation the nation to which also the Pope, as well as the "Prelati" of the Curia belong that has to decide upon the fate of the Papacy; and this it is which is truly tragic in the present situation of affairs that here Italians stand op- posed to Italians. And herewith is the Papacy in a far different position than it was in former times ; for now the active majority of the nation seems determined on no longer enduring a Papal Government in the midst of the Peninsula. It is, they say, with its past antecedents, become a strange and antipathetical institution to the rest of Italy; and it is, in its dependence upon foreign protection, and guarded, in consequence of its own cravings, by foreign arms, a horrify- ing excrescence, a breath-smothering wen, and an ever- threatening danger to the body politic of Italy. such a notion, because they have whether forced to do so or not, is an historical question we do not here enter into shown themselves to be well content with a government allowance that which was given to the Church by the State for the loss of the property of which it was de- spoiled such property being, in fact, their temporal power. Add to this feeling the overwhelming influence of the anti-religious newspapers, and it is impossible not to entertain the conviction that the temporal power of the Pope has nothing favourable to expect from the verdict of public opinion in France. It is the Emperor alone who can give, by a favour- able vote, a fitting solution to the difficulty." 1 " Allg. Zeitung," 26th May, 1861. See also " Neue Preuss. Ztg.," 8th August, 18G1. " The whole population of that district (Subiaco; is pervaded but by one thought, and that is to see themselves included amongst the Piedmontese." 444 THE ITALIAN KINGDOM AND THE PAPACY. When the Popes were, in former times, either threatened or attacked, the Italians either stood by their side or re- mained passive. But now almost the whole Italian literature preaches the same opinion, and the whole of the periodical press with the exception of the "Armenia" in Turin and the "Civilta" in Rome inculcate the pet doctrine of the day; viz., that the Pope must, for the sake of the welfare of Italy, be stripped of his temporal sovereignty ; and this, it is said, must be done under the pretence either that the greatness and unity of Italy require such a sacrifice, or that the defects of the Papal Government are held to be irremediable. A powerful Italy is wished for, because the example of a single united powerful France has worked upon the minds of the higher classes in Italy, who have for a long time been imbued with French literature. To obtain this commanding position, it is affirmed that Italy can alone reach it by ab- sorbing those States which are in their nature neutral, and by means of which the country is separated into two distinct halves. 1 Besides this, it is added, as a point about which there can be no dispute, that there is an utter impossibility a Koman priest-government can ever reform itself, or adapt itself to the wants, ideas, and wishes of modern times. Such are the notions that Cavour has spread abroad. When, in the spring of the present year, Mr. Pope Hennessey spoke in the British Parliament in favour of the rights of the Papacy, Mr. Layard called upon him to name a single man of any intellectual importance in Italy, who, on the question of the Papal States, was on the side of the Papal Govern- ment; and Mr. Hennessey could only name one, and that one was the Jesuit Secchi. In point of fact, two indi- viduals conspicuous for their talents amongst the clergy have very openly declared as their opinion that the Papal States, at least in their present condition, must either cease alto- gether or be completely altered. The two men who have given this opinion are Passaglia and Tosti. 2 1 See the memorial of Count Rayneval, in "Allg. Ztg.," 1857, 15th April. 2 The letter of the latter, dated from Montecassino, 15th June, is IMPORTANCE OF THE PAPAL SEE TO ITALY. 445 And yet the time will assuredly come when the Italian nation will be again reconciled with the Papacy and its dominion in the midst of the people. That unhappy, hateful pressure which Austria imposed upon the entire Peninsula, was in reality the main cause why the value of the Papal See as a moral bulwark to all Italy became so very much obscured in the eyes of the nation. The Roman Govern- ment itself groaned under this pressure, and yet was forced to strengthen and confirm it, by calling in the Austrian troops of occupation, and by the political helplessness that forced it to follow, in temporal and political'afFairs, the will of the Cabinet of Vienna. 1 For fifteen hundred years the Papal See was the pivot upon which turned the destiny of the Italians. The greatest and the mightiest institution of the Peninsula is this See ; and upon its possession rested the weight of Europe, and the world-renowned importance of Italy. Every thoughtful Italian must acknowledge that, if the Papal See be lost to Italy, then the sun has disappeared from its firmament. The partition between the nation and the whole course of Italian history on the one side, and of the Papacy on the other, could alone be put an end to, when Italy should become that which might make her united that is, her con- version into a purely military state, living in a constant state of war, and maintaining herself by conquests. This, how- ever, is a state of circumstances so totally repugnant to the nature and disposition of the present race of Italians, that printed in the " Edinburgh Review," July, 1861, p. 277. In that letter he prays of the Pope to cast away the burden of the Papal States, " Perche oggi i popoli non si lasciano piu portare addosso, come una volta, ma vogliono andare co' piedi loro," &c. TOSTI'S treatise, "S. Benedetto al Parlamento nazionale" (Naples, 1861), in which a request is made for leaving Montecassino untouched, takes its stand upon the pro- priety of having a united Italian kingdom, and by implication abandons the maintenance of the Neapolitan Kingdom, as well as of the Papal States. 1 " Che e egli (the Pope) in realta se non un suddito dell' Austria?" said TORRELLI, in the year 1846, in his " Pensieri sulT Italia," p. 83. That was, until 1859, the opinion generally entertained in Italy. 446 PROPOSED PERVERSION OF THE PAPACY. the military enthusiasm that now prevails, and yet has left the greater portion of the population unmoved, is certain in a very short space of time totally to subside. A remarkable expression of Sismondi's is well worthy of notice, viz., that the contumely with which Alexander VI., during his government, had covered the Church of Rome, annihilated that religious respect which had previously pro- tected all Italy, and so rendered it an easier spoil for hostile attempts to be made against it. Thus it was since Leo I. for fourteen hundred years every enfeeblement and de- pression of the Papacy was at the same time a downfall for Italy. In the grandeur and the majesty of the See of St. Peter, the Italians participated. And when Italians turned their arms against this See, and when, with the spoliation of this See, they enriched themselves, and when they hoped with the princely robes they had torn from the Pontiff to cover their nakedness, then were they ultimately compelled to feel that they had been guilty of tl felo de se" had laid suicidal hands on their own body, and vented their blind rage on its noblest organ. This is a fact which has been recognized by all persons, in modern times, thoroughly well acquainted with Italian history. Balbo, Troya, Cantu, Galeotti, Gino Capponi have not spoken otherwise respect- ing it. And even Ferrari would admit it, but that he is restrained by his cheerless, unchristian fatalism. But the predominant party now in Italy is not only for an incorporation of the whole of the Papal States in the new United Kingdom, but they would also make use of the spiritual power of the Papacy for their political objects for objects which are still incalculable. They would have the Pope, not a world-Pope, but a Pope for the Italians, to do their will, and to prop up their kingdom ; and much, indeed, would they be amazed and embarrassed to find the Pope making preparations to pass beyond the Alps. There might be an attempt to create a schism an essay at establishing an anti-Pope but such, in sooth, would be but a harmless experiment; and its only end would be "reading a lesson" to the Italians, that an institution like the Papacy can never THE PAPACY A SACRED DEPOSIT TO ITALY. 447 be made use of for selfish purposes, and that those who so seek to pervert it will, at last, only bring down upon them- selves both loss and shame. For centuries long, in Italy, the people hoped in the fulfil- ment of a prophecy respecting " an Angelic Pope " (Papa Angelico), who was yet to come, and to bring order out of disorder, peace out of disunion, piety out of irreligion, and who also was to be the renovator and the benefactor of Italy. 1 That which is a Barbarossa sleeping in a cavern under a mountain, for the Germans, is the " Papa Angelico " for Italians. In the saga is expressed the feeling, that the destiny of Italy is determined by the Papacy, that both have become united together, and that it is the mission of the Pupal See to be the guardian genius of the nation, to abide with it, and to watch over it. Although the understanding of Italians may be, for one moment, darkened, yet it will again be able clearly to discern that the Papacy is an exalted deposit and pledge, entrusted to them by God, and that, as a nation, they will be held responsible for the use or misuse that they make of it. The greatest men amongst the Italians in modern times have avowed that a monarchical unity was antagonistic both to the character and the past history of the population, and did violence to the Italian municipal spirit. Balbo, Gioberti, Rosmini, Galeotti, were all in favour of a Confede- ration, as being most in accordance with the Italian tradition and the popular sentiment, and therefore they regarded a united Italian kingdom as an impossibility. And even now there are many deep-thinking Italians who see in this attempt at creating a United-Kingdom edifice, nothing more than an effort to put the roof on a building which has 1 In CAMBI (" Storie Florentine," iii. 60), it is said that in the year 1514 a monk, Theodore, had cajoled the people with the assurance, " avergli un angelo rivelato, come egli sarebbe quel Papa Angelico, che i popoli italiani aspettavano." Savonarola was also accused that his ambitious intention had been " farsi Papa Angelico." See " Scritti vari del P. Vixc. MARCIIESE." Florence, 1855, p. 294. 448 UNITY AND CENTRALIZATION. neither side walls nor a solid foundation. 1 The road to what is possible will yet be discovered, out of the by-path of that which, by experience, is found to be impossible. The party which struggles for unity and centralization, after the French pattern, has now the upper hand ; but it will not be able to retain it, and the adherents of a federative unity will be then its successors in power and influence. 2 Not many weeks since, one of the early leaders of the Italian Revolu- tion, Cernuschi, demonstrated the impracticability of a United Italy, and prophesied a speedy dissolution to the new kingdom. 3 A Confederation of Italian States, with the Pope as Moderator at their head : such was the hope of Pius IX., and the object for which he struggled. 4 And the establish- ment of such is still attainable, and presents itself as a plan the most suitable for the popular genius ; and as such it will be regarded when the existing Piedmontese annexation unity has fallen into fragments, when the Italians are wearied of Piedmontese officials, and when their shoulders have been galled and bruised from the heavy yoke of a Pied- montese administration. Men cannot, when they please, improvise united nationalities. To form a united nation, there must be the still, silent process of spontaneity; and to complete it, the slow, gradual working of centuries. Pied- mont has neither the vocation nor the capability, in any one respect, to effect a fusion of the scattered parts of Italy, differing from each other in manners, tastes, and customs. Neither will the other parts of Italy ever really become Piedmontese, nor will Piedmont become Italian. Beyond the military spirit which certainly is to be found in Pied- mont, though wanting in the remainder of Italy, the popula- tion of Piedmont possesses none of those peculiar gifts, as 1 See the remarks of the Marquess Bourbon del Monte in " Corre- spondant," 1859, xii. 472. 1 A proper distinction is there made between the two parties by Mox- TANELLI, "Memorie," i. 33. * " Neue Preuss. Ztg.," 16th July, 1861. u Ami de la religion," 18th July. 4 " Un Papato moderators della lega degli Stati Italiani." FARIXI, ii. 69. TURIN GOVERNMENT AND THE POPE. 449 a distinct race, which fit it for the intellectual or political leadership of a whole united Italian nationality. What the Government in Turin can offer to the Pope ; what it formerly, under Cavour and through Passaglia, has offered ; and what it, under Ricasoli, does offer, or thinks of again offering, is a subject with respect to which there is no mystery. 