VI. Christianity and Antichristianism

I LAID down Mr. Stephen's first article on Caesarism and Ultramontanism with disappointment; I have now read through his second with satisfaction; not, indeed, without regret. It is a still further and ampler confirmation of the assertion in my last paper, that the independence and supremacy of the Christian Church can not be denied without denying the Christian revelation. Mr. Stephen has again explicitly done this, and in terms which I have no will to repeat.

As I read through his article I noted certain epithets, phrases, and figures of speech which struck me as hardly worthy of a grave subject or usual in educated writers. My first thought was to make a catena of them; but when I reached the end I felt that it would give to this article a character of personality. I decided, therefore, to disconnect altogether this manner of writing from the defence of Revelation, and indeed I hope I may say from myself. Nevertheless, though I shall refrain from reference to Mr. Stephen, I shall take in as we go on, and reply to, such of his argu ments or assertions as are relevant to the point I have to maintain. Let me, therefore, re-state the purpose I have had in view.

In the essay on Csesarism I condemned the Falck laws and justified the resistance of the German Bishops on the ground that the civil power of Prussia had violated the spiritual office and liberty of the Church. Further, I justified this assertion by affirming that the Church has a spiritual authority, independent of all civil powers, and, within its own sphere of faith and morals, supreme. I was met by the charge that this is Ultramontanism. I answered by saying that it is Christianity; that, in this respect, Christianity and Ultramontanism are one and the same; that all Christian Churches, even while they disclaim infallibility, assert the same independence for themselves; that all Christians, even those who deny the institution of a visible Church, assert the same independence and supremacy of revealed truth conveyed to them by some channel or test of Divine certainty. It was, therefore, strictly relevant to bring forward Anglicans, Presbyte rians, Free-Kirkmen, and Nonconformists as witnesses. Even these, while they deny infallibility, claim the same spiritual independence of all civil powers, and would regard the Falck laws as violations of religious liberty and of conscience.

For instance, neither the Archbishop of Canterbury, nor the Moderators of the Kirk or of the Free Kirk, nor the President of the Wesleyan Conference, nor any Nonconformist, would ordain or admit to their ministry any man not trained and tested by themselves. None of them would allow the claim of the civil power to decide who ought or who ought not to be excommunicated, or put out of his office as a religious teacher of youth. And this resistance- would be offered on one and the same principle, namely, that the Church visible, or invisible as some of them say, is independent of all civil powers, and in such questions supreme.

It is, therefore, of no use, it is simply irrelevant, to talk of the differences and mutual contradictions of these bodies.

If they be in contention with each other, so much the better for my argument. Multiply their contradic tions as you will, you do but strengthen my proof. If, in spite of all contentions, they agree at least in this, then I claim it as a still stronger proof that such points as they hold in common are of the essence of Christianity. But they are also of the essence of Ultramontanism. This answer, then, is clear gain to my thesis.

The Spectator of April 4, 1874, has borne a direct testimony to the truth of my main position, namely, that in the claim to be, within the spiritual sphere, separate from all civil powers, and superior to them, Ultramontanism and Christianity are identical. It was for this precise reason that I forbore, in the last article, to quote any Catholic evidence. It was for this also that I widened out the proof from the extremes of Anglicanism to the extreme of Pietism. By this evidence I showed beyond contradiction that, whatsoever be the notions entertained by Christian bodies or sects as to the form or constitution of the Church, they all alike refuse to receive from the civil powers the definitions of doctrine, or the forms of worship, or the matter of religious belief; thereby declaring that Revelation has a jurisdiction over conscience separate from and superior to all prerogatives of Princes and all legislation of States.

The Spectator says that I have taken (pains to prove what needed no proof, that most Christian Churches have hitherto, whether consistently or inconsistently with their practice, held highly anti-Erastian views, and generally assumed that a certain sort of spiritual infallibility was, somehow or other, within their reach. That is perfectly true, and, as we hold, a very natural mistake for a body, to which a Divine Revelation had been committed, to make.' It is strange that this error should be universal. Whether they all possess it or not, this common belief points to a truth which the Spectator has well put in these words: ' Nothing seems more natural a priori than that, if God reveals any truth to man, He should take precautions for exactly defining and preserving the truths so revealed — other wise the revelation would be misunderstood, and, so far as it was misunderstood, would be no revelation.' The Spectator adds, that ' we are just beginning to under stand that God has not done so.'1 Of this we must speak hereafter.

I am, however, surprised that the thoughtful and candid writer in the Spectator should not perceive that the force of the argument is greatly increased by the fact that the same claim is made by every community of Christians ' in the widest possible acceptance of the terms.' To be separate, therefore, from civil powers and to be supreme in matters of faith — for this only, and not infallibility, is our present thesis — is not peculiar to Ultramontanism. It is universal in all Christian bodies and sects; all alike claim this independence and

1 April 4, 1874, p. 442.

supremacy. I repeat this, and insist upon it for an obvious reason. It demonstrates the inconsiderateness or the bad faith of those who are endeavouring to crush Ultramontanism under the mountains of popular odium, suspicion, and Falck laws, on the charge that it claims to be independent of all civil powers, and, in the sphere of faith, supreme. So does every Christian Church, communion, and sect upon earth. Crush them all if you can. Be open and sincere. Cry Ecrasez Vinfdme. Cry aloud and spare not. Let us know what you are, and we shall know how to meet you. Tell us at once that you are Antichristian. But do not profess to be Christians; do not pretend that you are believers in Christianity, or in a Divine Revelation. Now it was to take the mask off this pretence that I said in the essay which has provoked so much criticism, ' What I have here asserted is Ultramontanism, but it is not Ultramontanism alone; it is Christianity as it has been held by all men, in all ages, by Catholics and Protestants alike' (' Caesarism and Ultramontanism/ p. 145).

I believe, indeed, that the reckless habit of talking and writing, common at this day, may have betrayed some men who sincerely believe in Christianity into the grave fault of denouncing Ultramontanism, without reflecting that in so doing they are destroying the base of their own Christian belief. But of this I am sure: the journals of the Revolution, which are at this time denouncing Ultramontanism with every form of calumny in all countries, and the foreign correspondents of our own newspapers, who are playing the same game in

England, are, with more or less of consciousness, writing down Christianity. They wish to pull down all Churches, to destroy Christian education, and to efface the Christian name. My purpose, then, has been to divide the camps; to show that the Christian Church claims independence and supremacy in all matters of Divine Revelation, not because it is Ultramontane, but because it is Christian; that if this be Ultramontanism, the Established Kirk of Scotland, the Wesleyan Conference, are all alike Ultramontane; and that the persistent re iteration of this stupid clamour is a proof of shallowness or of bad faith. I shall not be for a moment suspected of offering this dilemma to the courteous and evidently sincere critic in the Spectator.

One further remark in the Spectator ought to be noticed. The writer says that I have not proved that a Church has been founded ' with the constitutions and powers that I claim for my Church, but only that Christ has been hitherto generally understood by Christians in all ages to have done so.'2 What further proof could I have offered? If Christians of all ages have so under stood, who shall know better than they? The Spectator goes on to say that even this I have established only in the widest possible acceptation of the terms. That was precisely my intention.

