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THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE OF GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.

VOL. X. OCTOBER, 1869, TO MARCH, 1870.

NEW YORK: THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION HOUSE, 126 Nassau Street.

1870.

S. W. GREEN, PRINTER, 16 and 18 Jacob St., N. Y.

Angela, 38, 161, 293, 471, 617. An October Reverie, 186.

British Premiers in Relation to British Catholics, 674, 826. Bach, Friedemann, 805.

Contradiction, An Imaginary, 1. Council of Trent, The, 24. Christian Women, An Appeal to, 71. Church in Paris and France, 95. Catholicity and Pantheism, 118. Council, The, and the Roman Congregations, 170. Church Music, 402, 598, 743. Catholic Church in New York, Early History of, 413, 515. Council, Matters Relating to, 420. Church Door, At the, 651. Chess, 683. Council of the Vatican, The First Oecumenical, 693, 841. Civil and Political Liberty, 721. Christ of Ausfeldt, The, 774.

Devious Ways, Through, 550.

Eclipse of August Seventh, 106.

Foreign Literary Notes, 135, 422, 705. Father Faber, Life of, 145. Free Religion, 195. Ffoulkes, The Letter of E. S., 631.

Gallicanism, The True Origin of, 527. Gordian Knots, Untying, 589, 735. Greek Schism, The, 758.

Hero, or a Heroine? 232, 346, 497. Hecker, Father, Farewell Sermon of, 289. Harwood's, Dr., Price Lecture, 312. Haydn's Struggle and Triumph, 326. History of the Catholic Church in New York, 413, 515. Hurston Hall, 449. Hints on Housekeeping, 610.

Irish Volunteers, A Sketch of, 276. Immutability of the Species, 252, 332, 656. Irish Land Tenure, History of, 641. Iron Mask, The, 754.

Lost and Found, 84. Life of Father Faber, 145. Liberty, Civil and Political, 721. Labor Movement, Views of the, 784. Lucifer's Ear, 856.

Memento Mori, 206. Music and Love, Haydn's First Lessons in, 267. Music, Church, 402, 598, 743. Matters Relating to the Council, 420. Miscellany, 564.

New York City, Sanitary Topography of, 362.

Paganina, 13. Priory, St. Oren's, 56. Prisons, Religion in, 114. Presbyterian Reply to the Pope's Letter, 216. Protestantism and Catholicity, The Future of, 433, 577. Putnam's Defence, 542. Polish Patriotic Hymn, A, 548. Poland, Present Condition of, 799.

Rome, Morality of, 50. Roman Congregations and the Council, 170.

Species, Immutability of, 252, 332, 656. Sermon, Father Hecker's Farewell, 289. St. Peter, Basilica of, 374. St. Augustine, The Philosophical Doctrines of, compared with the Ideology of the Modern Schools, 481. Schism, The Greek, 758. Seton, Mrs., 778.

Trent, The Council of, 24. The Seven Bishops, 130.

Vansleb, The Oriental Scholar and Traveller, 459. Vatican Council, The, 841.

Women, An Appeal to Young Christian, 71. Wayside Reminiscence, 84.

POETRY.

Ambition, Sacred, 12. A Christmas Hymn, 526. A Convert's Prayer, 614.

December 8, 1869, 457.

In Memoriam of Rev. F. A. Baker, 597. "It's Wrong," 825.

Lines on the Pontifical Hat, 134.

Matthew xxvii, 37. My Christmas Gift, 496.

Nazareth, On a Picture of, 757.

Prayer, 331.

Sacred Ambition, 12. St. Peter Delivered from Prison, 824.

The Chapel, 655.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Alcott's Hospital Sketches, 143. A Little Boy's Story, 426. Auerbach's German Tales, 427. Almanac, Catholic Family, 574. Andersen's Improvisatore and Two Baronesses, 575. Acta ex iis Decerpta, etc., etc., 720. Alexander, J. A., Life of, 856. An American Family in Paris, 858.

Bayma's Elements of Molecular Mechanics, 288. Bonaventure's Parables and Stories, 575. Bushnell's Woman's Suffrage, 715.