1 The matter is one partly affecting the position of the Pope, and partly the freedom of the Church in Italy. With reference to the latter, Cavour, on the 26th March, 1861, made the declaration in Parliament, "That Italy will emancipate the Church from the State, and secure its liberty on the amplest foundations." With respect to the Pope and Court of Rome, it was announced, " That there was every readiness to concede to the Pope and the Cardinals, as Princes and Privy-Councillors of the Church, all the privi- leges of a sovereign's immunities both for his own person and the members of the Sacred College." It was added " that an establishment of a free fixed landed property an endow- ment from the State would not be refused ;" for it was perceived, even in Turin, that the Pope could not well be placed in the position of a government-pensioner. And yet, with these two conditions united together sovereignty and an independent landed property there would be nothing more effected than the new commencement of another Papal state ! But now Piedmont is prepared to rob the Pope of that which is his own, in order that he maybe endowed with the property of strangers and when that has been done, there is something more to be thought of: namely, what reliable securities can the Turin politicians or the future Roman Government tender to the Pope and the whole Catholic world ? Who is there to guarantee the faithful performance of what they promise 1 ? Or who is there to go bail for the guarantees "? Who is to be guarantee for the guarantors ? Is a Government that prides itself in its perfidy, and respects neither the rights of nations, nor the faith of treaties, nor the legitimate possession of property that has no regard 1 See as to this matter the " Edinburgh Review," 1861, July, pp. 260-9. GG 450 PIEDMONT AND THE PAPAL SEE. but for brute force, and the power of the stronger, and the authority of accomplished facts ; is a Government that, in one of its decrees, declared the memory of a murderer to be holy and sanctified ; is a Government that is restrained neither by the bonds of law, morality, nor religion, to be the Government that is to secure to the Church its freedom, and to the Pope his inviolability and independence ? Let the question be asked in Turin of the Brofferios and the Gal- lengas, who regard the Church as a useless log, from which anyone can, like the Horatian carpenter, chop out, as he fancies, either a stool or an idol, 1 and they will tell you what would be the lot assigned to it. Their " freedom of the Church " would begin by " freeing " it from the burden of its earthly possessions. And when they had done that, then they might deal with the Mendicant as their whims, their caprice, or their innate despotism might dispose them to act. Their doings with religious communities, their oppression and spoliation of monasteries and convents, their banishment and maltreatment of bishops, are now before the world, as the superabounding first-fruits of the new era of "religious free- dom" inaugurated by them. That the Papal See could be, in a kingdom like the Pied- montese, really free, is an absolute impossibility. Even if the present and future statesmen of that kingdom had the sincere intention not to violate the freedom of the Papal See, still circumstances would overmaster them. The daily press would be untiring in its mischievous meddling and incite- ments it would to-day be describing the Pope and all about him as secret conspirators, and then to-morrow de- nouncing them as popular demagogues ; and so there would be put in force, and in a very short space of time, too, the whole apparatus of the police, with political measures of restraint and coercion. As -opposed to the powers and influences that now prevail in Piedmont, and will for a time reign over it, every compact and assurance would be but as a 1 [" Olira truncus eram ficulnus, inutile lignum; Cum faber, incertus scamnum faceret ne Priapum, Maluit esse deum." " Hor.," lib. i., serin. 8.J THE POPE A " SUBJECT " OR " AN EXILE " ? 45 I drag-chain made of paper to restrain the downward career of a fast-running carriage. Upstart advocates and journalists would, upon the very first opportunity, sweep down, with the besom of brutal violence, the whole cobweb of solemn stipulations. Italian Bareres would surpass their predecessors, in the Paris Convention, in the utterance of sonorous phrases, in palliation of every infringement of right that might be practised, and every deed of violence that might be perpetrated. Then, too, they would be acting upon the apothegm : " II faut aviler et puis detruire." And as " the monarchy" was treated in France, so the posthumous posterity of the Convention in Italy are already preparing to follow out a similar series of events, and to complete them all with a final, fatal verdict against " the Papacy." According to statements made in the public journals, " There are at this time in Rome nine of the Cardinals disposed to enter into terms with Piedmont." This is scarcely credible. They must be indeed blindfolded, if they could think of so acting; or do they imagine that the time has, even now, come when the Mazzini Wolf will lie down meekly, gently, and tenderly by the side of the Church Lamb ? Should the hour arrive when the Pope has to make his choice between the condition of being "a subject" or "an exile," then will he, as we confidently hope, adopt the better alternative ; for the Pope is in the whole Catholic world at home. 1 It is only amongst the professors of another creed he would be a stranger. To whatever side he then may turn, he will everywhere meet with his children, and everywhere will be venerated as a father. " Thou art mine, and we are thine" such is the salutation with which he will be in all places greeted. Rome, too, may then remember with what shouts of joy in the time of the seventh Pius the appearance of the Pope, released from his French prison, and returning to his native land, was hailed in Italy. The circumstance, too, of the 1 Petrarch, in his letter to Pope Urban V. in the year 1366, says, " Ubicunque ille (Pontifex) sibi moram eligit, illic sponsa, illic sedes propria sua est." Ap. RAYNALD, ad. a. 1366, 22. GO 2 452 REMOVAL OF THE PAPAL SEE. Pope's absence would have this beneficial result that it would make, in a tangible manner, clear to the religious portion of the nation certain facts, and they might thus then say: "It is our Unity-advocates who have imposed upon us the triple yoke of a Conscription, Exorbitant Taxes, and Foreign Government-Officers and now, in addi- tion to all these, they have driven away from us the Pope, and forced him to become an exile on the other side of the Alps." There would, it must be admitted, in such a temporary separation of husband and wife, in the departure of the Pope from Rome, be many inconveniences experienced. It could not occur without great and manifold disturbance and interruptions to the ecclesiastical department, to the members of the Court, to the many and numerous religious congregations which would have to be transported en masse to a foreign land. In former times, the machinery of the Government of the Church was much more simple ; and when the Pope (as it often happened) had to take up his abode in another city than Rome, or to travel across the Alps, the whole members of the Court that followed him could find sufficient room in a single French abbey. It is now far otherwise. There are, too, some Powers that may suppose it will be easier for them to gain what they desire from a Court suffering from oppression, and forced awny from its native soil. Thus it will be seen that, if there is a necessity for quitting Rome, it will not fail to be accompanied by difficulties and painful circumstances. But, then, that which is the less of two evils must be chosen ; and there can be no doubt that the temporary embarrassment of the Papal See is a far less evil in comparison with that which would involve the renunciation of a principle, that, once abandoned, would prove to be lost irretrievably. The removal of the Papal See to France would, under existing circumstances, be regarded as tantamount to the formal challenge to a schism ; or it would, at the least, afford a welcome pretext to all who wish to curtail the Papal rights, or to interrupt the communication between the Pope and the several Churches ; and it would put arms into the CATHOLICISM IN GERMANY. 453 hands of governments that wish to impede the action of the Papal authority upon the churches and populations in their respective states. And, then, what humiliations await both Pope and Car- dinals, and what a yoke would be imposed upon them, if they were once but to be on French soil, and within the power of those individuals on the banks of the Seine who are already boasting that they can count upon a number of votes at the next Conclave ! When Spain had become acquainted with the designs of Piedmont upon Umbria and the Marches, she was prepared to send an army into Middle Italy, for the defence of the Papal territory, and invited the French Government to strengthen its garrison in Rome, for the same purpose. To that invitation, a reply in the negative was given, " because England did not wish it." And it has come to this the French people, who, in the year 1849, had purchased, with the blood of their warriors, the restoration of the Pope, are now, twelve years later, com- pelled to abandon the Pope, because England so wills it ! If the Court of Rome should reside for a time in Ger- many, the Roman " Prelati" will, doubtless, be agreeably surprised to discover that our people are able to remain Catholic and religious without the leading-strings of a police ; and that their religious sentiments are a better protection to the Church than Episcopal prisons, which, thank God ! do not exist. They will learn that the Church in Germany is able to maintain herself without the Holy Office ; that our Bishops, although, or because, they use no physical compulsion, are reverenced, as if they were princes, by the people ; that they are received with triumphal arches, and that their arrival in a place is a festival for the inhabitants. They will see how the Church with us rests on the broad, strong, and healthy basis of a well- organised system of pastoral administration, and of popular religious instruction. They will perceive that we Catholics have maintained for years, straightforwardly, and with- out reservation, a struggle for the deliverance of the Church from the bonds of bureaucracy ; that we cannot en- 454 DEFENCE OF THE POPE'S LEGITIMATE RIGHTS. tertain the idea of denying to Italians what we have claimed for ourselves ; and that, therefore, we are far from thinking that it is anywhere an advantage to fortify the Church with the authority of the police, and with the power of the secular arm. Throughout Germany we have been taught by experience the truth of Fenelon's saying, " That the spiritual power must be kept carefully separate from the civil, because their union is pernicious." They will find, further, that the whole of the German clergy is prepared to bless the day, when it shall learn that the free sovereignty of the Pope is assured without sentence of death being still pronounced by ecclesiastics ; without priests continuing to discharge the functions of treasury-clerks, or police-direc- tors, or to conduct the business of the lottery ; and, finally, the Prelati will convince themselves that all the Catholics of Germany will stand up, as one man, for the independence of the Holy See, and the legitimate rights of the Pope ; but that they are no admirers of a form of government of very recent date, which is, in fact, nothing else than the product of the mechanical polity of Napoleon combined with a clerical administration. And this information will bear good fruit, when the hour shall strike for their return home, and when restitution has been made. Another thing will also occur whether the Italian Kingdom can establish itself, or what is certainly far more probable fall again into pieces. The time will come when the people of Italy will desire to make peace with the Papacy ; and then they will recognize how truly had one of their most exalted men of genius Tommaseo spoken, when he uttered these words : " It would be a folly in Italy to cast away from itself, to any other nation, the Papacy, which is its sword and its shield." 1 .And Tommaseo also intimates that it might be well if the Papacy were removed for a short time out of Italy ; for so would the present race of Italians best learn what a treasure to them had been its possession. Meanwhile, Pius and the men of his Council will " ponder over the days of old, and the years of the past." 2 They will 1 u Roma e il mondo," p. 349. 2 Psalm Lxxvi. 6. RESTORATION OP THE POPEDOM. 455 read the future in the earlier history of the Papacy, which has already seen many an exile and many a restoration. The example of the resolute, courageous Popes of the Middle Ages will be as a guiding light to them. There is no question now as to suffering martyrdom, or of clinging to the tombs of the Apostles, or of descending into the cata- combs but here is the matter to be thought of to quit a land of slavery, in order to exclaim, upon a free soil : " The bonds are snapped asunder, and we are emancipated!" For the rest, God will provide ; and the unceasing gifts and pure sympathies of the Catholic world will provide. And the parties, too, in Italy, will provide for the consequences. When these parties have torn and exhausted the land of which they have made a battle-field ; and when the sobered and saddened people, tired of the rule of lawyers and of soldiers, have understood the worth of a moral and spiritual authority then will the time have come to think of returning to the Eternal City. In the interval, the things will have disappeared for whose preservation such pains had been taken ; and then there will be better reason than Consalvi had, in the preface to the " Motu Prop-rio" of the 6th July, 1816, to say: " Divine Providence, which so conducts human affairs, that, out of the greatest calamity, innumerable bene- fits proceed, seems to have intended that THE INTERRUPTION OF THE PAPAL GOVERNMENT should prepare the way for IT IN A MORE PERFECT FORM." 456 APPENDIX. TWO LECTURES DELIVERED IN MUNICH, 5TH AND 6TH APRIL, 1861. I. WILL the Papal State maintain itself or vanish ? Will the Head of the Church remain as sovereign prince, or is the time arrived when the temporal power of the Pope must be separated from the spiritual? A large portion of territory is already torn from him, the remainder is threatened the seizure even of his capital is prepared for. Should this take place, what will be the con- sequences to the Christian world ? What is to become of the Papal See when the ground beneath its feet is taken away? And will it be possible to fulfil its high mission when it is, so to speak, suspended in the air, or placed in dependence on a foreign power intent on its own objects ? These questions keep every man in breathless suspense. No human foresight, no power of imagination, is capable of mea- suring all the consequences, operative through ages to come, bound up inevitably in their decision. APPENDIX. 457 Of the good right of the Pope, which rests upon the strongest and most legitimate titles of acquisition and pos- session, acknowledged by mankind, there can be no doubt. As little can exist of the faithless Macchiavellism, and the revolting injustice of the policy pursued towards the Roman See. On this point we all think alike. It may, however, be as well to mention a fact generally ignored, at least in Italy, that Pius is an electoral prince, that he has to administer a property only entrusted to him for life, and that he is bound by oath to preserve the States of the Church intact. Unquestionably, the Papacy is older than the States of the Church ; the Roman bishops have been from all time Chief Shepherds of the Church ; but in latter ages only have they become Temporal Princes. The Roman See subsisted seven centuries without possessing in sovereignty a single village. And even after the large donations of the Frankish kings, and that the Emperor had laid the foundation for a State of the Church, centuries had still to pass away before the Pope came into quiet possession and actual administration of the land in its subsequent extent. In Rome itself the Popes' power was long disputed ; they were frequently and for a long time compelled to leave their city, and to prefer having their residence in Viterbo, Anagni, Orvieto, or they were necessitated to pass the Alps and seek elsewhere an asylum most frequently in France. In the fourteenth century there came no Pope to Italy for nearly seventy years. The Court (Curia) resided in Avignon. In fact, it was not till the time of Leo X., about 350 years ago, that the Popes held quiet possession of the State, with its three million of inhabitants. It is also true that the electoral form, excellent for the Church, has, politically considered, serious disadvantages. The many and frequent changes of rulers, and, with them, systems of government the formerly prevailing efforts of the elected to elevate and enrich their kindred the want of a native-born dynasty, which should become, through the at- tachment of the people, at once a pledge and a bulwark of steadfastness and duration all this shows that the form of an electoral monarchy, with many advantages, has also its 458 APPENDIX. dark side ; and history teaches that electoral states, being exposed to stronger convulsions, are more easily subverted than hereditary principalities. In Rome, however, till very lately, this danger was warded off by the universally recog- nised inviolability of the Papacy, by the religious reverence that environed and protected the chair of the Apostolic princes. The heroes of Church science have not however considered this union of the highest ecclesiastical power and dignity with a temporal kingdom as an advantage or a perfection, but rather as a something urgently commanded by the ne- cessity of the times. " It would be better in itself," says Cardinal Bellarmine, "if the Popes concerned themselves only with spiritual affairs, the Kings with temporal ; but, on account of the wickedness of the times, Divine Providence has seen fit to bestow temporal principalities on the Pope and other bishops. It has been with the Church as with the Jews, amongst whom the kingly dignity and the pontifical were first united in the time of the Maccabees. In the earlier ages the Church did not need princely authority for the support of her majesty now it seems to be a necessity." 