For my answer is this. I have proved that the spiritual independence and supremacy of the Church is no question of ' constitutions' or ' forms,' but of the Divine authority of truth; that every Christian body, whether it hold the Church to be visible or invisible, 2 Spectator, April 4, 1874, p. 442.

holds its authority as a teacher to be Divine, independent of all civil powers, and supreme in its own sphere. I am sure that the friend, whose words I quote without his leave or knowledge, will forgive me for doing so. An Independent minister of high and deserved influence, and of much cultivation, in a letter just received, writes as follows: ' I believe most earnestly in the Personal Comforter, Interpreter, and G-uide. There is a sentence of Bishop Hoadley's which, much as I sympathise with some of Hoadley's views, seems to me about as far as possible from the truth. He says, " Christ, the chief captain of the army, being absent and invisible, instead of leaving officers whom His soldiers are bound to obey, has left orders in writing to be considered and consulted by every soldier in His army." I think that this ex presses very fairly the popular Protestant view; but to me " orders in writing" in spiritual matters are a dreary substitute for a living guide, in whose perpetual presence I believe, and in whose guidance of the Church I trust.' He then adds, ' But I cannot see the kind of guidance which I seem taught to look for in any authoritative human organ, be it Council or Pope.'

In the act of rejecting ' any human organ,' which I also do as earnestly and peremptorily as this thoughtful writer, he affirms the existence of an order divinely guided for the perpetuity of truth. This is, in effect, a Church, ' in which there is neither Pope nor Council;' nevertheless it is a Divine organ of perpetual guidance in truth. The Spectator will not tell us that such ' a divinely guided Church' is neither independent of civil powers, nor in its spiritual office supreme. No one

VOL. II. P has recognised this more clearly or affirmed it more broadly than the Spectator in many valuable articles.

I will now take up the main argument where I left it last time.

My thesis, then, is this: not only, as Mr. Stephen somewhat hastily supposes, that a Divine Revelation depends on God alone, a truism that he might easily have known to be unlikely to be found in his pages or in mine, but that the Kevelation of Christianity has been so given and left, as Bishop Butler says, that the evidence for it in the natural order of human and historical evidence amounts to moral certainty; and, as the Catholic faith further affirms, that this certainty is also Divine.

The Act of Faith made by every Catholic contains two points: the first, ' I believe all that God has revealed;' the second, 'I believe all that the Church teaches;' or, in other words, ' I acknowledge God as the sole fountain of Revelation; and the Church as the sole channel of what He has revealed.'

Now in the last paper I have stated the position of those who believe the first of these two propositions. They rest on the moral certainty of human and historical evidence. I have now to go on and to state the position of those who believe that God has not only revealed His truth, but has made a Divine and imperish able provision for the custody, perpetuity, and promulgation of His truth to the world, that is to say, through. the channel of His Church, divinely founded, divinely preserved from error, and divinely assisted in the declaration of truth.

With Schlegel I have affirmed, and I affirm again, that the maximum of evidence for the history of the past is to be found in the witness of the Catholic Church. I have pointed out how this witness contains in itself all the sources of truth, namely, sense, reason, testimony, and authority. I have affirmed that authority has two senses, obvious to any mind patient enough to think. In its popular sense it stands for command or rule; in its stricter sense it stands for the motive of belief. We say, ' I have this on the authority of an eye-witness.' In this way of speaking it is equivalent to evidence. I have, in this sense, affirmed that the authority of the Church is evidence of the Divine facts which it attests. The eye-witnesses and ear- witnesses of those facts delivered their evidence to others. These again, after testing the evidence, believed on their authority. The authority of the Apostles was grounded on their personal evidence of the facts which they had seen and heard. There is no confusion of terms here. Words clink as men think; and it needs little art to make a jingle out of what we do not understand.

The witness, therefore, of the Catholic Church is* both a motive of belief and the source from which we receive the evidence on which we believe the Divine facts of Christianity. That witness contains in itself the personal testimony of those who were eye-witnesses and ear- witnesses of the facts they attested. Their testimony is intrinsically certain. To reject such evidence is to isolate the human mind, and to confine it in a state of irrational scepticism or self-sufficient ignorance of human history and of human life. Such a scepticism destroys the moral relations of human society by destroying the trust which binds human life together; 'Perit,' as I quoted from Grotius, ' omnis quse inter parentes liberosque est pietas, ut quos haud aliter noscamus.'

The witness of the Church, then, has ultimately this element of personal evidence and intrinsic certainty in itself. It has also the world-wide and accumulating extrinsic evidence of the whole of Christendom. If this intrinsic certainty never grows greater, at least it never grows less. It is the same to-day as it was in the beginning. Its safe custody and unchanged tradition is secured and attested by the extrinsic evidence of the whole Church from the beginning until now. Such was and is my argument. When any man says, in reply to this, ' How very true Buddhism and Brahminism must have grown by long keeping and earnest belief,' I can only hold my peace; especially when it is the same person who is telling others that they do not understand what proof or evidence means. Such things need no answer.

To expose this fully let us take a parallel.

The fact that Charlemagne was consecrated emperor by Pope Leo III. in the Basilica of St. Peter's on

Christmas-eve in the year 800 is, I suppose, attested by the evidence of eye-witnesses and ear-witnesses whose testimony is intrinsically certain. This fact laid the foundation of the Holy Koman Empire, which, as Mr.

Bryce tells us, lingered on till the year 1806. For a thousand years the nations of Christendom have believed

" in the fact and the place and the date and the agent of that consecration. The tradition of Christendom has guarded and handed on that original testimony. It was intrinsically certain at the first. It has never be come more certain or less certain in itself; but the extrinsic historical tradition which has guarded and delivered it to every successive age has attached to it an ever- accumulating security of its unchanged identity and truth.

Let me take another illustration. I remember hearing Lord Macaulay say that some day the New Zealanders may, perhaps, describe the conquest of their country as the exploit of two valorous chieftains called Lion and Unicorn, just as we describe the conquest of England by Hengist and Horsa. Now I suppose no calm man would believe that this fiction would become true by any extent or continuity of tradition, nor would think that any other man of sound mind could have ever said or thought that falsehood could grow into truth.

What is false in the beginning can never become true by any length of transmission; what in the begin ning is true, if safely guarded from change, remains true for ever. It is of those who refuse to believe on the evidence of legitimate authority that our Lord said, 1 They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them: if they hear not Moses and the Prophets, neither will they believe if one rise again from the dead.'

Let us, then, go on.