Cantarium Romanum, 427. Caseine, 431. Cooley's Text-Book of Chemistry, 432. Columbus, Lorgne's Life of, 574. Curtis's Life of Webster, 714. Creation a Recent Work of God, 855.

Diomede, 142. Dorie, Henry, Life of, 144.

Evans's Autobiography of a Shaker, 143. Emerald, The, 144. Edgeworth's Tales and Parent's Assistant, 430. Elm Island Stories, 860.

Ffoulkes's Letter, A Critique on, 287. Ffoulkes's Roman Index and its Late Proceedings, 709. Formby's Life of Christ, 719. Fair Harvard, 858. Frontier Stories, 860.

Giles's Lectures and Essays on Irish Subjects, 138. Gilmour's Bible History, 143. Gallitzin's Life and Character, 426. Gasparini's Attributes of Christ, 857.

Henry Crabbe Robinson's Diary, Correspondence, etc., 141. Heady's Seen and Heard, 288. Horace, The Works of, 288. Hadley's Elements of the Greek Language, 288. Hagenbach's History of the Church, 718. Hefele's Council of Constance, 719. Hill's Titania's Banquet, etc., 856. Hedge's Primeval World of Hebrew Tradition, 858.

In Heaven We Know Our Own, 139. Intelligence of Animals, 288. Ireland, Patriot's History of, 432.

Janus on the Pope and the Council, 712. Jarves's Art Thoughts, 717.

Kerney's First Class Book of History, 431. Kickham's Sally Cavanagh, 720. Neal's Great Mysteries and Little Plagues, 720.

Lacordaire's Sketch of the Order of St. Dominic, 429. Lange's Commentary on Romans, 430. Lorimer's Among the Trees, 718. Library of Good Example, 719. Lange's Commentary on the Old Testament, 857. La Salle, Life of the Venerable J. B. de, 857. Lady Fullerton's Mrs. Gerald's Niece, 859.

Marshall's Order and Chaos, 138. Mopsa and the Fairy, 140. Madame Swetchine, Writings of, 285. Mangin's Mysteries of the Ocean, 428. Meunier's Great Hunting-Grounds of the World, 428. Mangin's Desert World, 428. Minor Chords, 431. Manual of Third Order of St. Francis, 431. Manning's Pastoral on the Council, 569. Missale Romanum, 715. Mommsen's History of Rome, 715. McGee, Thomas D'Arcy, Poems of, 854.

Nampon's Catholic Doctrine, as Defined by the Council of Trent, 286. Nolan's Byrnes of Glengoulah, 720.

Patty Gray's Journal from Boston to Baltimore, 142. Placidus on Education, 143. Potter's Pastor and People, 573. Pumpelly's Across America and Asia, 711. Prentiss's Nidworth, 716. Preston's Christ and the Church, 718. Particular Examen, 857.

Reiter's Ecclesiastical Map of the U. S., 142. Ryder's Critique on Ffoulkes's Letter, 287. Robertson's Sermons, 432.

Smith's Pentateuch, 429. Sargent's Woman who Dared, 571. Spielhagen's Through Night to Light, 576. Sadlier's Almanac and Directory, 718. Sybaris and other Poems, 859.

Two Years before the Mast, 140. The Two Women, 144. Thompson's Man in Genesis and Geology, 287. The Two Cottages, 576. The Lost Rosary, 576. The Life of Blessed Margaret Mary, 576. Tennyson's Holy Grail, 855. The Cabin on the Prairie, 860. The Sunset Land, 860.

Upton's Letters of Peregrine Pickle, 859.

White's Elements of Astronomy, 141. Whipple's Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, 283. Wood's Bible Animals, 716. White's Ecce Femina, 857. Wiley's Elocution and Oratory, 859. Wonders of Pompeii, 860.

Young's Office of Vespers, 144.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. X., No. 55.--OCTOBER, 1869.