1 This necessity indisputably exists in our time as strongly as ever. And yet there has arisen, even in the Catholic world, numerous voices some even of theological import- ance which speak of a time for the separation of these hitherto united powers which announce that the time is come when the secularization of the Church State is both called for and unavoidable. The causes of this striking ma- nifestation are to be sought for in the condition of Italy, the internal circumstances of the Papal States, the sentiments of the Italian peoples, and more particularly of the Pope's sub- jects. The Papal Government has the reputation of being one of the mildest and most moderate in all Europe. And yet it is true, that for nearly forty years deep discontent and dissatis- faction have reigned in the States of the Church, but most 1 "De Rom. Pontifice, Disputationes," vol. i., p. 1104. Ed. Ingol- stadt, 1596. APPENDIX. 459 strongly in the towns; and in a land where no independent yeomanry exists, it is the population of the towns in a yet higher degree than elsewhere that decides on everything. In these chief places of the nation secret political societies, conspiracies, and attempts at insurrection have grown rank and numerous; hundreds live compromised or banished they pass their days as fugitives in foreign lands. The weakness of the Papal Government increases from year to year. Pius IX. attempted in vain by concessions, and by granting a Constitution, to effect a reconciliation. He began his reign with a most complete amnesty, which recalled the accused and culpable of four insurrections. This measure brought back to the country the irreconcil cable opponents of its Government, and placed them iu a position to make war upon it. The catastrophes that followed in quick succession are well known. As before, so since 1849, two foreign powers, Aus- tria and France, have been obliged to garrison the country with their troops. The Papal See, which in its ecclesiastical position and its spiritual rights found in the whole Catholic world the most complete recognition and the readiest obedience, more, per- haps, than had ever been the case in like degree in any for- mer time ; yet on its temporal, political side has presented the melancholy spectacle of the weakest, most helpless Govern- ment in all Europe ; and one, too, only able to maintain it- self by the double prop of foreign Powers and their bayo- nets. And yet no government could labour more to remove no- torious abuses of administration, to introduce improvements, to take into consideration the reasonable wishes of the peo- ple, so far as the interests and principles of self-maintenance or of the existing system of a government administered by ecclesiastics, were not brought in question. For twelve years the history of the present Pope's reign was one con- tinuous chain of useful and beneficent reforms. But all these improvements were and are insufficient to remove the deep discontent and aversion of the people. 460 APPENDIX. Every government which is not supported merely by the bayonets of its soldiers, must even if there be a class of discontented be able to depend upon the majority of the population, through their attachment to the dynasty, their conservative feelings, or, at least, through an interest in self- maintenance and fear of revolutions and thus be in union with the nation. All this is wanting in the States of the Church : there is no dynasty, all attempts to form a native army have failed utterly, the dislike to the Papal military service id universal, and foreign mercenaries only embitter it. Foreign diplo- matists remark in their reports : " The impotence of the Papal Government is glaringly evident it can rely on no one class of the population in the moment of an attack upon it not one would raise a hand in its defence, and no one make a sacrifice for its support." Hence it comes that the temporal dominion of the Papal See has numerous enemies, not only among its own subjects, but throughout Italy. The public opinion of Italy is against it. It is looked upon as the great obstacle to the realisation of the Italian ideal the develop- ment of one grand nationality, one powerful Italian State, which should take its place among the " Great Powers " of Europe. Count Rayneval says justly, " The displeasure and discontent of the population arise chiefly from this : that Italy does not play such a part in the world as she has dreamed of. In all times when this feeling of national ambition is awakened, the temporal power of the Pope will be looked upon by it as a hindrance." 1 It is further not to be denied that for a hundred years a tendency to secularisation has passed through the whole of Europe. The union of spiritual dignities with temporal officialism has, henceforward, no sympathy to reckon on from the nations of Europe. Even the German spiritual princi- palities, in which, unlike the Papal States, the administration was chiefly in lay hands, have been destroyed, not merely by revolution, but by public opinion, which saw in them some- thing foreign to the age ; unnatural a ruin of the past ; and ' " Allg. Ztg.," 15th April, 1857. APPENDIX. 461 since 1814 not a single voice has been raised for their re- storation. In our time, therefore, a union of temporal functions and action with the ecclesiastical is no longer an O element of strength, but of weakness. Nothino- gives rise to ~ * O O more bitter feelings than the application of secular govern- mental measures, or even of the power and chastisements of the police to effect religious purposes, or the reverse, the application of religious means to political objects. This repugnance to the admixture of the spiritual and temporal, or to the exercise of political power and police office functions by ecclesiastics, is not the operation of weak- ened religious feeling, but the consequences of altered views and a change in circumstances. The Spaniards present a striking example of this. With the Spaniards there was a kind of necessity for that which appeared elsewhere in- tolerable. They desired to listen to the Church even in temporal matters ; and if the State wanted taxes the inter- vention of the Church was requisite an ecclesiastical form must be given to the impost; and then only did the nation pay it willingly. Thus the Spanish Inquisition was a kind of State and Police institution, that was acceptable to the people only under such a form. All this is now changed even in Spain. And with us, in Germany, it would stir up the most vehe- ment opposition if a prelate were to become minister, or a bishop the president of an administration. Formerly there was little governmental action in the terri- tories of the Pope. The municipal form existed throughout, and administered its own affairs ; whilst the State contented itself with the supreme direction without much interference in details. It is now altogether different, in consequence of the system established by means of the French Napoleonic administration, to whose inheritance Cardinal Consalvi suc- ceeded. Since then it has been an ecclesiastical government, and such it is at present; and although in the year 1848 there were o,059 lay employes to 109 ecclesiastics, still it has been felt as an intolerable burden, and as such to be shaken off; and as it is generally considered " the sooner the better." 462 APPENDIX. The judicial power, also, mostly exercised by ecclesiastics in the Papal States, has given occasion to manifold com- plaints. And it may be a subject of consideration whether in our times an ecclesiastic, by his condition, his mental cultiva- tion, and his pastoral far more than forensic modes of thought, is adapted for a judge ; and whether the temptation would not be too strong for him to give to a frequently milder, but, in the end, purely despotic procedure, the preference over an objective and severely legal judgment and decision. Hence the condition of the Papal States, apart from all foreign intrigues, incitements, and acts of violence, has been for years lamentable and discouraging. The Government, necessarily rendered distrustful by the aversion of a large portion of the population, thinks less freedom must be granted in the interests of its own self-pre- servation ; and no assemblies for discussion can be permitted, because its enemies would speedily become masters of them. On all sides the Government must act obstructively, and for that very reason it loses more and more the support of public opinion ; and hence the striking contrast between times past and the present! When, in 1809, Pius VII. answered the decree of deposition launched against him by Napoleon I., by excommunicating the French Emperor, the act awakened the enthusiasm of the people ; all Romans who were in the French service threw up their employments ; and, in short, the whole nation made its resolution plainly manifest, to rule itself exactly according to the Bull of Excommunication. Some years later, the return of Pius from his French impri- sonment was a real triumphal procession throughout the whole land. How changed is all this now ! Cardinal Pacca relates that at the period of the Napo- leonic dominion he had, after a year's meditation, reconciled himself to the thought that the extinction of the temporal sovereignty of the Papal See would be coupled with many and no small advantages for the Church that the jealousy and dislike to the Roman See would be removed, or at least diminished. Pacca was of opinion that Europe was advanc- ing towards a great universal monarchy, in which the Pope, APPENDIX. 463 without prejudice to his spiritual dignity, might again become a subject, as under the Roman Empire. In this, however, he greatly deceived himself. A universal monarchy in Europe is, happily, not to be thought of, and the Pope cannot become a subject ; he cannot belong exclusively to any one kingdom he must exercise his high office freely and independently, as the common father of all. As Caesar said that Caesar's wife must not be even suspected, so the merest suspicion of dependence would be fatal to the Papal See. The most unconditional, unreserved confidence is the breath of life to spiritual authority. If there were the appearance, the conjecture, that the Papal See, in matters spiritual, acted under the influence, or for the interest, of a political power, it would operate as a deadly poison on the Church. From this consideration a change in the position of the Papal See is becoming more and more an urgent necessity. So long as two foreign Powers, Austria and France, held garrisons in the Church States, it might seem that the Pope, between the two neutralising each other, enjoyed freedom. But when, in consequence of the late war, the Austrian occupation ceased, and the French must be looked upon as the only support of the Papacy, a condition of things has existed which is only bearable as being provisional and transitory. Placed as it now is, the possession of a Church State would be productive of results the very opposite to what it ought to produce, and whereby alone it can be justified. Instead of acting inde- pendently as the highest guide of the Church and assuring its freedom, it will sink continually in public opinion, as an institution which cannot dispense with the pro of foreign soldiers; and the Pope, like all who ask and need foreign help, must become a dependent on his Protector or, what is nearly as bad, he will appear to be so, for that Protector can at any time disquiet or coerce him, by the threat of withdrawing his troops. 464 APPENDIX. II. In my first Lecture I spoke of the difficult position of the Ecclesiastical States, which has its foundation rather in false relations within, than in the hostile and rapacious advances of foreign powers, as the enemy has made, and continues to make, the discontent of the people the pretext for and fulcrum of their operations. The thought here forces itself upon me, that the Church State had its beginning with the German Empire; and it may well be affirmed that the fall of that Empire inflicted a wound on the Roman State from which it is still bleeding. The Emperor was the armed "Protector" of the Papal See on him lay the duty of wielding the sword, and when the Popes took this on themselves, it was either a mistake, or an act of the direst necessity. And although the Empire had long pre- sented only the shadow of the old idea and purpose, yet was it to the last the prop and centre of the ancient political order of Europe, and covered with its majesty the Papal See, as a member engrafted upon the United Roman Empire. If with the Empire an outward stay has fallen, inwardly the State is sickening under the false relations in which " an ecclesiastical administration " necessarily stands to a modern system of statesmanship. It is difficult to reject the opinion that lay hands are better suited to direct the action of state and police, with their manifold increasing material wants and cares they are better suited than those of priests for a police and administrative omnipotence, a care for lot- teries, theatres, gaming-houses, and houses of public enter- tainment, for managing passports and manufactories. It is, indeed, frequently asserted that the Pope, as an ecclesias- tical prince, must commit the administration to " ecclesiastical" officers. This necessity, however, is not very evident. At least, the ecclesiastical sovereignties of Germany, to which Bellarmine appealed in justification of the Pope's temporal dignity, afford no parallel. The prince-bishops and eccle- APPENDIX. 