If there be a fact of past history adequately proved by an unbroken succession of witnesses running up from our time to the time of its occurrence, and to the evidence of those who saw and heard what they attested, it is the institution of the Christian Church by its Divine Founder, and its spread throughout the world by those to whom He gave commission and commandment for that purpose. If there be any continuous history, unbroken in its tradition, sedulously recorded in its chief events, diligently maintained in all the links of its succession, it is the history of the world-wide Episcopate of the Church. Every episcopal see became the guardian of its unwritten and written testimony. At every succession of its Bishops the rightful order and validity of every act by which its authority and witness were transmitted were guarded by the most vigilant and jealous care. What was done at Jerusalem and Antioch and Alexandria and Home was done in every episcopal see founded in every city, however small and remote, in the album of Imperial Home. The whole Empire became conscious that there had arisen in the midst of it an organised and universal system, absolutely one in its corporate existence, and in the mutual relations and inter-communion of its members. It was conscious also that this system did not spring from it self, nor depend on its authority; that it lived a life apart from the Empire; that its laws and its customs, its tribunals and its jurisdiction, were wholly its own and supreme within itself. The Empire legislated against it as a ' religio illicita' and as a ' societas illicita.' The Imperial power strove for three hundred years to sweep it out from its borders. But there it was. And there it is to this day. If cut down it sprang up again. If thinned by persecution it multiplied itself more rapidly. Its organisation, if broken, always renewed itself. The succession of its Bishops could never be cut off. When one fell another rose; and that, not here and there, but everywhere. It con fronted the Praetors in the provinces and the Ca3sars on the Palatine Hill. Everywhere it said the same thing. Everywhere it claimed to be independent of all civil powers, and within its Divine office supreme. And for that independence and supremacy of its spiritual office it went everywhere, and gladly, to prison and to death. If, I say, there can be found a historical fact in the world which commands the belief of rational men, it is the history of the Christian Church — a history which alone solves the phenomenon of its present visible existence, its world-wide presence, and its perfect identity in every place. The history of the Sovereigns of Eng land is not more evidently traceable than the history of the Koman Pontiffs; the history of the Parliaments of England is not more patent than the history of the (Ecumenical Councils, which for eighteen hundred years have legislated for the Catholic Church. If there be anything provable by historical evidence it is, that the Catholic Church from the beginning has claimed, and by suffering has vindicated, its spiritual independence and supremacy. This claim is not more evident, by reason of its uniform and universal assertion, than by the uniform and universal persecution it has thereby drawn upon itself in every country and in every age. And that persecution, impotent to destroy, has set its seal to the history and the prerogatives of the Christian Church.

Thus far I have treated the Christian Church as a human and historical witness attesting its own origin, constitution, powers, and jurisdiction. If its witness he not credible, human history exists no longer: there is no fact beyond our eyesight or the reach of our arm to be believed: for all beyond these are hearsay or secondhand. The whole of my arguments hitherto may be used by all Christian communions who rest their motives for believing in Christianity upon the universal testimony of the Christian world. Against Mr. Stephen's sceptical criticisms their argument is invincible. The theory of calling up the twelve Apostles in the nineteenth century for cross-examination in the Court of Queen's Bench is a theory which subverts the whole moral order of human life. Their testimony was taken and tested at the time and on the spot, and it abides for ever. And here I might close the argument, for I am arguing, not with those who reject the evidence of Christian history, but with those who profess to believe it. And I am hardly willing to continue the argument, because I foresee that what I have to add will be as sailed as affording a cheap and easy diversion from the position I have hitherto defended in behalf of all who retain the Christian name.

Nevertheless I will go on, that I may fully and openly state the whole case of Christianity against Caesarism. Hitherto I have argued upon a basis on which all Christians stand together. But the argument does not end here: I will therefore take it up again and complete it. The Catholic Church affirms all I have advanced, and more. But I have already said that I will not argue here and now that the Catholic Church exclusively possesses the independence and supremacy of which we are treating. It will be enough for the present to show that it possesses these prerogatives eminenter, and for special reasons.

Some of these arguments are common in their kind to all other Christian bodies or communions — such, I mean, as rest on Scripture, tradition, and reason. There remains still one other foundation of my argument, which, though I touched it only in passing, has been copiously used as a topic to excite odium or incredulity: I mean the infallibility of the Church and of its Head. It is right therefore that I should, with all frankness, state what is our faith on this point, and that I should make the grounds of that faith as clear and explicit as I can.

I will therefore do so, and all the more willingly because Mr. Stephen has quoted a book published by me some years ago on the Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost, and has twice or three times described its purport in words which either prove that he did not understand so much as the terms of the subject, or that, understanding them, he could not refrain from so representing them as to excite odium. I will therefore, partly by quotation, and partly by a summary, give the argument of the book. To do so I shall be forced into the most sacred subjects. But Mr. Stephen is responsible for the introduction of this matter into the Contemporary Review. Once more I must warn my readers that I proceed to this matter not as if it were necessary against Mr. Stephen's objections. Once more I repeat that, as a reply to his arguments, the voice of Christen dom and the evidence of Christian history are enough.

I have, I hope, already shown that there is no Christian nor body of Christians that does not believe in the existence of the Church, whether visible or in visible, whether indivisible or divided; and there is no Christian or body of Christians which does not claim for the Church, understood, as it may be, in various ways, a Divine authority independent and, within its sphere, supreme. The existence of a Church divinely founded and with a Divine office is a part of Christianity. It is not only manifest in the world, but recorded in the New Testament. I had therefore no need of citing Catholic witnesses to prove that Jesus Christ established a Church with the constitution and powers which I claim for my Church, for in my argument against Caesarism I had claimed only the independence and supremacy of the Church in matter of revealed truth. Every Church, communion, and sect whatsoever makes the same identical claim. I shall therefore leave Mr. Stephen's thrrd proposition, and proceed to the fourth, which is as follows:

' My Church is the Church so established, and as such possesses the powers in question.'

But the powers in question are precisely independence and supreme authority in matter of faith and morals. To this I will now go on. I am afraid that I shall disappoint all who desire to see a controversy among those whom I have cited as witnesses. I am indeed going to proye that the Catholic and Eoman Church, as a witness, teacher, and judge of faith and morals, is within that sphere independent of all civil powers and supreme. But I am not going to prove here and now that the Catholic and Roman Church exclusively possesses this Divine office. If I were to enter upon this controversy I should chiefly gratify those who wish to find or to make contentions in the Christian world. My desire is to rally all Christians in one common cause against the growing Antichristianism of the day. Of one thing I am confident. The people of these three kingdoms are a Christian people. They have no sympathy with infidelity, impiety, or profaneness. They retain with a tenacious belief two great traditional facts: first, that Christianity is a Divine Revelation; and secondly, that the Holy Scriptures are the Word of God. They believe also in the great outlines of the Christian faith. Rationalistic infidelity is the disease of indivi duals among us. The people of England and Scot land would never for a moment tolerate a royal religion such as the Evangelical Church set up in Prussia, nor an imperial supremacy such as the Falck laws.

They would refuse obedience to all such violations of Christian liberty on precisely the same principles as are maintained by the Archbishop of Posen and the Archbishop of Cologne. I have already given their testimony to the constitution and office of the Christian Church as they believe it. It is enough for my argument to show that all that they claim for themselves is to be found in an eminent degree and above all in the Catholic Church. This, at least, they do not deny, and this for my present argument against their adversaries and ours is enough.

It cannot be necessary for me to enter into an historical proof that the Catholic and Koman Church reaches upwards from the present day to the mission of the Apostles, or that the great family of nations which compose it now is the lineal descendant of that family of all nations which the Apostles knit together. There has never been but one Church of all nations, and out of that one Church all separate communions or churches have sprung. But their separation, whether in the East or West, whether in ancient or modern centuries, has not diminished the identity nor the universality of the Catholic Church. It still remains in its unity and world-wide extension, with its unbroken Episcopate under one supreme Head and its nineteen (Ecumenical Councils, the one chief witness both by visible presence, audible voice, and unity of testimony to the Divine fact of the Incarnation and to the revelation of Christianity. Take Home out of Christendom, what remains? What Church can trace an unbroken line and a universal presence for the last eighteen hundred years? What Church has continuity if Rome has not? What Church has universality if Rome be taken away? What Church speaks in every language under heaven, if it be not the Church Catholic and Roman, which the other day called together the pastors of some thirty nations in the Council of the Vatican?