AN IMAGINARY CONTRADICTION.[1]

We notice in this review the article on the Spirit of Romanism for a single point only, which it makes, for as a whole it is not worth considering. Father Hecker asserts in his Aspirations of Nature, that, "Endowed with reason, man has no right to surrender his judgment; endowed with free-will, man has no right to yield up his liberty. Reason and free-will constitute man a responsible being, and he has no right to abdicate his independence." To this and several other extracts from the same work to the same effect, the Christian Quarterly opposes what is conceded by Father Hecker and held by every Catholic, that every one is bound to believe whatever the church believes and teaches. But bound as a Catholic to submit his reason and will to the authority of the church, how can one assert that he is free to exercise his own reason, and has no right to surrender it, or to abdicate his own independence? Father Hecker says, "Religion is a question between the soul and God; no human authority has, therefore, any right to enter its sacred sphere." Yet he maintains that he is bound to obey the authority of the church, and has no right to believe or think contrary to her teachings and definitions. How can he maintain both propositions?

What Father Hecker asserts is that man has reason and free-will, and that he has no right to forego the exercise of these faculties, or to surrender them to any human authority whatever. Between this proposition and that of the plenary authority of the church in all matters of faith or pertaining to faith and sound doctrine, as asserted by the Council of Trent and Pius IX. in the Syllabus, the Christian Quarterly thinks it sees a glaring contradiction. Father Hecker, it is to be presumed, sees none, and we certainly see none. Father Hecker maintains that no human authority has any right to enter the sacred sphere of religion, that man is accountable to no man or body of men for his religion or his faith; but he does not say that he is not responsible to God for the use he makes of his faculties, whether of reason or free-will, or that God has no right to enter the sacred sphere of religion, and tell him even authoritatively what is truth and what he is bound to believe and do. When I believe and obey a human authority in matters of religion, I abdicate my own reason; but when I believe and obey God, I preserve it, follow it, do precisely what reason itself tells me I ought to do. There is no contradiction, then, between believing and obeying God, and the free and full exercise of reason and free-will. Our Cincinnati contemporary seems to have overlooked this very obvious fact, and has therefore imagined a contradiction where there is none at all, but perfect logical consistency. Our contemporary is no doubt very able, a great logician, but he is here grappling with a subject which he has not studied, and of which he knows less than nothing.

It is a very general impression with rationalists and rationalizing Protestants, that whoso asserts the free exercise of reason denies the authority of the church, and that whoso recognizes the authority of the church necessarily denies reason and abdicates his own manhood, which is as much as to say that whoso asserts man denies God, and whoso asserts God denies man. These people forget that the best of all possible reasons for believing any thing is the word, that is, the authority of God, and that the highest possible exercise of one's manhood is in humble and willing obedience to the law or will of God. All belief, as distinguished from knowledge, is on authority of some sort, and the only question to be asked in any case is, Is the authority sufficient? I believe there were such persons as Alexander the Great, Julius Cæsar, Charlemagne, Louis XIV., Robespierre, and George Washington, on the authority of history, the last two, also, on the testimony of eye-witnesses, or persons who have assured me that they had seen and known them personally; yet in the case of them all, my belief is belief on authority. On authority, I believe the great events recorded in sacred and profane history, the building of the Temple of Jerusalem in the reign of Solomon, the captivity of the Jews, their return to Judea under the kings of Persia, the building of the second temple, the conquest of Jerusalem by Titus and the Roman army, the invasion of the Roman empire by the northern barbarians, who finally overthrew it, the event called the reformation, the thirty years' war, etc. Nothing is more unreasonable or more insane than to believe any thing on no authority; that is, with no reason for believing it. To believe without authority for believing is to believe without reason, and practically a denial of reason itself.

Catholics, in fact, are the only people in the world who do, can, or dare reason in matters of religion. Indeed, they are the only people who have a reasonable faith, and who believe only what they have adequate reasons for believing. They are also the only people who recognize no human authority, not even one's own, in matters of Christian faith and conscience. Sectarians and rationalists claim to be free, and to reason freely, because, as they pretend, they are bound by no human authority, and recognize no authority in faith but their own reason. Yet why should my reason be for me or any one else better authority for believing than yours? My authority is as human as yours, and if yours is not a sufficient reason for my faith, how can my own suffice, which is no better, perhaps not so good? As a fact, no man is less free than he who has for his faith no authority but his own reason; for he is, if he thinks at all, necessarily always in doubt as to what he ought or ought not to believe; and no man who is in doubt, who is unable to determine what he is or is not required to believe in order to believe the truth, is or can be mentally free. From this doubt only the Catholic is free; for he only has the authority of God, who can neither deceive nor be deceived, for his faith.