465 siastical electors never hesitated to govern their countries through the instrumentality of lay ministers, chancellors, councillors, employes and judges. The government of Francis Louis, of Erthal, Prince- bishop of Wiirzburg and Bamberg, was a model government, one blessed throughout the land ; I have in my youth (my grandfather was in the Bishop's service) heard old men speak of it with enthusiasm. It was, however, conducted by lay administrators. Pius himself had acknowledged the want of thorough re- formation in this respect his lamented minister Rossi had presented a plan to the government which the Great Powers, in the Memorandum of 1831, had previously recommended. It is known how the dagger of a Mazzinist cut off, with this dis- tinguished man, the many hopes bound up with him. And after his restoration, Pius thought himself obliged to make no concessions, which, as the English envoy, Mr. Lyons, said, ( * might be used as weapons in the hands of enemies to the government, to contend against it." " What will all this end in ?" That is the question every man proposes to himself every man tries to answer, or would like to hear answered. In the complicated relations and unnatural tension under which Europe now labours, positive conclusions are naturally excluded ; we can only speak of possibilities and probabilities. The first possibility is, that a new war breaking out, a victory of the Austrian arms should restore Austrian pre- ponderance and the Papal dominion over the whole extent of the States of the Church. Whether such a turn of affairs is hoped for by many, I do not know ; but what I do know is, that it is not wished by any intelligent friend of the Papal See. A permanent occupation of the country by Austrian troops, which would then become necessary, would render the Pope's situation worse, and his temporal sove- reignty more unmaintainable. New insurrections and political convulsions with Mazzini views would inevitably follow. A second possibility is, the transplanting the Papal See to France. Such, it is well known, was the plan of the first HH 466 APPENDIX. Napoleon, which was frustrated by the firmness of Pius VII. The Emperor has left no doubt on this point ; for, subse- quently, at St. Helena, he spoke with complaisance of the plan, and of the splendid results that would have been con- sequent on its realisation. That the nephew has entered on the inheritance of the ideas and plans of his uncle is \vell known. The carrying through of these projects, or the fulfilment of these hopes, would certainly produce incalculable mischiefs. A Gallicised Papacy would become a formidable source of confusion and discord ; and one of our best read journals has openly expressed the expectation that a schism in the Catholic Church would be the result. 1 I confess that I entertain no fear for the one or the other not of a schism in the Church ; it is now four hundred years since even an attempt at a division has been made. Divi- sion and Catholicism are two things so diametrically opposed, that nothing but some extraordinary complication, a dispute on principles, on ideas, could again lead to such a result. I am convinced that no materials, and no disposition to such a malady exists, in the whole compass of the Catholic Church. The universal feeling of the religious in all Catholic countries would reject such an attempt with abhorrence, and the irre- ligious would at the utmost be able only to perform a second act of the Ronge-May-festivai night of 1846. It will not, however, come to a repetition of the four- teenth century we shall see no second Avignon with French cardinals and a French Pope. The episcopacy, the clergy, all the Catholic faithful of France, would protest against a Papal Court wholly in the power of the Emperor ; a will- less instrument of his policy. The whole collective Catholic states and people of the universe would cast their weighty "No" into the scale against such a project. Of the three parties into which the French may be divided when such a question is in agitation, the devout minded, the liadicals and the Bonapartists, only the latter, numerically the weakest, would, provided their master so willed it, be favourable to such a measure ; the other two, i.e., the great 1 " Allg. Ztg.," April 2, 1861. APPENDIX. 467 majority of the nation, would be averse to, and strive against it. The Catholics, because they would see, in the attempt to make the Papacy an instrument of political interests, a degradation of it, to be warded off at any cost ; the irre- ligious because they would on no account have the highest spiritual authority in close proximity to themselves, and in their own land ; because they dread the mighty influence which it would exercise over the whole body of the clergy and the believing part of the nation. Tliird Possibility. That the French Emperor should bring the question of the temporal sovereignty of the Pope to the decision of a Congress of the Catholic Powers evidently, in the present position of affairs, the justest, most rational, and the only method whereby the Emperor can turn aside the reproach made against him in the very heart of his own nation, viz., that he has humbled himself to be the instrument of English hatred to Rome, and thereby placed the French nation in a position as false politically as it is morally un- worthy. These Powers would be, France, Austria, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and, it is to be hoped, Bavaria. Pied- mont has, indeed, openly declared that she no longer acknow- ledges any national rights ; yet, in the present relation, as she alone is in a condition to represent Italy, she must be admitted. What such a Congress would resolve may be predicted with some probability. The majority of voices would press for the maintenance of the remaining possessions of the Papal See, and for the restitution of at least some portion of what has been violently taken away. It will also desire, as the only means of satisfy- ing the people, municipal self-government, participation of the laity in the government, representation for (the purposes) of finance and legislation in short, they would demand the introduction of those institutions which now prevail through- out Europe, with the exception of Russia and Turkey, and which were substantially demanded by the Five Great Powers in the year 1831, and without which none can see how a reconciliation between the Government and the HH 2 468 APPENDIX. people, and permanent order, are to be maintained, otherwise than by permanent occupation by foreign troops. Fourth Possibility. That the Pope should be obliged to quit Rome, and take up his abode for a time in some other Catholic country. Rome, and the remainder of the States of the Church, would be, forthwith, incorporated with the new Piedmontese kingdom. It is self-evident that all those arrangements which the Papal Government thinks it cannot grant would be immediately introduced the secularisation would be complete. The whole present order of things would be passed over as with a sponge ; the clergy, as in all other parts of Europe, with the abolition of all privileges burden- some and offensive to other classes, would, like other citizens, be placed under the common law; and, herewith, the main source of the dislike of the people to the priesthood be put an end to. Then, when the germ of decay which the new Italian kingdom bears in its bosom develops itself, and the return of the Pope to Rome, and the resurrection of the whole State of the Church, or a part of it, takes place, the Pope will find " accomplished facts ;" he will enter upon an entirely altered position ; he will be the head of an adminis- tration entirely, or in great part, secular in its members, and whose precedent condition, or the forcing back into forms now dead, it would be as unwise as difficult, if not impossible, to accomplish. Fifth Possibility. That the States of the Church should be irreparably lost to the Papal See. Even this eventuality must be looked in the face. It is conceivable that it is already resolved on in the councils of Providence. The Church has truly the promise that the gates of Hell shall not prevail against her, but she has no promise that the successor of St. Peter should always remain monarch of a temporal kingdom. If Italy, or Europe, be destined to become the theatre of new revolutions, the position of the Head of the Church is indisputably better and more dignified if it be not welded to the ponderous, helpless burden of a secular king- dom, which he could neither maintain nor protect against ever-recurring insurrection, and against the thronging billows APPENDIX. 469 of revolution. Should, however, a permanent and well- ordered State establish itself in Italy, public opinion, or rather the public conscience of Catholic Europe, will be strong and powerful enough to create and make firm a position through which the freedom of the Papal See, and the sovereign dignity and inviolability of the Head of the Church, would be protected and secured. In Germany a small, feeble State, surrounded by stronger neighbours, like Frankfort, can subsist free and independent. And shall, in Italy well ordered, and recovered from the revolutionary fever the Pope not be able to maintain his smaller or greater territory and capital intact? Will not Koine itself this out-and-out papal and ecclesiastical Rome, which but for the chair of St. Peter and the tombs of the Apostles would long since have sunk to a little provincial city or market-town prefer to be a world-city, the metro- polis of a spiritual kingdom of two hundred millions, than the seat of a kingdom of twenty millions ? The reconciliation of the people to the Papal dominion is here presupposed ; for who can be blind to the fact that, since 1831, this dominion over three millions of people has been a source of weak- ness, dependence, anxiety, and care for the Papal See ; that this task of keeping down a discontented population long- ing for the institutions of other countries has been as a leaden weight attached to the foot of the successor of the Apostles ? And who will maintain that it is the Divine Will that this lamentable, unnatural state of things should drag on for an indefinite time that the alternation of revolt, political trials, dungeoning, banishment, and foreign occupation should prolong itself indefinitely, as was contemplated by Count Rayneval ? We cannot conceal from ourselves that the situation is, in the highest degree, tragical. The Pope is bound, by the most sacred pledges, to surrender nothing of that which has been entrusted to his keeping ; he must continually protest against the spoliation of his territory. The Papal Govern- ment can find few among the laity who have the necessary instruction for higher employments, and on whose fidelity he 470 APPENDIX. can rely. As I said before, the Pope believes himself bound, by the duty of self-preservation, by the right of self-defence, to maintain the old system of ecclesiastical government, with- out serious change of form. And yet, as things now are, it is not to be hoped for that the people will be ever frankly reconciled to this form of clerical administration, and will renounce the rights and institutions subsisting in other parts of Italy. The difficulty of the position is heightened by the painful collisions in which the bishops, and, more or less, the whole body of the clergy throughout Italy are entangled. Let us not, however, forget that history is, before all things, God's judgment; and that to this Judgment every human will and purpose must submit. We can only say, "Laissez passer la justice de Dieu" It is the beautiful privilege of God, that He, when men will to do evil, can turn that evil to good. The position of the Pope between the two allied Powers, who are throwing the dice over him, reminds us of the Lear of Shakespeare between his daughters, Goueril and Regan, and where no Cordelia is to be found. But Lear will not die ; Goneril and Regan will reap what they have sown the Church will say at last, " My loss is a gain." Who will pronounce on the immediate future? Do we know what, is coming in Germany? Are we in Central Europe not approaching some mighty convulsion? Is not the Mazzini party lurking behind Piedmont to hurl Italy into the throes and tortures of a social and antichristian revolution ? Who can say how much in Italy and elsewhere will meet destruction? One thing, however, is certain. Amidst all wrecks, one Institution will remain erect, will constantly emerge from the flood of revolution for it is indestructible, immortal it is the Chair of St. Peter. If I am asked, whence I draw this assurance, I may point to the Bible as my answer ".Thou art the Rock," &c. But I will give another answer, derived from the very nature of the thing itself: The Papal See will not be destroyed, because it is reachable by no human power ; because no one on earth is strong and powerful enough to destroy it. If all the Powers of Europe were to unite for its destruction, APPENDIX. 471 they could not effect it. All that human power can do is to compel it to make a pilgrimage ; and, for a longer or shorter time, to keep its seat away from Rome. And, lastly, this Chair will not be destroyed, because it is indispensable and irreplaceable, for it forms the keystone of the whole build- ing of the Church. " On ne detruit que ce quon remplace" That the Papacy can ever be replaced by anything else, no one will seriously maintain. It is the keystone that holds the whole edifice of the Church together, that makes the Church what it is, and what it ought to be : a world-Church the only society that has in earnest fulfilled the given purpose of God that is, to embrace all humanity, and find room for all nations. Should this all-keeping, all-sustaining keystone be taken away, the whole will fall asunder, the Church will be split according to monarchies and nationalities ; from the Christian religion will be rent that noble jewel bestowed by her founders ; that privilege that stands alone in history the privilege and the strength to unite all nations in one great whole, yet without injury to them as nations. The faithful throughout the world desire not to belong to a French or a Spanish, a Bavarian or an Austrian Church ; they desire to belong to ONE church, THE Church, the only Catholic Church in other words, all will be subject to the Pope, and will, in community with him, feel and acknowledge themselves as members of "the Catholic Church." The Papacy, then, will continue, because God wills it, because every Catholic believes it, because two hundred millions of men in all parts of the world desire it, because everyone who knows the condition of the world acknow- ledges it. There are enemies many enemies of the Tem- poral Power of the Papacy ; but, within the Catholic world, there lives no enemy of the Pope's Spiritual Power, or only such as are at the same time the enemies of the Christian religion. I am not afraid to maintain that, even outside the pale of the Catholic Church, in the Protestant world, so far as it is really Christian, reflecting believers, especially among the laity, do not object to the Papal power in itself. They 472 APPENDIX. ask themselves: "Is there not something beautiful, something good, something willed of God, that the different Christian nations and countries should be united in one Church one world-embracing community of faith and love that the common affairs of the entire be conducted by one hand ;" and the answer from all is " Yes." If it be further asked : '.' Shall this centre of church unity, this bearer of the highest authority of the Church, be a temporal monarch?" the answer will be " No that is impossible ; he must be no Emperor, no King, no President of a Republic ; he must be a Pope that is, he must be a Spiritual Father." So soon, how- ever, as the observation is made, " This real, living, concrete Pope is already there ; he dwells in Rome, and at present bears the name of Pius; and the larger part of assembled Christen- dom obeys him willingly and gladly will you accept him?" Then there is heard an angry protest, a many-voiced cry of " No ; him by no manner of means." " And why not ? " "Because he does not teach as we teach." "And what, then, shall he teach ?" And a voice from one corner of Germany cries out : " He shall teach what is agreeable to the German nation that nation of thinkers and inquirers. He shall teach, therefore, as Wittenberg taught from 1520 to 1546. Then and there the true Christian doctrine, in completest purity, first saw the light." Forthwith a different cry is heard from another corner of Germany : " That is an obso- lete resting-place ; in latter times the German people have made the grandest progress ; they stand now on the summit of intelligence and theological penetration. In three centuries we have learned much, and unlearned more. The Pope must teach now, as they think and teach in the chief seats of German science, in Berlin, and, perhaps, in Leipzig or Gottingen. Then we would accept him." " Not so," says a voice from the west; "neither Wittenberg nor Berlin, but Geneva is the birth- place of true Christianity ; if the Pope were converted to Calvin if he teaches as the French Reformer taught he may be something for us." " Let him take heed how he does that," is the cry from the other side of the Channel, from England. " Neither Wittenberg nor Geneva has discovered APPENDIX. 