What other Church presents at this hour to the world the unity of the Apostles, who preached one doc trine in every place; what other has a continuous identity with itself in all successions of time? The doctrines which we preach day by day in England our forefathers defended and suffered for three hundred years ago; and the same in all fulness and precision may be read in Bede's History of the Anglo-Saxon race. What was preached by Bede in the seventh century was preached last Sunday, and will be preached next Sunday, in England, in China, in Australia, and in Spain; and for this same faith the pastors and people of Germany are contending now, as our English forefathers con tended three centuries ago. Through all this tract of time, and throughout this world-wide unity, the pastors and the people of the Catholic Church have always held as a doctrine of revealed truth that the authority of the Church in the sphere of faith and morals is by Divine institution independent of all civil power, and supreme over all authority of man. If the Church of England and the Kirk of Scotland can claim to be independent and supreme in all matter of revealed truth, a fortiori the Catholic and Koman Church can make good its claim. All that they possess they derive, if not from us, at least through us. Every argument that can be advanced by them has greater force when advanced by the Catholic and Eoman Church. Every proof from the testimonies of Scripture tells in the first place in our behalf. Every proof drawn from tradition if it reach to them must first include, if it does not even spring from, us. This at least is certain, that if the quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus is to be verified now on earth, it can be verified eminently in the One Body which has unbroken continuity, universality in extent, and identity of faith in every place.

For my present argument, then, it is enough to show that what is claimed by every Christian communion may be shown to exist in an eminent and especial degree in the Catholic and Koman Church.

I will now go on, and I must enter upon the region of theology in which the human and historical certainty of Kevelation is shown to be also Divine, and secured by a Divine provision.

It is not by accident, or by mere order of enumeration, that in the Baptismal Creed we say, ' I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church.' These two articles are united because the Holy Spirit is united with the Church. And this union is indissoluble. It is the source of supernatural endowments to the Church which can never be absent from it, or suspended in their operation. The Church, of all ages and of all times, is therefore immutable in its knowledge, discernment, and enunciation of the truth, in virtue of its in dissoluble union with the Spirit of Truth, and of His perpetual guidance; whereby He directs its teaching not only from council to council, and from age to age, with an intermittent and broken utterance, but always and at all times, by the continuous enunciation of the Faith.

What I here assert is the doctrine of the Scriptures, Fathers, and Theologians, and the faith of all Catholics. I might assume that the evidence of Scripture is too obvious to need quotation, but I will give the following.

The testimonies from Scripture, being familiar to all, shall be recited as briefly as possible.

Our Lord promised that His departure should be followed by the advent of a Person like Himself — another Paraclete — the Spirit of Truth, who proceedeth from the Father: ' I will ask the Father, and He shall give you another Paraclete, that He may abide with you for ever. The Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, nor knoweth Him: but you shall know Him, because He shall abide with you, and shall be in you.'8

' The Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you.'8

' It is expedient for you that I go; for if I go not, the Paraclete will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.'4

' When He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He will teach you all truth. For He shall not speak of Him self; but what things soever He shall hear, He shall speak; and the things that are to come He shall show you. He shall glorify Me, because He shall receive of Mine, and shall show it to you. All things whatsoever the Father hath are Mine. Therefore I said, He shall receive of Mine, and show it to you.'4

The fulfilment of this promise ten days after the Ascension was accomplished on the day of Pentecost by the personal advent of the Holy Ghost, to abide for ever as the Guide and Teacher of the faithful in the name and stead of the Incarnate Son. I forbear to quote the second chapter of the book of Acts, in which

3 S. John xiv. 16, 17, 26.

4 Ibid. xvi. 7, 13-16. Eph. iv. 4-16. Rom. xii. 4, 5. 1 Cor. xii. 11-14, 27. Eph. i. 19-23. S. John vii. 39.

this Divine fact is recorded by the Holy Spirit Him self.

S. Paul has traced out the events and a succession in this Divine order, connecting them with the creation and organisation of the Church, where he says, ' One body and one spirit: as you are called in one hope of your calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism. One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in us all. But to every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the giving of Christ. Wherefore He saith, Ascending on high, He led captivity captive: He gave gifts to men. Now that He ascended, what is it, but because He also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that de scended is the same also that ascended above all the heavens, that He might fill all things. And He gave some apostles, and some prophets, and other some evangelists, and other some pastors and doctors. For the perfection of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, until we all meet into the unity of faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the age of the fulness of Christ: that henceforth we be no more children tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the wickedness of men, by cunning craftiness, by which they lie in wait to deceive. But doing the truth in charity, we may in all things grow up in Him who is the Head, even Christ: from whom the whole body, being compacted and fitly joined together, by what every joint supplieth, according to the operation of the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in charity.'6

The same delineation of the Church as the mystical hody runs through the Epistles to the Eomans and the Corinthians. ' For as in one hody we have many members, but all members have not the same office; so we being many are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.'6

Again to the Corinthians, after enumerating with great particularity the gifts and operations of the Holy Ghost, he adds that ' all these things one and the same Spirit worketh, dividing to every one according as He will. For as the body is one and hath many members; and all the members of the body, whereas they are many, yet are one body; so also is Christ. For in one Spirit were we all baptised into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free; and in one Spirit we have all been made to drink. For the body also is not one member, but many Now you are the body of Christ, and members of member.'7

These passages explicitly declare that the Church is a living body, made up of Head and members inhabited by the Spirit of Truth, who is a Divine Person; that it is complete in its organisation, indefectible in its life, always in possession of the truth, and constituted to be the channel and the organ of that truth to mankind. It is expressly described as independent of all human teachers, and dependent on God alone, itself a Divine witness and a Divine teacher. The same is the doc-

5 EPh- iv. 4-16. s Rom. xjj. 45.

7 1 Cor. xii. 11-14, 27. Eph. i. 19-23. S. John vii. 39. VOL. II.

trine of the Fathers. I forbear from quoting more than one or two passages. S. Augustin says:

' What the soul is to the body of man, that the Holy Ghost is to the body of Christ, which is the Church. What the Holy Ghost does in the whole Church, that the soul does in all the members of one body.... In the body of a man it may happen that a member — the hand, the finger, or the foot — may be cut off. Does the soul follow the severed member? While it was in the body it was alive; cut off, its life is lost. So a man is a Christian and a Catholic while he is alive in the body; cut off, he be comes a heretic. The Holy Ghost does not follow the amputated limb.'8

Again he says:

' The body is made up of many members, and one spirit quickens them all.... The offices of the members are divided severally, but one spirit holds all in one. Many are commanded, and many things are done; there is one only who commands, and one who is obeyed. What our spirit — that is, our soul — is to our members, that the Holy Ghost is to the members of Christ to the body of Christ, which is the Church. '9

From these principles S. Augustin declares the Church to possess a moral personality '. He says:

' The head and the body are one man; " Christ and the Church are one man.".... Therefore let Christ speak, because in Christ the Church speaks, and in the Church Christ speaks, both the body in the Head and the Head in the body.... Our Lord Jesus Christ often speaks Himself — that is, in His own per son, which is our Head — oftentimes in the person of His body, which we are — namely,* His Church.... that we may under stand the head and the body to consist by an integral unity, never to be put asunder after the manner of matrimony, of which it is said two shall be in one flesh.'