It is a great mistake to suppose that the Catholic believes what the church believes and teaches on any human authority. To assume it begs the whole question. The act of faith the Catholic makes is, "O my God! I believe all the sacred truths the Holy Catholic Church believes and teaches, because thou hast revealed them, who canst neither deceive nor be deceived." The church can declare to be of faith only what God has revealed, and her authority in faith is the authority not of the law-maker, but of the witness and interpreter of the law. In faith we believe the word of God, we believe God on his word; in the last analysis, that God is true, Deus est verax. Better authority than the word of God there is not and cannot be, and nothing is or can be more reasonable than to believe that God is true, or to believe God on his word, without a voucher.

That the church is a competent and credible witness in the case, or an adequate authority for believing that God has revealed what she believes and teaches as his word, can be as conclusively proved as the competency and credibility of a witness in any case in court whatever. She was an eye and ear-witness of the life, works, death, and resurrection of our Lord, who is at once perfect God and perfect man; she received the divine word directly from him, and is the contemporary and living witness of what he taught and commanded. The church has never for a moment ceased to exist, but has continued from Christ to us as one identical living body that suffers no decay and knows no succession of years; with her nothing has been forgotten, for nothing has fallen into the past. The whole revelation of God is continually present to her mind and heart. She is, then, a competent witness; for she knows all the facts to which she is required to testify. She is a credible witness; for God himself has appointed, commissioned, authorized her to bear witness for him to all nations and ages, even unto the consummation of the world, and has promised to be with her, and to send to her assistance the Paraclete, the Spirit of Truth, who should recall to her mind whatsoever he had taught her, and lead her into all truth. The divine commission or authorization to teach carries with it the pledge of infallibility in teaching; for God cannot be the accomplice of a false teacher, or one who is even liable to err. What surrender is there of one's reason, judgment, free-will, manhood, in believing the testimony of a competent and credible witness?

In point of fact, the case is even stronger than we put it. The church is the body of Christ, and in her dwelleth the Holy Ghost. She is human in her members, no doubt; but she is divine as well as human in her head. The human and divine natures, though for ever distinct, are united in one divine person by the hypostatic union. This one divine Person, the Word that was made flesh, or assumed flesh, for our redemption and glorification, is the person of the church, who through him lives a divine as well as a human life. It is God who speaks in her voice as it was God who spoke in the voice of the Son of Mary, that died on the cross, that rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven, whence he shall come again to judge the quick and the dead. Hence, we have not only the word of God as the authority for believing his revelation, but his authority in the witness to the fact that it is his revelation or his word that we believe. We may even go further still, and state that the Holy Ghost beareth witness within us with our spirits in concurrence with the external witness to the same fact, so that it may be strengthened by the mouth of two witnesses. More ample means of attesting the truth and leaving the unbeliever without excuse are not possible in the nature of things.