473 genuine Christianity. That precious jewel has been decreed of Heaven to the Anglo-Saxon race. The true Church is that of which Queen Elizabeth was the mother : it is the English-episcopal Church. This Church alone maintains the true medium between the extremes of Continental Protes- tantism and Catholicism. Let the Pope become Anglican, and we will then let him talk to us." " You are all in error, sheep without a shepherd," the North exclaims. " The true Church, the beloved of God among churches, is that only which the shepherd chosen of God, the Czar in St. Peters- burg and his Holy Directing Synod, leads in the pastures of the Divine Word. Russia is, as the Emperor Nicholas has often called it, 'Holy Russia] and the Russian people are ' God's chosen in these present times.' Let the Pope acknow- ledge this and act accordingly, and we will willingly concede him the first rank amongst the five orthodox patriarchs." And, lastly, a new and strongly represented party, particu- larly in Germany and in England, claims to be heard the men of " The Church of the Future." " You all," say they, " demean yourselves as if the true Church really existed anywhere, but that is a monstrous delusion. All existing church communities are but fragments, or the stones and building materials from which God will in nearer or remoter times construct the true church, responsive to all wants. Until that time, we have only provisional churches, and a provisional doctrine, and the Pope had better prepare himself for this Church, lying yet unborn in the lap of the future, and in the mean time put a note of interrogation to tLe doctrines hitherto prevalent in the Church." So far these, parties ; and now, on the other side, the two hundred millions, Europeans, Asiatics, Americans, these world-churches, to whose community belong at least a frag- ment of every considerable people on the whole earth. These say unanimously, " Our Christianity shall have no national supplementary flavour; it shall be no especial German, or Italian, or French, or English, or Russian Christianity it shall not tickle the palate of this or that people, like a fiery artificially-prepared potation; our doctrine, our religious 474 APPENDIX. practice, shall be and is a pure, clear stream of running water, colourless and odourless, the universal, wholesome drink for all, to-day as yesterday, to-morrow as a thousand years gone by. The Pope cannot, dare not teach otherwise than as those two hundred millions believe, and have long believed. And these millions will, must have a Pope ; will not allow him to be taken from them, will not suffer him to fall. They prove that they are ready to make any sacrifice for his preservation ; for his freedom. German, Irish, and French blood has flowed in his defence, and for a just and noble cause. We will also in the coming time, and before all the clergy in Europe as in America, willingly, joyfully, abun- dantly bring our tribute to alleviate the situation of our common Head and Father, and to furnish him with the means of free and vigorous action in his high office. But we will not cling to that which is transitory and accidental ; we will not desire that any people shall be constrained to accept what we ourselves would not bear; we will not stand up for a system of government which is in point of fact not more than forty-five years old, and the deficiencies of which the Pope himself has acknowledged, and which, in the course of that time, has generated nothing but discontent and revolt amongst the majority of the people. He who will support himself on such a staff, when the staff has already become rotten, must run the risk of falling to the ground. The Greek myth says : When a new god, Apollo, was to be born, the island of Delos rose from the sea to be the birth- place of a deity. We will in all confidence expect that a Delos shall not be wanting to the Chair of St. Peter, should it even have to arise from the depths of the sea ! THE END. R. BORN, PRINTER, GLOUCESTER STREET, REGENT'S PARK. 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH ST. LONDON. MESSRS. HURST AND BLACKETT'S LIST OF NEW WORKS, PUBLISHED AND IN PREPARATION. THE LIFE OF J. M. W. TUKNER, R,A. FKOM Original Letters and Papers furnished by his Friends and Fellow Academi- cians. By WALTER THORNBUUY. 2 volt, 8 vo. with Portrait and other Illustrations. 30s. (Now ready.) THE LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF ADMIRAL SIR CHARLES NAPIER, K.C.B. From his Private Papers and Official Documents. By Major-General ELERS NAPIER. 2 vols. 8vo. with Portrait and Charts 30s. (JSow ready.) FRENCH WOMEN OF LETTERS. By JULIA KAVANAGH. Author of "NATHALIE," "ADELE," &c. 2 vols. post 8vo. 21s. (Eeady in November.) THE PRIVATE DIARY OF RICHARD DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM AND CHANDOS, K.G. 3 vols. with Portrait. (In the Press.) THE LIFE OF THE REV. EDWARD IRVING. WITH Selections from his Correspondence. By Mrs. OLIPHANT. 2 vols. with Portrait. (In the Press.) THE COURT AND SOCIETY FROM ELIZABETH TO ANNE. Illustrated from the Papers at Kimbolton. Edited by the DCKB OF MANCHESTER. 2 vols. 8vo. with Illustrations. (In Preparation.) TWENTY-FIVE YEARS' MUSICAL RECOLLEC- TIONS. By HENRY F. CHORLEY. 2 vols. post 8vo. (In the Press.) MEMOIRS OF QUEEN HORTENSE, MOTHER OF NAPOLEON III. Edited by LASCELLES WRAXALL. 2 vols. post 8vo. 21s. (Just ready.) HURST AND BLACKETl's NEW PUBLICATIONS. MEMOIRS OF THE COURTS AND CABINETS OF WILLIAM IV. AND VICTORIA. FROM ORIGINAL FAMILY DOCU- MENTS. By the late DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM AND CHANDOS, K.G. 2 vols. 8vo. with Portraits. 30s. Among the principal interesting subjects of these volumes will be fonnd : The Re-establishment of the Royal Household The Sailor King and his Court The Duke of Wellington In, and Out of, Office The Reform Cabinet and the Conservative Opposition Career of Sir Robert Peel Civil List Expenditure Vicissitudes of Louis Philippe Attacks on the Duke of Wellington Corona- tions of William IV. and Queen Victoria Rise and Fall of O'Connell Lord Mel- bourne and his Ministry Proceedings of the Kings of Hanover and Belgium Pri- vate Negotiations at Apsley House Secret History of Court Arrangements. &c. uuv iiiiertrsi. AS lurumig tue uuuuiusiuu ui u vtuuuuic aim irs should find a place on the shelves of every library." Sun. MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF GEORGE IV. FROM ORIGINAL FAMILY DOCUMENTS. By the late DUKE OF BUCKING- HAM AND CHANDOS, K.G. 2 vols. 8vo. with Portraits. 30s. "The country is very much indebted to the Duke of Buckingham for the publication of these volumes to our thinking the most valuable of the contributions to recent history which he has yet compiled from his family papers. Besides the King, the Duke of Buckingham's canvass is full of the leading men of the day Castlereagh, Liverpool, Can- ning, Wellington, Peel, and their compeers. We are sure that no reader, whether he seeks for gossip, or for more sterling information, will be disappointed by the book. There aie several most characteristic letters of the Duke of Wellington." John Bull. MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF THE REGENCY. FROM ORIGINAL FAMILY DOCUMENTS. By the late DUKE OF BUCK- INGHAM AND CHANDOS, K.G. 2 vols. 8vo., with Portraits, 30s. " Here are two goodly volumes on the English Court ; volumes full of new sayings, pictures, anecdotes, and scenes. The Duke of Buckingham travels over nine years of English history. But what years those were, from 1811 to 1820 ! What events at home and abroad they bore to the great bourne I from the accession of the Regent to power to the death of George III. including the fall of Perceval; the invasion of Russia, and the war in Spain; the battles of Salamanca and Horodino; the fire of Moscow; the retreat of Napoleon; the conquest of Spain ; the surrenderor Napoleon; the return from Elba; the Congress of Vienna; the Hundred Days ; the crowning carnage of Waterloo; the exile to St. Helena; the return of the Bourbons ; the settlement of Europe; the public scandals at the English Court; the popular discontent, and the massacre of Peterloo ! On many parts of this story the documents published by the Duke of Buckingham cast new jets of light, clearing up much secret history. Old stories are confirmed oe\v traits of character are brought out. In short, many new and pleasant additions are ir.ade to our knowledge of those times." Athenaeum. HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY. WORKS BY MISS FEEEE. HISTORY OF THE REIGN OF HENRY IV. KING OF FRANCE AND NAVARRE. From numerous Original Sources. By MARTHA WALKER FREER. 2 vols. with Portraits, 21s. HENRY IV. AND MARIE DE MEDICI- FORMING Part II. of " The History of the Reign of Henry IV. King of France and Navarre." By MISS FREER. 2 vols. with Portraits. 21s. "Miss Freer's ability and research have raised her to a conspicuous position among our historical writers. Among the most prominent of her qualities is a rare spirit of moderation and impartiality. Important and eventful as the rt>ign of Henry IV. was, its details are little known by general readers among us, and therefore in presenting so complete and interesting a narrative Miss Freer has done good service to the public, besides enhancing her own well-earned reputation." Sun. <: In these volumes we have the second part of a work the greatest to which Miss Freer has dedicated her powers. She draws her materials from sources mostly original, and she has selected for illustration a period the interest of which can scarcely be said to be second to any in modern times. There was romance in Henry the Fourth's character and in his career, and events of importance were grouped around his life. Miss Freer writes only after the most conscientious research, and with a mastery of the subject which will of itself go far towards explaining the vitality and animation which so distinguish her productions. Where a style of such supreme attractiveness is combined with such accuracy in detail, it is impossible not to give the work a high place in the literature of the day." Sunday Times. HENRY III. KING OF FRANCE AND POLAND; HIS COURT AND TIMES. From numerous unpublished sources. By MISS FREER, 3 vols. post 8vo. with portraits, 31s. 6d. "Miss Freer having won for herself the reputation of a most painstaking and trust- worihy historian not less than an accomplished writer, by her previous memoirs of sovereigns of the houses of Valois and Navarre, will not fail lo meet with a most cordial and hearty welcome for her present admirable history of Henry III., the last of the French kings of the house of Valois. We refer our readers to the volumes them- st-lves for the interesting details of the life and reign of Henry III., his residence in Poland, his marriage with Louise de Lorraine, his cruelties, his hypocrisies, his penances, his assassination by the hands of the monk Jaques Clement, &c. Upon these points, as well as with reference to other persons who occupied a prominent position during this period, abundant information is afforded by Miss Freer; and the public will feel with us that a deep debt of gratitude is due to that lady for the faithful and admirable manner in which she has pourtrayed the Court and Times of Henry the Third." Chronicle. HURST AND BLACKETT'S NEW PUBLICATIONS. ELIZABETH DE VALOIS, QUEEN OF SPAIN, AND THE COURT OF PHILIP II. From numerous unpublished sources in the Archives of France, Italy, and Spain. By MISS FREER. 2 vols post 8vo. with fine Portraits by HEATH. 21s. THE LIFE OF MARGUERITE D'ANGOULEME, QUEEN of NAVARRE, SISTER of FRANCIS I. By MISS FREER. Second Edition, 2 vols. with fine Portraits, 21s. "This is a very useful and amusing book. It is a good work, very well done. The authoress is quite equal in power and grace to Miss Strickland. She must have spent great time and labour in collecting the information, which she imparts in an easy and agreeable manner. It is difficult to lay down her book after having once begun it.." Standard. THE LIFE OF JEANNE D' ALBERT, QUEEN OF NAVARRE. By MISS FREER. Cheap Edition, 1 vol. 5s. with Portrait. "This book reflects the highest credit on the industry and ability of Miss Freer. Nothing can be more interesting than her story of the life of Jeanne U'Albret, and the narrative is as trustworthy as it is attractive." Post. THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE COURT OF FRANCE UNDER LOUIS XV. Edited, from Rare and Unpublished Documents, by Dr. CHALLICE. 2 vols. with fine Portraits. 