From all this he concludes:

' If there are two in one flesh, how not two in one voice T The same doctrine is copiouly taught by the Greek

8 S. Aug., Serm. in die Pentecost. 1, torn. v. p. 1090.

9 Ibid. Serm. 2, torn. v. p. 1091.

Fathers, such as S. Gregory Nazianzen and S. Cyril of Alexandria. It is also explicitly taught by S. Gregory the Great. The quotations are given in the work quoted by Mr. Stephen, the Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost, from p. 40 to p. 48.

I have said that the union between the Spirit of Truth and the mystical body of the Church is indissoluble. Before the Incarnation the Holy Spirit dwelt and wrought in the souls of men one by one, illuminating, converting, sanctifying, and perfecting those who were faithful. But the union between His presence and each individual man was conditional on.the correspondence and fidelity of his life and will. It was a dissoluble union, and in the multitudes who fell from grace it was actually dissolved: In the faithful that union was sustained to the end. We also are under the same law of individual probation. If we persevere in faith and obedience, the union between us and the presence of the Holy Spirit in us remains firm. If we fail, we dissolve it. This union is conditional, depending upon the finite, frail, and unstable will of men. It is the error of these later days to suppose the union of the Holy Spirit with the Church to be in like manner conditional and dissoluble.

It is manifest, however, that the union of the Holy Spirit with the Church is not conditional,' but absolute, depending upon no finite will, but upon the Divine Will alone. It is therefore indissoluble to all eternity. For it is constituted (1) by the union of the Holy Ghost with the Head of the Church, not only as God, but as Man, and in both these relations this union is indissoluble. It is constituted further (2) by the union of the Holy Spirit with the mystical body, which, as a body, is imperishable, though individuals in it may perish. There will never come a time when that body will cease to be, and therefore there will never come a time when the Holy Spirit will cease to be united to it. But that which shall be eternal is indissoluble also in time — the union, that is, of the Spirit with the body as a whole. Individuals may fall from it, as multitudes have fallen; provinces, nations, particular Churches, may fall from it; but the body still remains, its unity undivided, its life indefectible; and that because the line of the faithful is never broken.10

The union, therefore, of the Spirit with the body can never be dissolved. It is a Divine act analogous to the hypostatic union, whereby the two natures of God and man are eternally united in one Person. So the mystical body, the head and the members, constitute one moral person; and the Holy Ghost inhabiting that body, and diffusing His created grace throughout it, animates it. as the soul quickens the body of a man.

From this flow many truths. First, the Church is not a physical, but a mystical person, and all its endowments are derived from the Divine Person who is its Head, and from the Divine Person who is its Life. As in the Incarnation there is a communication of the Divine perfections to the humanity, so in the Church the perfections of the Holy Spirit become the endowments of the body. It is imperishable, because He is God; indivisibly one, because He is numerically

10 Eph. ii. 22.

one; holy, because He is the fountain of holiness; infallible both in believing and in teaching, because His illumination and His voice are immutable. The Church, therefore, being not a physical, but a moral person, depending not as we do, one by one, upon the fidelity of our human will, but depending as a body only on the Divine Will, it is not on trial or probation, but is itself the instrument of probation to mankind. The corporate existence of the Church cannot be affected by the frailty or sins of the human will, any more than the brightness of the firmament can be darkened by the dimness or the loss of human sight. It can no more be tainted by human sin than the holy sacraments, which are always immutably pure and divine, though all who come to them be impure and faithless. What the Church was in the beginning it is now and ever shall be in all the plenitude of its Divine endowments, because the union between the body and the Spirit is indissoluble, and the opera tions of the Spirit in the body are perpetual and absolute.

Thus the revelation of God is divinely preserved and divinely proposed to the world. A Divine reve lation in human custody would be soon lost; a Divine revelation expounded by human interpreters puts off its Divine character and becomes human: as S. Jerome says of the Scriptures when perverted by men, it is no longer the Word of God. A Church likewise, if subject to man, would cease to be a Church.

But God has provided that the Church cannot teach falsehood: that what He has revealed should be for ever preserved and enunciated by the perpetual presence and assistance of the same Spirit from whom the revelation originally came. And this gives us the basis of a Divine certainty and the rule of Divine faith.

(1) The voice of the living Church of this hour, when it declares what God has revealed, is no other than the voice of the Holy Spirit, and therefore gene rates Divine faith in those who believe. The Baptismal Creed represents at this day, in all the world, the preaching of the Apostles and the faith of Pentecost. It is the voice of the same Divine Teacher who spoke in the beginning, enunciating now the same truth.

(2) The -Decrees of General Councils are un doubtedly the voice of the Holy Ghost, both because they are the organs of the teaching of the Church, and because they have the pledge of a special Divine assistance, according to the needs of the Church and of the Faith.

(3) The Definitions and Decrees of Pontiffs speaking ex cathedra, or as the Head of the Church and to the whole Church, whether by Bull or Apostolic Letters or Encyclical or Brief, in matter of faith and morals, to many or -to one, are undoubtedly guided by the same Divine assistance, and are therefore infallible.

Now the Pontiffs, as Vicars of Jesus Christ, have a twofold relation: the one, to the Divine Head of the Church, of whom they are the visible representatives on earth; the other, to the whole body. And these two relations impart a special prerogative of grace to him that bears them. The endowments of the head, as

S. Augustin argues, are bestowed in behalf of the body. It is a small thing to say that the endowments of the body are the prerogatives of the head. The Vicar of Jesus Christ would bear no proportion to the body if, while it is infallible, he were not so. He would bear also no representative character if he were the fallible witness of an infallible Head. Though the analogy observed by S. Augustin between the head and the members cannot strictly apply to the Vicar of Christ and the members upon earth, nevertheless it invests him with a pre-eminence of guidance and direction over the whole body, which can neither be possessed by any other member of the body, nor by the whole body without him. This supreme office attaches to him personally and alone as representing to the body the prerogatives of its Divine Head. The infallibility of the Head of the Church extends to the whole matter of Kevelation — that is, to the Divine truth and the Divine law as revealed to us — and to all those facts or truths which are in contact with faith and morals.

If the relation between the body and the Spirit were conditional and dissoluble, then the enunciations of the Church might be fallible and subject to human criticism.

If the relation be absolute and indissoluble, then all its enunciations by Pontiffs, Councils, Traditions, Scriptures, and by the universal consent of the Church are Divine, and its voice also is Divine, being identified with the voice of its Divine Head in heaven. ' He that heareth you heareth Me.'

But that the relation between the body and the Spirit is absolute and indissoluble, the Theologians, Fathers, Scriptures, and the universal Church declare.