21s. " We recommend these volumes to our readers as amusing, interesting, and instruc- tive." Critic. " A valuable and interesting work. It unites the fascination of a romance with the integrity of history." Chronicle. " The interest of this work will be readily acknowledged. Every page contains a con- tribution to the general chronicle of the times, while anecdotes and sketches of character abound." Illustrated Newt. MEMORIALS OF ADMIRAL LORD GAMBIER, G.C-B. with Original Letters from LORDS CHATHAM, XELSON, CASTLEREAGH, MDLGRAVE, HOLLAND, Mr. CANNING, &c, Edited, from Family Pa- pers, by LADY CHATTERTON, SECOND EDITION, 2 vols. 8vo, 28s. " These volumes are an important addition to our naval literature; but they are also valuable for the light they throw on the domestic history of the time. The correspon- dence is particularly rich in anecdotes, glimpses of society and manners, and traits of character." U. S. Magazine. A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. BY J. C- JEAFFRESON, ESQ.., New, Revised and Cheaper Edition, 1 vol., 10s. Cd. "This is a rare book; a compliment to the medical profession and an acquisition to its members; a book to be read and re-read ; fit for the study and the consulting-room, as well as the drawing-room table and the circulating library. Mr. Jeatireson takes a com- prehensive view of the social history of the profession, and illustrates its course by a series of biographic and domestic sketches, from the feudal era down to the present day. The chapters on the Doctor as a bon-vivant, the generosity and parsimony, the quarrels and loves of physicians, are rich with anecdotes of medical celebrities. But Mr. Jeaffreson does not merely amuse. The pages he devotes to the exposure and history of charlatanry are of scarcely less value to the student of medicine than the student ot manners. We thank Mr. Jeaffreson most heartily for the mirth and solid information of his work. All the members of our profession will be sure to read it." Lancet. "A pleasant book. Out of hundreds of volumes, Mr. Jeaffreson has collected thousands of good things, adding much that appears in print tor the first time, and which of .course gives increased value to this very readable book." Athenxum. HURST AND BLACKETT S NEW PUBLICATIONS. LODGE'S PEERAGE AND BARONETAGE. Under THE ESPECIAL PATRONAGK OF HER MAJESTY AND H.R.H. THE PRINCE CONSORT. Corrected throughout by the Nobility. THIRTIETH EDITION, in 1 vol. royal 8vo., with the Arms beautifully engraved, hand- somely bound, with gilt edges, price 31s. 6d. LODGE'S PEERAGE AND BARONETAGE is acknowledged to be the most complete, as well as the most elegant, work of the kind. As an established and authentic authority on all questions respecting the family histories, honours, and connections of the titled aristocracy, no work has ever stood so high. It is published under the especial patronage of Her Majesty, and His Royal Highness the Prince Consort, and is annually corrected throughout, from the personal communications of the Nobility. It is the only work of its class, in which, the type being kept constantly standing, every correction is made in its proper place to the date of publication, an advantage which gives it supremacy over all its competitors. Independently of its full and authentic information respecting the existing Peers and Baronets of the realm, the most sedulous attention is given in its pages to the collateral branches of the various noble families, and the names of many thousand individuals are introduced, which do not appear in other records of the titled classes. For its authority, correctness, and facility of arrangement, and the beauty of its typography and binding, the work is justly en- titled to the high place it occupies on the tables of Her Majesty and the Nobility. " Lodge's Peerage must supersede all other works of the kind, for two reasons ; first, it is on a better plan ; and, secondly, it is better executed. We can safely pronounce it to be the readiest, the most useful, and exactest of modern works on the subject." Spectator. " A work which corrects all errors of former works. It is the production of a herald, we had almost said, by birth, but certainly by profession and studies, Mr. Lodge, the Norroy King of Arms. It is a most useful publication." Times. "As perfect a Peerage of the British Empire as we are ever likely to see published. Great pains have been taken to make it as complete and accurate as possible. The work is patronised by Her Majesty and the Prince Consort; and it is worthy of a place in every gentleman's library, as well as in every public institution." Herald. "Asa work of contemporaneous history, this volnme is of great value the materials having been derived from the most authentic sources and in the majority of cases emanating, from the noble families themselves. It contains all the needful information respecting the nobility of the Empire." Post. " This work should form a portion of every gentleman's library. At all times, the infor. mation which it contains, derived from official sources exclusively at the command of the author, is of importance to most classes of the community ; to the antiquary It must be invaluable, for implicit reliance may be placed on its contents." Globe. " This work derives great value from the high authority of Mr. Lodge. The phin is excellent." Literary Gazette. "When any book has run through so many editions, its reputation is so indelibly stamped, that it requires neither criticism nor praise. It is but just, however, to say, that 1 Lodge's Peerage and Baronetage ' is the most elegant and accurate, and the best of its class. The chief point of excellence attaching to this Peerage consists neither in its elegance of type nor its completeness of illustration, but in its authenticity, which is insured by the letter-press being always kept standing, and by immediate alteration being made whenever any change takes place, either by death or otherwise, amongst the nobility of the United Kingdom. The work has obtained the special patronage of Her Most Gracious Majesty, and of His Royal Highness the Prince Consort, which patronage has never been better or more worthily bestowed." Messenger. " ' Lodge's Peerage and Baronetage' has become, as it were, an 'institution' of this country ; in other words, it is indispensable, and cannot be done without, by any person having business in the great world. The authenticity of this valuable work, as regards the several topics to which it refers, has never been exceeded, and, consequently, it must be received as one of the most important contributions to social and domestic history extant. As a book of reference indispensible in most cases, useful in all it should be in the hands of every one having connections in, or transactions with, the aristocracy." Observer . HURST AND BLACKETl's NEW PUBLICATIONS. LODGE'S GENEALOGY OF THE PEERAGE AND BARONETAGE OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE. A NEW AND REVISED EDITION. Uniform with " THE PEERAGE" Volume, with the arms beautifully engraved, handsomely bound with gilt edges, price 31s. 6d. The desire very generally manifested for a republication of this volume has dictated the present entire revision of its contents. The Armorial Bearings prefixed to the History of each Noble Family, render the work complete in itself and uniform with the Volume of THE PEERAGE, which it is intended to accompany and illustrate. The object of the whole Work, in its two distinct yet combined characters, has been useful and correct information ; and the careful attention devoted to this object throughout will, it is hoped, render the Work worthy of the August Patronage with which it is honoured and of the liberal assistance accorded by its Noble Correspondents, and will secure from them and from the Public, the same cordial reception it has hitherto experienced. The great advantage of " The Genealogy" being thus given in a separate volume, Mr. Lodge has himself explained in the Preface to " The Peerage." THE BOOK OF ORDERS OF KNIGHTHOOD, AND DECORATIONS OF HONOUR OF ALL NATIONS; COMPRISING AN HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF EACH ORDER, MILITARY, NAVAL AND CIVIL; with Lists of the Knights and Companions of each British Order. EMBELLISHED WITH FIVE HUNDRED FAC-SIMILE COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE INSIGNIA OF THE VARIOUS ORDERS. Edited by SIR BERNARD BURKE, Ulster King of Arms. 1 vol. royal 8vo., handsomely bound, with gilt edges, price A2. 2s. " This is indeed a splendid book. It is an uncommon combination of a library book of reference and a book for a boudoir, undoubtedly uniting beauty and utility. It will soon find its place in every library and drawing-room." Globe. THE LIFE AND TIMES OF GEORGE VILLIERS, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM. By MRS. THOMSON. 3 vols. "These volumes will increase the well-earned reputation of their clever and popular author. The story of the royal favourite's career is told by Mrs. Thomson very honestly, and is enriched abundantly with curious and entertaining)details of which a full publication is now made for the first time." Examiner. BRITISH ARTISTS, from HOGARTH to TURNER;- A SERIES OF BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. By WALTER THORNBURY. 2v "The interest of Mr. Thornbury's pictures is undeniable a result partly due to the talent of the painter, partly to his subjects; for next to the lives of actors those of artists are among the most interesting to read. Especially so are those of our English artists of the last century lives abounding in contrasted and often dark hues, interwoven with the history of men still remarkable in letters and polities. Capital subjects for a biographer with a turn for dramatic and picturesque realisation are such men as the bright, mercurial Gainsborough ; the moody, neglected Wilson ; Reynolds, the bland and self-possessed j Barry, the fierce and squalid; shrewd, miserly Nollekins; the foppish, visionary Conway; the spendthrift Sherwin ; the stormy Fuselt ; Morland, the reprobate; Lawrence, the courtly. The chapters devoted to these heroes of the English schools are not so much condensed biographies as dramatic glimpses of the men and their environments. Certain striking scenes and circumstances in their lives are vividly and picturesquely painted made to re-live before our eyes with all the vraisemblance of the novelist." Critic. MEMOIRS OF ROYAL LADIES. BY EMILY S. HOLT. 2 volumes post 8vo. with Illustrations. 21s. "These attractive 'Memoirs of Royal Ladies,' accounts of whose lives have never before appeared in our language, are full ot entertaining matter, while they display abun- dant evidence that they are the result of much research and careful study." Press. VOYAGES AND TRAVELS. TRAVELS IN THE REGIONS OF THE AMOOR, AND THE RUSSIAN ACQUISITIONS ox THE CONFINES OF INDIA AND CHINA; WITH ADVENTURES AMONG THE MOUNTAIN KIRGHIS, AND THE MANJOURS, MANYARGS, TOUNGOUZ, TOUZEMTZ, GOLDI, AND GEI/YAKS. By T. W. ATKINSON, F G.S., F.R.G.S., Author of " Oriental and Western Siberia." Dedicated by permission, to HER MAJESTY. SECOND EDITION. Royal 8vo., with Map and 83 Illustrations. 2 2s., elegantly bound " Our readers have not now to learn for the first time the quality of Mr. Atkinson as an explorer and a writer. The comments we made on, and the extracts we selected from, his ' Oriental and Western Siberia' will have sufficed to show that in the former character he takes rank with the most daring of the class, and that in the latter he Is scarcely to be surpassed for the lucidity, picturesqueness, and power, with which he pourtrays the scenes through which he has travelled, and the perils or the pleasures which encountered him on the way. The present volume is not inferior to its predecessor. It deals with civilization, semi -civilization, and barbarous life. It takes us through localities, some of which are little, others not at all, known to even the best read men in the literature of travel. The entire volume is admirable for its spirit, unexaggerated tone, and the mass of fresh materials by which this really new world is made accessible to us. The followers, too, of all the ' ologies will meet with something in these graghic pages of peculiar interest to them. It is a noble work." Athenaeum. "We must refer to Mr. Atkinson as one of the most intelligent and successful of the civilized travellers of our own day. By far the most important contribution to the history of these regions is to be found in Mr. Atkinson's recent publication on the Amoor a work which derives equal interest from his well-stored portfolio and his pen." Edinburgh Review. ".This is in every respect an aureus liber. Its magnificent apparel not Inaptly sym- bolises its magnificent contents. Mr. Atkinson has here given us a narrative which could be told by no other living Englishman. The intrinsic interest of that narrative is enhanced by Mr. Atkinson's gift of vigorous and graceful description. Thanks to the power of his pen, and the still more remarkable power of his pencil we follow his travels with eager Interest and anxiety. He himself is the chief object of interest, from his thirst for adventure and daring exploits, and the countless shapes of terror and death that he encounters. The work is a magnificent contribution to the literature of travel. More useful and pleasant reading can no where be found." Literary Gazette. " Mr. Atkinson has here presented the reading world with another valuable book of travels. It is as interesting, as entertaining, and as well written as his previous work. It is a volume which will not only afford intellectual entertainment of the highest order, but fitted to instruct both the philosopher and the statesman. The vast territorial acquisition! lately made by Russia in the Northern parts of Central Asia along the whole frontier of China, is described by an eye witness well qualified to estimate their real value and political advantages. Our readers, we feel sure, will peruse this interesting book of travels for themselves. It contains something for every taste." Daily News " The success of Mr. Atkinson's ' Oriental and Western Siberia' has happily indnced him to write and publish another volume, and written with the same unflagging interest. A more pleasing as well as more novel book of travels it would be difficult to find. The illustrations are admirably executed, and they add ten fold to the value of a volume already possessing intrinsic merits of the highest kind. Independently of the deep interest it excites as a traveller's tale, the work has other claims. It presents peculiar geographical and ethnolo- gical information, and points out a boundless field of commerce to English enterprise. It marks with a decided pen the gradual advances of Russia towards British India, and the sweeping rush of her conquering energy from Siberia to the Pacific. Thus Mr. Atkinson's book has not only a literary, but a political and commercial importance. There is food for all readers and interest for all." Globe. "A really magnificent volume, which for many years to come must be a standard authority upon the country of which it treats. It is very interesting and abounds in incident and anecdote both personal and local." Chrtnicle. HURST AND BLACKETT's NEW PUBLICATIONS. ORIENTAL AND WESTERN SIBERIA ; A NAR- RATIVE OF SEVEN YEARS' EXPLORATIONS AND ADVENTURES IN SIBERIA, MONGOLIA, THE KIRGHIS STEPPES, CHINESE TARTARY, AND CENTRAL ASIA. By THOMAS WITLAM ATKINSON. In one large volume, royal 8vo., Price JG2. 2s., elegantly bound. Embellished with upwards of 50 Illustrations, including numerous beautifully coloured plates, from drawings by the Author, and a map. "By virtue alike of ltd text and Its pictures, we place this book of travel in the first rank among those illustrated gift books now so much sought by the public. Mr. Atkinson's book is most readable. The geographer finds in it notice of ground heretofore left undescribed, the ethnologist, geologist, and botanist, find notes and pictures, too, of which they know the value, the sportman's taste is gratified by chronicles of sport, the lover of adventure will find a number of perils and escapes to hang over, and the lover of a frank good-humoured way of speech will find the book a pleasant one in every page. Seven years of wandering, thirty-nine thousand five hundred miles of moving to and fro in a wild and almost unknown country, should yield a book worth reading, and they do." Examiner. "A book of travels which in value and sterling interest must take rank as a landmark in geographical literature. Its coloured illustrations and wood engravings are of a high order, and add a great charm to the narrative. Mr. Atkinson has travelled where it is believed no European has been before. He has seen nature in the wildest, sublimest, and also the most beautiful aspects the old world can present. These he has depicted by pen and pencil. He has done both well. Many a fireside will rejoice in the determination which converted the artist into an author. Mr. Atkinson is a thorough Englishman, brave and accomplished, a lover of adventure and sport of every kind. He kuows enough of mineralogy, geology, and botany to impart a scientific interest to his descriptions and drawings ; possessing a keen sense of humour, he tells many a racy story. The sportsman and the lover of adventure, whether by flood or field, will fiud ample stores in the stirring tales of his interesting travels." Daily News. " An animated and intelligent narrative, appreciably enriching the literature of English travel. Mr. Atkinson's sketches were made by express permission of the late Emperor of Russia. Perhaps no English artist was ever before admitted into this enchanted land of history, or provided with the talisman and amulet of a general passport; and well has Mr. Atkinson availed himself of the privilege. Our extracts will have served to illustrate the originality and variety of Mr. Atkinson's observations and adventures during his protracted wanderings of nearly forty thousand miles. Mr. Atkinson's pencil was never idle, and he has certainly brought home with him the forms, and colours, and other characteristics of a most extraordinary diversity of groups and scenes. As a sportsman Mr. Atkinson enjoyed a plenitude of excitement. His narrative is well stored with Incidents of adventure. His ascent of the Dielouka is a chapter of the most vivid romance of travel, yet it is less attractive than his relations of wanderings across the Desert of Gobi and up the Tangnou Chain." Athenteum. "We predict that Mr. Atkinson's 'Siberia' will very often assume the shape of a Christmas Present or New Year's Gift, as it possesses, in an eminent degree, four very precious and suitable qualities for that purpose, namely, usefulness, elegance, instruction and novelty. It is a work of great value, not merely on account of its splendid illustrations, but for the amount it contains of authentic and highly interesting intelligence concerning regions which, in all probability, has never, previous to Mr. Atkinson's explorations, been visited by an European. Mr. Atkinson's adventures are told in a manly style. The valuable and interesting information the book contains, gathered at a vast expense, is lucidly arranged, ann altogether the work is one that thejauthor-artist may well be proud of, and with which those who study it cannot fail to be delighted." John Bull. " To the geographer, the geologist, the ethnographer, the sportsman, and to those who read only for amusement, this will be an acceptable volume. Mr. Atkinson is rot only an adventurous traveller, but a correct and amusing writer." Literary Gazette. VOYAGES AND TRAVELS. THE OKAVANGO RIVER; A NARRATIVE OF TRAVEL, EXPLORATION AND ADVENTURE. By CHARLES JOHN ANDERSSON. Author of " Lake Ngami." 1 yol. 8vo. with Portrait of the Author, and numerous Illustrations. 21s. bound. " Mr. Andersson is one of those whom the world and the Geographical Society delight iu uonour. Not for adventures only, but for science's sake does he betake himself to the wilds, in which he has all the delights attractive to the true sportsman, but in which he fearlessly encounters all perils that he may discover a river, depict a new people, or bring to light a tresh species. His ' Lake Ngami' was deservedly popular; and, on behalf "This book illustrated with many animated pictures of adventures connected with the " Mr. Andersson's adventures stamp him as an one of the most enterprising traveller of modern times, and well worthy to take rank by the side of Livingstone and others, who have attempted to penetrate the interior of the great African continent. Every page of hit present work is full or' interest." Observer. " Mr. Andersson's narrative of his discovery of the Okavango River is very interesting. The book is one which will please alike the traveller, the sportsman, and the student of natural history. It abounds in startling adventures." Morning Post. " Mr. Andersson's new work is full of startling accounts of encounters with all kinds of wild beasts the elephant, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, the lion, the giraffe, &c. all of which will be read with delight by the sportsman ; while the traveller and the student of geography or ethnology will find plenty of food for the mind in the other parts of the book. It is profusely and beautifully illustrated, and cannot but become one of the favourite works of the season." Bell's Life. LAKE NGAMI; OR EXPLORATIONS AND DIS- COVERIES DURING FOUR YEARS* WANDERINGS IN THE WlLDS OP SOUTH-WESTERN AFRICA. By CHARLES JOHN ANDERSSON. Second Edition.l vol. royal 8vo., with Map and upwards of 50 Illustrations, repre- senting Sporting Adventures, Subjects of Natural History, &c. "This narrative of African explorations and discoveries is one of the most important geographical works that have lately appeared. It contains the account of two journeys made between the years 1850 and 1854, in the first of which the countries of the Damaras and the Ovambo, previously scarcely known in Europe, were explored; and in the second the newly-discovered Lake Ngami was reached by a route that had been deemed imprac- ticable, but which proves to be the shortest and the best. The work contains much scientific and accurate information as to the geology, the scenery, products, and resources of the regions explored, with notices of the religion, manners, and customs of the native tribes. The continual sporting adventures, and other remarkable occurrences, intermingled with the narrative of travel, make the book as interesting to read as a romance, as, indeed, a good book of travels ought always to be. The illustrations by Wolf are admirably designed, and most of them represent scenes as striking as any witnessed by Jules Gerard or Gordon Cumming." Literary Gazette. 10 HURST AND BLACKETT's NEW PUBLICATIONS. TRAVELS IN THE HOLY LAND. By FREDRIKA BREMER. Translated by MARY HOWITT. 2 vols. (Just ready.) TWO YEARS IN SWITZERLAND AND ITALY. By FREDRIKA BREMER. Translated by MARY HOWITT. 2 vols. " This Is certainly one of the best works Miss Bremen has ever yet produced. We can scarcely find words adequately to express our admiration of the manner in which she has told all she saw and felt during the two years she passed in the loveliest parts of Europe. The book is the best that ever was written on such themes." Messenger. SIX YEARS OF A TRAVELLER'S LIFE IN WESTERN AFRICA. By FRANCISCO VALDEZ. Arbitrator at Loanda, and the Cape of Good Hope. 2 vols. with Illustrations. " A book of value and importance." Messenger. TEN YEARS' WANDERINGS AMONG THE ETHIO- PIANS ; with Sketches of the Manners and Customs of the Civilised and Uncivilised Tribes from Senegal to Gaboon. By T. J. HUTCHINSON, F.R.G.S., Consul for Fernando Po. 8vo. with Illustrations. 14s. " A work of very considerable interest, that cannot fail to be highly valued by the merchant and the trader, as well as by the philantrophist, the ethnologist, the geographi- cal explorer, and the man of science." Observer, THE MEDICAL MISSIONARY IN CHINA: A NAR- RATIVE OF TMENTY YEARS' EXPERIENCE. By WILLIAM LOCK- HART, F.R.C.S. F.R.G.S, of the London Missionary Society. Second Edition, 1 vol. 8vo. " We heartily commend this work to our readers. It contains more information upon the social life of the teeming millions of Chinese than any book it has been our fortune to meet." Baptist Magazine. TRAVELS IN EASTERN AFRICA, WITH THE NARRATIVE OF A RESIDENCE IN MOZAMBIQUE : 1856 to 1859. By LYONS McLEOD, Esq. F.R.G.S.. &c. Late British Consul in Mo- zambique. 2 vols. With Map and Illustrations. A RESIDENCE AT THE COURT OF MEER AU MOORAD ; WITH WILD SPORTS IN THE VALLEY OF THE INDUS. BY CAPT. LANGLEY, late Madras Cavalry. 2 vols. 8vo. with Illustrations. 30s. SIXTEEN YEARS OF AN ARTIST'S LIFE IN MOROCCO, SPAIN, AND THE CANARY ISLANDS. By MRS. ELIZABETH MURRAY. 2 vols. 8vo. with Coloured Illustrations. " Mrs. Murray's book is like her painting, luminous, rich and fresh. We welcome it (as the public will also do) with sincere pleasure." Athenteum. A SUMMER RAMBLE in the HIMALAYAS; with SPORTING ADVENTURES IN THE VALE OF CASHMERE. Edited by MOUNTAINEER. 8vo. with Illustrations. 15s. " This volume is altogether a pleasant one. It is written with lest and edited with care. The incidents and adventures of the journey are most fascinating to a sportsman and very nteresting to a traveller." Athtrutum HURST AND BLACKETT S NEW PUBLICATIONS. 1 1 THE ENGLISH SPORTSMAN IN THE WESTERN PRAIRIES. By the HON. GRANTLEY BERKELEY. Royal 8vo. with numerous Illustrations. " This is a splendid volume, full of adventure and anecdote. One of the most skilful and ardent of our sportsmen, Mr. Grantley Berkeley is at the same time an excellent writer upon sporting matters. This is a very rare combination of qualities, for, generally speaking, the men who understand sport are unable to write, whilst those who can write are pro- fonmlly ignorant of sport. Now Mr. Grantley Berkeley not only understands his topics thoroughly, but is able to write with ease, freshness, and vigour about them. There is a zest in his descriptions which only a true sportsman can feel. There is a breath of the woods, an echo of the hunting-horn in his writings. We can see the exciting picture which his words would present." Critic. " We heartily commend this handsome book to the gentlemen of England. Its author is the present Caesar of sport, who unites to his feats of hunting the ability of recording them .'' Herald. ESSAYS FROM THE QUARTERLY. BY JAMES HANNAY. 1 vol. 8vo. 14s. " A very agreeable and valuable addition to our literature. As a writer Mr. Hannay possesses very remarkable merit indeed. He is eminently readable, he has a vast deal of shrewd common sense, and a brilliancy of illustrative comparison quite unparalleled by any author of the present day. We could not point to any series of articles, not even excepting those of Alacaulay, which are easier reading." Spectator. DOMESTIC SKETCHES IN RUSSIA. By LADY CHARLOTTE PEPYS. 2 vols. post 8vo. 21s. " This very agreeable book presents a photograph of Russian home life, the simplicity of which is as charming as the manner of relating it is attractive." Messenger. LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF FRENCH MILITARY LIFE. By the Author of " FLEMISH INTERIORS," &c. 3 vols. with Illustrations. (Just ready.) REALITIES OF PARIS LIFE. BY THE AUTHOR of " FLEMISH INTERIORS," &c. 3 vols. with Illustrations. 31s. 6<1. " ' Realities of Paris Life' is a good addition to Paris books, and important as affording true and sober pictures of the Paris poor." Atheruntm. DOMESTIC MEMOIRS OF THE ROYAL FAMILY, and the COURT OF ENGLAND, chiefly at SHENE and RICHMOND. By FOLKESTONE WILLIAMS, F.G.S., 3 vols. with Portraits. " In the prosecution of his labours, the author has consulted antiquaries and archte- ologists, and examined contemporary authorities. The result is, a work, pleasant and. instructive, abundant in anecdote, and agreeably gossipping. It, moreover, evinces con- siderable research, and a generally sound historical judgment." Spectator. THE RIDES AND REVERIES OF MR. .ESOP SMITH. By MARTIN F. TUPPER, D.C.L., F.R.S., Author of " Proverbial Philo- sophy," " Stephen Langton," &c., 1 vol. post 8vo. 5s. 12 HURST AND BLACKETT S NEW PUBLICATIONS. STUDIES FROM LIFE. BY THE AUTHOR OF " JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN,'' " A WOMAN'S THOUGHTS ABOUT WOMEN," &c. 1 vol. 10s. 6d. elegantly bound. "Studies from Life is altogether a charming volume, one which all women and most men, would be proud to possess." Chronicle. " Without being in the same degree elaborate, either in purpose or plot, as 'John Halifax,' these 'Studies trom Life' may be pronounced to be equally as clever in construc- tion and narration. It is one of the most charming features of Miss Muloch's works that they invariably tend to a practical and useful end. Her object is to improve the taste, retine the intellect, and touch the heart, and so to act upon all classes of her readers as to make them rise from the consideration of her books both xviser and better than they were before they began to read them. The ' Studies from Life' will add considerably to the author's well earned reputation." Messenger. POEMS. BY THE AUTHOR OF " JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN," " A WOMAN'S THOUGHTS ABOUT WOMEN," &c. 1 vol. with Illustrations by BIRKET FOSTER. "A volume of poems which will assuredly take its place with those of Goldsmith, Gray, and Cowper, on the favourite shelf of every Englishman's library. We discover in these poems all the firmness, vigour, and delicacy of touch which characterise the author's prose works, and in addition, an ineffable tenderness and grace, such as we find in few poetical compositions besides those of Tennyson." Illustrated Ne.ws of the World. " We are well pleased with these poems by our popular novelist. Tliey are the expression of genuine thoughts, feelings, arid aspirations, and the expression is almost always grace- ful, musical and well-coloured. A high, pure tone of morality pervades each set of verses , and each strikes the reader as inspired by some real event, or condition of mind, and not by some idle fancy or fleeting sentiment." Spectator. A SAUNTER THROUGH THE WEST END. BY LEIGH HUNT. 1 vol. 10s. 6d. " The title of this work is unexceptionable, it is happily and appropriately chosen to denote the gossipping contents of the book ; light, chatty, and amusing. The author quietly puts his arm in that of his reader, and as he passes on from Hyde Park Corner down Piccadilly or Pall Mall to the Haymarket and Soho, points out the anecdotes con- nected with each locality. Touches of quiet, genial, humour, playful interruptions, and amusing stories told in a quaint, unaffected style contribute to the attractive conversational tone adopted, as he saunters along with his friend of the hour. The reader will nnd himself agreeably carried on from the first to the last of ' The Saunter' by its cheerful tone and entertaining gossip." Literary Gazette. "This book is ever fresh. Few men felt, as Leigh Hunt did, the human poetry of the memories that crowd upon the lettered and thoughtful rambler about London streets. His gentle, genial humour shines in a book like this worthy companion to his ' Town' and ' Old Court Suburb' with light that will not become dim with lapse of time." Exam. "Ifanyofour readers are in want of a genial, gossipping volume, full of pleasant historical allusions, and written by one who was deservedly a great favourite in the world of letters, we can recommend them Leigh Hunt's very pleasant ' Saunter.' It will suit town or country readers equally well." Critic. RECOLLECTIONS OF A FOX-HUNTER. BY SCRU- TATOR. 