And therefore the infallibility of the Church is perpetual, and the truths of Revelation are so enunciated by the Church as to anticipate all research, and to exclude from their sphere all human criticism.11

Having thus stated the grounds on which Catholics believe the evidence on which we receive the revelation of Christianity to be certain, not only in the order of history, but by a special provision divinely ordained for its custody and perpetuity, I will add a few words on the attempt, so sedulously made, to find or to feign a division in the Catholic Church between Ultrarnontanes and non-Ultramontanes, and to pretend further that the non-Ultramontanes are Old Catholics, and that the Old Catholics are the true Catholics who reject the Vatican innovations.

All Catholics believe that the Catholic Church by Divine assistance is preserved from error, both in what it teaches and in what it believes; or, in other words, that the Church is infallible. The only question among Catholics was as to the organ by which this infallibility is to be exercised, and the test by which it is to be ascertained.

All Catholics believe that the Church, whether dispersed or gathered in one (Ecumenical Council, is infallible. In an (Ecumenical Council the whole Church is gathered in its Bishops with their Head.

11 Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost (Longmans, 1865), second edition.

Every definition of faith and morals promulgated by such a Council with its Head is, in the belief of all Catholics, divinely certain, that is, infallible. And every one who shall reject such a definition is a heretic, and -every one who shall deny such a Council to be (Ecumenical is excommunicated.

On all these points there has never been a question among Catholics. The self-called ' Old Catholics ' are therefore, ipso facto, heretical and excommunicate. They deny the Council of the Vatican to be (Ecumenical, and the definitions made by it to be doctrines of the faith.

Such was their first position. And such was the position of Dr. Wohlmann, Professor of Keligion in the Gymnasium of Braunsberg, justly excommunicated by the Bishop of Ermland. The Prussian Government, thinking that it had found its opportunity, supported Dr. Wohlmann against the Bishop, thereby putting itself visibly and irrevocably in the wrong. All its violence since that date is the transparent evidence of a will to crush those whom it had wronged.

But I leave this for the present.

The only question ever raised among Catholics as' to the organ and seat of infallibility was this: Whether the Divine assistance promised to the Church as a whole, including its Head, is promised to its Head when acting in behalf of the Church out of an (Ecumenical Council, or in the intervals between Council and Council. Let us take an analogy. The Crown is sovereign while Parliament is sitting; does it cease to be sovereign between Session and Session, or between Parliament and Parliament? An opinion sprang up in France, and was fostered by the French monarchs and courtiers from the time of Louis XIV., that the Head of the Church out of (Ecumenical Councils possessed indeed 'the chief authority in denning doctrines of faith,' but that such definitions were not irreformable, that is, infallible, ' until accepted by the Church.' I will not stay to point out the impossibility of this test. How is it to be applied? Who is to apply it? Who to judge of its application? What majority is to be the test of truth? What minority to be the proof of error? What is to become of definitions while the test is being applied? What is to check heresy in the mean while? What is to arrest controversy? What ad interim is to be believed as of faith? This is in fact the well-known theory of ' open questions.' It would need only a controversy on each of the twelve articles of the Baptismal Creed to make the whole faith an open question. And such, in fact, would be the possible state of the Christian Church if its Head could propound false doctrine for its reception. This incoherent theory existed only in France, and even there only in the theology of a school, and not of all members even of that school. It was imposed by royal mandate, but the Church in France never believed it. All theo logians were bound to teach it, but only a -few ever obeyed. Gallicanism here and there tainted a few Bishops, priests, and laymen, but, like the principles of 1789, it was never accepted by the Church of France. Its tradition was Catholic and Roman, or, as men would now say, Ultramontane. It endured the theology of its kings and their servants, but in the first (Ecumenical Council assembled after 1682, in union with the Catholic Episcopate, it extinguished Gallicanism for ever. If the Vatican Council had met and parted without condemning Gallicanism, it would have given to it a presumption of truth, or, at least, of probability, such as Lutheranism would have gained if the Council of Trent had spared it, or Arianism if it had been passed over in silence by the Council of Nicea.

I know nothing more dreary and hopeless than the floods of persistent misrepresentation of which the definition of the infallibility of the Head of the Church has been made the theme. It has been described as a dogma created and carried by the adulation of flat terers, the servility of sycophants, the ignorance of a packed majority, the credulity of weak minds, the superstition of bigots inspired by the ambition of courtiers, and the venality of place-hunters. Such have been the deliverances of the ' men of culture,' ' scientific his torians,' ' Old Catholics,' and ' German professors.' The utterances of ' Berlin Correspondents' were still more amusing. We were told that Pius IX. had received 'Divine attributes;' that, as was well known, he had eagerly sought, and at last obtained, his ' deification;' that he had been declared to be a ' Vice-God;' all this and oceans of ribaldry, blasphemy, and trash have been poured out from abroad over England. It is an astonishment to me to see how the common sense of Englishmen has waded through this 'great Serbonian bog' of nonsense, and come out safe on the other side. I confess that I have almost despaired at this deplorable revel of clamorous absurdity. To contradict was use less; to explain was worse. If exposed, the story was repeated next day. Now at last men begin to see that the infallibility of the Head of the Church is simply the question of how we are to ascertain the seat of the Di vine certainty on which we receive Christianity. This is highly disappointing and commonplace. It is, after all, only a part of the treatise De Locis Theologicis. All the sensational clamour about ' Divine attributes' subsides into a dry argument about the Kule of Faith. Now the Vatican Council denned the infallibility of its Head, because to deny it is to deny a Divine fact, and to expose the infallibility of the Church as a whole to a series of logical difficulties. This I can affirm of my own personal knowledge to have been the motive which caused the Bishops to be so uncompromising and in flexible. Any man who understands the infallibility of the Church will see this at a glance. They who do not understand it must, I fear, go on talking, writing, and thinking like our ' Berlin Correspondent.'

As I was writing these words, the Berlin Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph supplied me with an example, which will save the trouble of description. In the debate on the Supplementary Ecclesiastical Laws — the effect of which is to enable the Government to ' intern,' or to exile, all ecclesiastics who shall continue, for conscience' sake, to exercise their spiritual functions after deposition from office by the Imperial Tribunal — we are told that ' one member, an ex-Excellency, qua-lifted his adversaries as a lot of tea-drinking old women;' another, a celebrated rationalistic theologian, called his opponents ' a draggletail of little-brained fanatics.' Herr von Syhel's ribaldry against the Catholic religion was interrupted by ' Shouts' of Homeric laughter,' 'Roars of laughter,' 'Loud and prolonged laughter,' 'Roars of laughter.' Finally he said, ' You may be sure that if Prince Bismarck was to-morrow to resolve upon the restoration of the imperial power and the mutilation of Italy, to-morrow would Pope Pius IX. sanction the May Statutes, and confer upon the Minister of Public Worship — that is, if Dr. Falck wanted to have it — the Grand Cross of the highest Papal Order.' This, we are told, 1 fairly brought the house down' for some minutes.

' Dixeris hsec inter varicosos centuriones Continue crassum ridet Vulfenius ingens.'

Persius does not see in this gross laughter any token of culture.

The ' Homeric laughter' was so great that they seem to have forgotten what they were debating. It was the exile, for conscience' sake, of free men and Christians, who refuse to betray their Divine office at the will of a Government. The correspondent then goes on with the cool insolence of a persecutor, as follows:

' The Government does not propose to add to its powers of offence and defence until it shall be in a position to judge by a fair amount of experience whether or not the subordinate Popish clergy, or any considerable section of that body, will think fit to submit itself to the secular arm, and, by doing so, to sever the connection existing between it and the Vatican. The group of laws already available to the authorities for quellincj the disobedience of his Majesty's Bishops will enable the Executive, within the next few months, to get all the prelates and their vicars-general, besides a considerable sprinkling of the lesser clergy, safely into prison or across the frontier, whilst the civil powers will have secured the entire and exclusive administration of the vacated dioceses. A good many cures will be vacant, and every possible encouragement will be given to their congregations to appoint thereto, by election, priests of the Old Catholic or Reformed Catholic persuasion, if no Papal clergyman can be found to take the oaths and subscribe the declaration required under the new enactments. Should such congregations prove refractory, and refuse to elect ecclesiastics who may be acceptable to the Administration, they will simply have to do without spiritual ministrations and functions until such time as they may deem it wiser to yield to the stern necessities of the situation.'

We have here German Liberalism unmasked. It is a compound of Antichristian hatred, inflated contempt of conscience in other men, with the higotry of unbelief and the despotism of intolerance. Liberty of conscience exists no longer in Prussia, and where liberty of conscience is violated all liberty perishes. Prussia has become the strongest and the least civilised country in Europe. Its civilisation is that of the world without God. Alcibiades was an orator, a soldier, a musician, a refined citizen, a free-thinker, an aristocrat, a despiser of superstitions, a mutilator of sacred things, a profligate, and a fop. This is the civilisation which is arising again, where Christianity is dying out. Such civilisa tion I do not deny to Prussia, but it is not the civilisa tion of the Christian world. There are men among us who are labouring to make Englishmen admire and adopt this civilisation. While they applaud these tyrannical persecutions, they are not worthy of the soil of England, nor of the Christian liberty which they abuse in railing at Christianity.

An Ultramontane, then, is one who believes that the

Church, in virtue of its infallibility, is independent of all civil powers, and is, in all that belongs to faith and morals, supreme over all human authority. The question as to the seat of that infallibility was once a domestic question, and is a question no longer.

We are now in a condition to appreciate the Falck laws, and, I must add, the ignoble pretence that they are directed, not against the Catholic religion, but against ' Ultramontanism.' They violate the Catholic religion by violating the spiritual independence and the Divine office of the Church. They pretend to make the sanction of the civil power a condition of determining who are and who are not Catholics, who are and who are not heretics, who are and who are not excommunicate: what is 'or is not the faith of the Catholic Church, who are and who are not to be put in cure of souls, how candidates for the priesthood are to be educated, 'and what doctrine they are to hold. Lastly, by the third law of May it is provided that all appeals are to be decided by the Imperial Tribunal within Germany, or, in other words, the Church in Germany is to be cut off from the supreme appellate jurisdiction of its Head, whom the ' Old Catholics,' with the congenital insolence of heretics, call 'the man outside of Germany.' That is to say, the Church in Germany is to be placed in a permanent schism. These are the laws which are not Directed against the Catholic religion! I must use the free speech of an Englishman and the liberty of a Christian to denounce this pretence as an ignoble hypocrisy.

Mr. Stephen has complained that I have interrupted his argument. I might with more justice complain that while I was denouncing this Prussian persecution he was endeavouring to plunge me into the bottomless pit of a controversy with scepticism. Life is short. The little that remains to me will, I hope, be given to issues that are vital, not to individuals here and there, but to Christians of every name. I have purposely elicited and laid bare the truth that the conflict now raging is between Christianity and Antichristianism. As the enemies of Christianity widen out their line against the Christian name in every country of Europe, so it is our duty to widen out our defence along the whole line of Christian faith. Those who remember the year 1848, and the universal and simultaneous rising of Antichristian revolution which threatened all Europe, will readily see in what is passing in Italy, Spain, France, Austria, and Germany at this time the same simultaneous movement grown strong and bold by success. It has ascended thrones, controlled cabinets, overthrown go vernments, and usurped their place. Who can fail to see that the exclusion of Christianity from education, and from laws, and from States is only the prelude of an attempt to destroy the Christian Faith and the Christian Church? The war against Christianity in Germany fell by necessity upon the Catholic Church, because it is the chief, I might say the only solid, organised, and consistent witness for Christianity in the new empire. The civil power has behind it a social revolution urging it on to persecute the Catholic Church as the price of its co-operation and support. Until this crisis, which Prince von Bismarck has created for himself, arose, the Government of Prussia was just and equitable to all Christian confessions, including the Catholic faith. But the Antichristian revolution has pushed it into the excesses of Caesarism, fatal to its future. The pretext that the Falck laws were necessary because of the hostility of Catholics to the empire served its purpose at the time. Nobody in Germany believed it even then; and now it is believed nowhere. Everybody now sees that if the Prussian Government had continued to deal justly with Catholics it would have detached them from all alleged foreign sympathies, and bound them to itself. But it dared not enter upon such a policy. The Antichristian re volution was at its back. It therefore entered upon a policy of extermination against the Catholic Church, to buy the political support or to buy off the enmity of an Antichristian conspiracy which is undermining every throne in Germany.

Mr. Stephen defends the proposition that a ' nation is a higher and more sacred object than any Church whatever.' I would ask, does he mean the nation as it existed in Pagan Kome; or the nation as it exists in Christian Europe? If he mean the former, I would refer him once more to his classics, or to Dr. Dollinger's work on Gcntilism and Judaism. If he means the nation as it exists in Christian Europe, I would remind him that it is the Christian law of marriage, Christian morals, and Christian education which have recreated the nations and the civil society of the world. Nowhere but in Christianity does the law of marriage create, purify, and sustain the unity

VOL. II. E and sanctities of domestic life; from no other source have come to us the Christian ethics, public and private, which have elevated, restrained, and matured the morality of the modern world. And yet Mr. Stephen asks whether I am to be trusted with authority over the laws of marriage and education. I have claimed no authority for myself; I have claimed it for Christianity; and I am bold to say that the people of England would at once intrust authority over marriage and education rather to Christianity than to Secularism, or Caesarism, or Scepticism, or to a State stripped of the laws and morals of Christianity. The sa'_ae may be affirmed of every country in Europe, except, perhaps, of Prussia; and there we have the reason assigned by the Prussian authorities, namely, that so large a part of the population has ceased to practise any religion that the laws of civil marriage and secular education have become inevitable. Protestant authorities tell us that not two per cent of the people of Berlin go to any place of worship, and not more than one-third of the dead are buried with religious rites. Without doubt in such a population civil laws must take the place of Christian marriage and Christian morality. That is to say, where the civil State has fallen from the Christianity which once raised it from Paganism to the civilisation of the Christian world, it must needs fall back upon itself. It has no other sanctions, laws, or ethics except those of Nature, and so much of the personal and domestic morality of its extinct Christianity as may still survive. For a while these ancient traditions will, in some degree, linger and live on, but let nobody hold this up as the perfection and ripeness of States. The whole civil society of Europe seems to be withdrawing itsblf in its public life from Christianity. The formula of ' separating the School from the Church and the Church from the State' is, in truth, the separating of both School and State from Christianity. This is the ideal of those who have rejected Christianity, and are misleading Christian men by formulas into false principles fatal to their strongest and best convictions. One good effect of such a discussion as I have thus far, with much reluctance, engaged in is to bring out this fact into day light. I hope men will be on their guard before they adopt as axioms or principles the phrases and formulas of an Antichristian movement which is separating the civil society of the world and the generations of the future from the Christian Kevelation.