1 vol. "This is Scrutator's best book. It is a sort of memoir of the hearty and accomplished writer, including pleasant notices of sporting celebrities, such as Assheton Smith, &c., but the burden of the volume consists of experience in the hunting-field real truths con- veying excellent lessons as to horse and hound, and ensuring for tlie volume an honoured place in every sportsman's library." Era, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A STAGE-COACHMAN. By THOMAS CROSS. Dedicated to Henry Villebois, Esq., Master of the Norfolk Hounds. 3 vols. with Illustrations. " The autobiography of Mr. Cross is a faithful chronicle of a by -gone form ofciviliia- tion. It is one of Mr. 'Cross's chief merits that he tells many a good anecdote in his own characteristic way." Examiner, WORKS OP FICTION. 13 THE LAST OP THE MORTIMERS. By the Author of "MAROARKT MAIT- LAND," &c. 3 vols. WHITE AND BLACK. A TALK OF THE SOUTHERN STATES. 3v. THE HOME AT ROSEFIELD. By EDWARB COPPING. 3 vols. NOTICE TO QUIT. By W. G. WILLS. 3 vols. " A novel of remarkable power. The interest never flags. There is real genius in this writer." Spectator. EAST AND WEST. By J. FRAZER CORKRAN. 3 vols. " A good novel. The author has know- ledge in abundance." Daily Newt. SIR RICHARD HAMILTON. 2 vols. COUNTY SOCIETY. 3 vols. " An admirably written and entertaining novel." Observer A HERO IN SPITE OP HIMSELF. By CAPTAIV MAYVE REID. From the French of Luis de Bellemare. 3 vols. ALONE IN THE WORLD. By the Author of " COUSIN GEOFFREY," &c. v. PAUL FOSTER'S DAUGHTER. RyDoTTON COOK. 3 vols. UNDER THE SPELL. By the Author of " GRANDMOTHER'S MONKY," "WlLDFLOWBR," &C. 8 Vols. "The beststory hitherto written by a very pleasant novelist." Examiner. A FAMILY HISTORY. By the Author of " THE QUEEN'S PAR- DON." 3 vols. NO CHURCH. By the Author of " HIGH CHURCH." Third Edition. 3 vols. " We advise all who have the oppor- tunity to read this book. It is worth the study. It is a book to make us feel what may be accomplished by each and all of us who choose to set about it in a simple, earnest spirit, unprejudiced by sectarian or party feeling, only having a lively faith in God's mercy, and a fervent charity towards our fellow men. As a love story, the book is interesting, and well put together." Athenaeum, MY SHARE OF THE WORLD. By FRANCES BROWNE. 3 vols. KATHERINE AND HER SISTERS. By the Author of "THB DISCIPLINE OF LIFK," &c., 3 vols. ICE-BOUND. By WALTER THORNBCRT. 3 vols. " lu ' Ice-Bound' Mr. Thorubury has put forth all his powers, and has pro- duced one of the best books of fiction he has ever written." Messenger. THE HOUSE ON THE MOOR. By the Author of " MARGARET MAITLAND," 3 v. " This story is very interesting and the interest deepens as the story proceeds." Athenaum. HOMELESS; or, A POET'S INNER LIFE. By M. GOLDSCHHIDT. Author of " JACOB BENDIXBN." 3 v. THE WORLD'S VERDICT. By the Author of " MORALS or MAT FAIR," 'CREEDS," &c. 3 vols. WHEEL WITHIN WHEEL. By the Author of" ALICE WBNTWORTH," "THE LEBSOFBLKNDON HALL." &c. 3v. "A good novel." Atlienoeum. THINKING AND ACTING. By A CLEKOVMAN'S DAUGHTER. Author of " HBLEN LINDSAV," OCR " HOMELESS POOR," &c. 2 vols. NOW IN COURSE OF P0BLICA.TIOX. HURST AND BLACKETT'S STANDARD LIBRARY OF CHEAP EDITIONS OF POPULAR MODERN WORKS ILLUSTRATED EY MILLAIS, LEECH, BIRKET FOSTER, &c. Each in a single volume, elegantly printed, bound, and illustrated, price 5s. A volume to appear every two months. The following are now ready. VOL. I.-SAM SLICK'S NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE. " The first volume of Messrs. Hurst and Blackett's Standard Library of Cheap Editions of Popular Modern Works forms a very good beginning to what wi<l doubtless be a very successful undertaking. ' Nature and Human Nature' is one of the best of Sam Slick's witty and humorous productions, and well entitled to the large circulation which it cannot fail to obtain in its present convenient and cheap shape. The volume combines with the great recommendations of a clear, bold type, and good paper, the lesser, but still attractive merits, of being well illustrated and elegantly bound." Morning' Post. "This new and cheap edition of Sam Slick's popular work will be an acquisition to all lovers of wit and humour. Mr. Justice Haliburton's writings are so well known to the English public that no commendation is needed. The volume is very handsomely bound and illustrated, and the paper and type are excellent. It is in every way suited for a library edition, and as the names of Messrs. Hurst and Blackett, warrant the character of the works to be produced in their Standard Library, we have no doubt the project will be eminently successful." Sun. VOL. II.-JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN. " This is a very good and a very interesting work. It is designed to trace the career from boyhood to age of a perfect man a Christian gentleman, and it abounds in incident both well and highly wrought. Throughout it is conceived in a high spirit, and written with great ability, better than any former work, we think, of its deservedly successful author. This cheap and handsome new edition is worthy to pass freely from hand to hand, as a gift hook in many households." Examiner. "The new and cheaper edition of this interesting work will doubtless meet with great success. John Halifax, the hero of this most beautiful story, is no ordinary hero, and this, his history, is no ordinary book. It is a full-length portrait of a true gentleman, one of nature's own nobility. It is also the history of a home and a thoroughly English one. The work abounds in incident, and many of the scenes are full of graphic power and true pathos. It is a book that few will read without becoming wiser and better." Scotsman VOL. III.-THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS. BY ELIOT WARBURTON. "Independent of its value as an original narrative, and its useful and interesting information, this work is remarkable for the colouring power and play of fancy with which its descriptions are enlivened. Among its greatest and most lasting charms is its reverent and serious spirit." Quarterly Rvvieu 1 "A book calculated to prove more practically useful was never penned than 'The Crescent and the Cross' a work which surpasses all others in its homage for the sub- lime and its love for the beautiful in those famous regions consecrated to everlasting immortality in the annals of the prophets, and which no other writer has ever depicted with a pencil at once so reverent and so picturesque." Sun. VOL. IV. NATHALIE. BY JULIA KAVANAGH. '"Nathalie ' is Miss Kavanagh's best imaginative effort. Its manner is gracious and attractive. Its matter is good. A sentiment, a tenderness, are commanded by her which ate as individual as they are elegant. We should not-soon come to an end were we to specify all the delicate touches and attractive pictures which place ' Nathalie* high among books of its class." Athenaeum, VOL. V. A WOMAN'S THOUGHTS ABOUT WOMEN. BY THE AUTHOR OF "JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN." "A book of sound counsel. It is one of the most sensible works of its kind, well-writ- ten, true-hearted, and altogether practical. Whoever wishes to give advice to a young lady may thank the author for means of doing so." Examiner. HURST AND BLACKETT'S STANDARD LIBRARY OF CHEAP EDITIONS. Each in a single volume, elegantly printed, bound, and illustrated, price 5s. VOL. VI.-ADAM GRAEME, OP MOSSGRAY. BY THE AUTHOR OF "MRS. MARGARET MAITLAND." "' Adam Graeme' is a story awakening genuine emotions of interest and delight by Its admirable pictures of Scottish life and scenery. The eloquent author sets before us the essential attributes of Christian virtue, their deep and silent workings in the heart, and their beautiful manifestations In the life, with a delicacy, a power, and a truth which can hardly be surpassed." Morning Post. VOL. VII.-SAM SLICK'S WISE SAWS AND MODERN INSTANCES. "The humour of Sam Slick is inexhaustible. He is ever and everywhere a welcome visitor; smiles greet his approach, and wit and wisdom hang upon his tongue. The present production is remarkable alike for its racy humour, its sound philosophy, the felicity of its illustrations, and the delicacy of its satire." Post. VOL. Vlii.-CARDINAL WISEMAN'S RECOLLECTIONS OF THE LAST FOUR POPES. "A picturesque book on Rome and its ecclesiastical sovereigns, by an eloquent Roman Catholic. Cardinal Wiseman has here treated a special subject with so much generality and geniality, that his recollections will excite no ill-feeling in those who are most conscientiously opposed to every idea of human infallibity represented in Papal domination." Athenaeum. VOL. IX.-A LIFE FOR A LIFE. BY THE AUTHOR OF "JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN." "We are always glad to welcome Miss Muloch. She writes from her own convictions, and she has the power not only to conceive clearly what it is that she wishes to say, but to express it in language effective and vigorous. In ' A Life for a Life' she is fortunate in a good subject, and she has produced a work of strong effect. The reader having read the book through for the story, will be apt (if he be of our persuasion) to return and read again many pages and passages with greater pleasure than on a first perusal. The whole book in replete with a graceful, tender delicacy ; and in addition toils other merits, it is written in good careful English." Athenaeum. VOL. X.-THE OLD COURT SUBURB. BY LEIGH HUNT. "A delightful book, of which the charm begins at the first line on the first page, for full of quaint and pleasant memories is the phrase that is its title, ' The Old Court Suburb.' Very full too, both of quaint and pleasant memories is the line that designates the author. It is the name of the most cheerful of chroniclers, the best of remembrancers of good things, the most polished and entertaining of educated gossips 'The Old Court Suburb' is a work that will be welcome to all readers, and most welcome to those who have a love for the best kinds of reading." Examiner. VOL. XL-MARGARET AND HER BRIDESMAIDS. "We may save ourselves the trouble of giving any lengthened review of this work, for we recommend all who are in search of a fascinating novel to read it for themselves. They will find it well worth their while. There are a freshness and originality about it quite charming, and there is a certain nobleness In the treatment both of sentiment and incident which is not often found." Athenaeum. VOL. XII. THE OLD JUDGE. BY SAM SLICK. "These popular sketches, in which the Author of ' Sam Slick' paints Nova Scotian life, form the 12th Volume of Messrs Hurst and Blackett's Standard Library of Modern Works. The publications included in this Library haVe all been of good quality ; many give infor- mation while they entertain, and of that class the book before us is a specimen. The manner in which the Cheap Editions forming the series is produced deserves especial mention. The paper and print are unexceptional; there is a steel engraving in each volume, and the outsides of them will satisfy the purchaser who likes to see a regiment of books in handsome uniform." Examiner. HURST AND BLACKETT'S STANDARD LIBRARY OF CHEAP EDITIONS. Each in a single volume, elegantly printed, bound, and illustrated, price 5s. VOL. XIII. DARIEN. BY ELIOT WARBURTON. "This last production, from the pen of the author of 'The Crescent and the Cross,' has the same elements of a very wide popularity. It will please its thousands." Globe. " We have seldom met with any work in which the realities of history and the poetry of fiction were more happily interwoven." Illustrated News. VOL. XIV.-FAMILY ROMANCE ; OR, DOMESTIC ANNALS OF THE ARISTOCRACY. I^ SIR BERNARD BURKE, ULSTER KINO OF ARMS. " It were impossible to praise too highly as a work of amusement this most interesting book, whether we should have regard to its excellent plan or its not less excellent exe- cution. It ought to be found on every drawing-room table. Here you have nearly fifty captivating romances with the pith of all their interest preserved in undiminished poig- nancy, and any one may be read in half an hour. It is not the least of their merits that the romances are founded on fact or what, at least, has been handed down for truth by long tradition and the romance of reality far exceeds the romance of fiction." Standard. VOL. XV. THE LAIRD OF NORLAW. BY THE AUTHOR OF "MARGARET MAITLAND." " In this delightful work Scottish life and character, in connection with the for- tunes of the house of Norlaw, are delineated with truly artistic skill. The plot of the tale is simple, but the incidents with which it is interwoven are highly wrought and dramatic in their effect, and altogether there is a fascination about the work which holds the attention spell-bound from the first page to the last." Herald. VOL. XVI. THE ENGLISHWOMAN IN ITALY. BY MRS. G. GRETTON. " Mrs. Gretton had opportunities which rarely fall to the lot of strangers of becoming acquainted with the inner life and habits of a part of the Italian peninsula which is the very centre of the national crisis. We can praise her performance as interesting, uuex- aggerated, and full of opportune instruction." The Times. VOL. XVII. NOTHING NEW. BY THE AUTHOR OF "JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN." " We cordially commend this book. The same graphic power, deep pathos, heall ul sentiment, and masterly execution, which place that beautiful work 'John Haliiux,' among the English Classsics, are everywhere displayed." Chronicle. VOL XVIII. THE LIFE OF JEANNE D'ALBRET. BY MISS FREER. "We have read this book with great pleasure, and have no hesitation in recommending it to general perusal. It reflects the highest credit on the industry and ability of Miss Freer. Nothing can be more interesting than her .Uory cf the life of Jeanne D'Albret, and the narrative is as trustworthy as it is attractive." 1'ost. VOL XIX. THE VALLEY OF A HUNDRED FIRES. BY THE AUTHOR OF "MARGARET AND HER BRIDESMAIDS." "We know no novel of the. last three or four years to equal this latest production of the popular authoress of ' Margaret and her Bridesmaids.' If asked to classify it, we should give it a place between 'John Halifax* and 'The Caxtons.' " Herald. VOL. XX.-THE ROMANCE OF THE FORUM. BY PETER BURKE, SKRJKANT AT LAW. (January 1862.) "This attractive work will be read with much interest. It contains a great variety o singular and highly romantic stories." John Bull. -< -< University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. SEP 2 5 DUE2WK6 1998 1 t