As I have made one digression, I cannot refrain from another, which shall be as brief as possible.' I have read, with more astonishment than I can express, the studious effort of Mr. Stephen to excite odium, and to inflame his readers with animosity against those who refuse to accept, his arguments. For what other pur pose does he talk of inquisitions and dragonnades and massacres? This is the last refuge of Exeter Hall, when reason and fact run dry. Mr. Stephen does not forget that both Catholics and Protestants, in turn, have been guilty of persecutions. They cannot, then, be charged on ' Catholicism only. If he say that Catholics have been worse than Protestants, then, where both are guilty, what argument is there in measuring degrees? If he say that these horrors are the offspring of Christianity, I ask him, as a historian, as a lawyer, and as a jurist, to say whether it was Christianity that created the penal code of the modern world? Was it the Christian Church or the civil power that invented and created the severities of the criminal law? The nations of the whole world, if any are guilty, are all guilty. The civil society of the world inherited from the Koman empire a penal code, against which Christianity has striven all along its history. The mitigations of the criminal code are due to Christian ethics and to the Christian Church. The atrocities which Mr. Stephen quotes, with a carelessness of argument into which he never would have been betrayed if he had been calm, were indeed the work of Christians and of Catholics, but neither of Christianity nor of the Catholic Church. It is almost within the memory of living men that women were burnt in England. In 1773 Elizabeth Hering was burnt alive. In 1777 Sarah Parker was burnt for counterfeiting silver coin. In 1786 Phoebe Harris was burnt for the same offence. Lord Loughborough de feated the Bill to commute this penalty to hanging.12 It is within the memory of many of us that children might be sentenced to death in England for offences which would have been too severely punished by a whipping. Down to 1818 a child might be hanged for stealing in a shop goods worth five shillings. What would Mr. Stephen say of me if I had given this as a sample of English Christianity and the State Church?

12 See Annual Register, in Phillimore's History of George III., pp. 51, 65, 66, notes.

He well knows that to impute the atrocious penal codes of Europe to the Christian Church, or to imply what is not explicitly imputed, is as unjust and, I must say, as unmeaning as to say that Christianity introduced slavery among mankind, and that the State abolished it.

Mr. Stephen had no need to show that in theory the * Lex Regia' is supposed to represent the will of the people. I fully provided for such an answer. But it is like saying that the capitular election of the Anglican bishops is free, because the Crown issues the conge cVelire.

But all this is beside the point.

It may be well briefly to guard against certain objections. It may be said that the Falck laws affect only Ultramontanism. No better proof can be given to show that the Falck laws are a persecution, not of Ultramontanism, but of Christianity, than the fact that the first to lead the opposition against them in the Chambers was the venerable Baron von Gerlache, a Lutheran of known fidelity to his profession. Add to this the protests and petitions of the Lutherans in Hesse and in Hanover; the support given emphatically on this ground by the Lutherans in Munich to the Ultramontane candidate, who was also a Catholic priest; and finally, the fact that a number of Lutheran ministers have been fined, or thrown into prison, for refusing to obey the new ecclesiastical laws.

Again, it may be said that the Falck laws affect only those who pretend that the Church is infallible. Surely the facts just alleged are answer enough. They are better than a score of theological replies. Nevertheless I may repeat that the claim of independence for conscience, religion, and faith may be made good by every Christian and Christian communion on the argu ments of my last paper, and on the human and historical testimony of Christendom, apart from the higher and Divine certainty which the Catholic Church asserts. for itself.

Lastly, it may be said that to claim for the Church the power to define its own sphere is inconsistent with the independence of the civil power. First, I would ask: Does not every Christian Church and sect define its own sphere? If the Church is not to define its own sphere, who is to do so? No one can define how far the sphere of the Church extends but one who knows how far the Revelation intrusted to it reaches. But who knows this if the Church does not? or who knows this except the Church itself? Will any one say that the State is to define the sphere of the Church? If so, the State must know the whole circumference of Reve lation, and all that it contains. But no Christian ventures to be so coherent. If the State cannot claim to define the sphere of faith and morals, and if by the hypothesis the Church may not, who is to trace the circle round its jurisdiction? I have already drawn this out, in a slight degree, in the essay which has provoked so much question. It is impossible to treat the subject as it needs at the end of this paper. I can only state one or two propositions:

1. No. one can define the extent of the office of the Church but one who knows the limits of the commission it has received, and the Revelation intrusted to it.

2. No one can know these things adequately except one who has received that commission and trust; for these limits are a part of the Revelation.

3. The State received neither the commission nor the trust, and therefore cannot know the limits of either.

The consequence is obvious.

It is full time to bring this paper to an end. I will therefore restate the thesis I have undertaken to prove. In the essay on Caesarisrn and Ultramontanism I main tained that the revelation of Christianity has withdrawn the whole province of faith and conscience from all civil powers, and has intrusted it to the jurisdiction of the Church, which is separate from all civil powers, and in all matters of faith and morals supreme. I therefore condemned the Falck laws as a manifold violation of conscience and of the independence and supreme office of the Church. To this argument answer was "made that I could not claim such independence and supremacy for the Church until I had first proved the existence of God, the revelation of Christianity, the foundation of the Church with such powers as I claimed for it, and the identity of the Catholic Church with the Church proved to be so founded.

In reply, I rejected Mr. Stephen's two first points as irrelevant in a debate among Christians. To no others I address myself. If I make no answer to those who disbelieve or doubt of the Christian Revelation, it is not that they are on any hypothesis ' beneath my contempt;' for I regard them with kindness and sorrow, as creatures of Him whose existence they doubt, and as redeemed by

Him whose teaching they reject. I address myself to those who have not put off the name of Christian, and to them I acknowledged myself to he bound to offer proof of the two last propositions. So far as the narrow limits of an article admit, I hope that I have done so. In the former paper I have shown that every Christian community which professes to believe in a Church believes that Church to be independent of all civil powers, and in matters of religion supreme: in the present paper I have shown that the Catholic and Koman Church holds this faith as to the constitution and liberties of the Church, and founds its faith in that truth on an order of Divine facts which renders it impossible for the Church ever to compromise, or to yield in conflicts about faith and morals with the civil powers of the world. It is one thing to offer proof of a thesis; it is another to offer proof that will satisfy certain minds. The latter is a task I have not undertaken; it is a task no sane man will undertake. The former I hope and I believe has been done. No man can deny the premises of my argument without denying the foundations of Christianity: no man can admit the premises, and deny that the Falck laws are barefaced persecution, without incoherence of reason. The only consistent and logical antagonists are Christianity and Antichristianism. They are face to face now, and God will judge our cause.