It is not, then, the Catholic who contradicts himself; for between the free exercise of reason and complete submission to the authority of the church, as both are understood by Catholics, there is no contradiction, no contrariety even. Faith, by the fact that it is faith, differs necessarily from science. It is not intuitive or discursive knowledge, but simply analogical knowledge. But reason in itself cannot go beyond what is intuitively apprehended, or discursively obtained, that is, obtained from intuitive data either by way of deduction or induction. In either case, what is apprehended or obtained is knowledge, not belief or faith. To believe and to know are not one and the same thing; and whatever reason by itself can judge of comes under the head of science, not faith; whence it follows that reason can never judge of the intrinsic truth or falsehood of the matter of faith; for if it could, faith would be sight, and in no sense faith. If we recognize such a thing as faith at all, we must recognize something which transcends or does not fall under the direct cognizance of reason; and therefore that which reason does not know, and can affirm only as accredited by some authority distinct from reason. The Catholic asserts faith on authority, certainly, but on an authority which reason herself holds to be sufficient. True, he does not submit the question of its truth or falsehood to the judgment of reason; for that would imply a contradiction--that faith is not faith, but sight or knowledge. This is the mistake of sectarians and rationalists, who deny authority in matters of faith. They practically deny reason, by demanding of it what exceeds its powers; and faith, by insisting on submitting it to the judgment of reason, and denying that we have or can have any reason for believing what transcends reason. It ill becomes them, therefore, to accuse Catholics of contradicting themselves, when they assert the rights of reason in its own order, and the necessity of authority in matters of faith, or matters that transcend reason. They themselves, according to their own principles, have, and can have no authority for believing; and therefore, if they believe at all, they do and must believe without reason; and belief without reason is simple fancy, caprice, whim, prejudice, opinion, not faith.

But the Christian Quarterly is not alone in imagining a contradiction between reason and authority. The whole modern mind assumes it, and imagines a contradiction wherever it finds two extremes, or two opposites. It has lost the middle term that brings them together and unites them in a logical synthesis. To it, natural and supernatural, nature and grace, reason and faith, science and revelation, liberty and authority, church and state, heaven and earth, God and man--are irreconciliable extremes; and not two extremes only, but downright contradictions, which necessarily exclude each other. It does not, even if it accepts both terms, accept them as reconciled, or united as two parts of one whole; but each as exclusive, and warring against the other, and each doing its best to destroy the other.

Hence the modern mind is, so to speak, bisected by a painful dualism, which weakens its power, lowers its character, and destroys the unity and efficiency of intellectual life. We meet every day men who, on one side, assert supernatural faith, revelation, grace, authority, and, on the other, pure naturalism, which excludes every thing supernatural or divine. On the one side of their intelligence, nothing but God and grace, and on the other, nothing but man and nature. Indeed, the contradiction runs through nearly the whole modern intellectual world, and is not encountered among the heterodox only. We find even men who mean to be orthodox, think they are orthodox, and are sincerely devoted to the interests of religion, who yet see no real or logical connection between their faith as Catholics and their principles as statesmen, or their theories as scientists.

The two terms, or series of terms, of course, must be accepted, and neither can be denied without equally denying the other. The objection is not that both are asserted, but that they are asserted as contradictories; for no contradiction in the real world, which is the world of truth, is admissible. The Creator of the world is the Logos, is logic in itself, and therefore, as the Scripture saith, makes all things by number, weight, and measure. All his works are dialectic, and form a self-consistent whole; for, as St. Thomas says, he is the type of all things--Deus est similitudo rerum omnium. There must then be, somewhere, the mediator, or middle term which unites the two extremes, and in which their apparent contradiction is lost, and they are opposed only as two parts of one uniform whole. The defect of the modern mind is that it has lost this middle term, and men retain in their life the dualism we have pointed out, because they do not see that the conflicting elements are not harmonizable in their intelligence; or, because they have lost the conception of reality, and are false to the true principle of things.

In the early ages of the church, the fathers had no occasion to take care that reason and nature should be preserved, for no one dreamed of denying them. All their efforts were needed to bring out and vindicate the other series of terms, God, the supernatural, revelation, grace, faith, which was denied or perverted by the world they had to war against. The ascetic writers, again, having for their object the right disciplining of human nature through grace, which includes revelation and faith, as well as the elevation and assistance of nature and reason, had just as little occasion to assert reason and nature, for they assumed them, and their very labors implied them. Grace, or the supernatural, was rarely exaggerated or set forth as exclusive. The danger came chiefly from the opposite quarter, from Pelagianism, or the assertion of the sufficiency of nature without grace.

When, however, the reformers appeared, the danger shifted sides. The doctrines of the reformation, the doctrines of grace, as they are called by evangelicals, were an exaggerated and exclusive supernaturalism. The reformers did not merely assert the insufficiency of reason and nature, but went further, and asserted their total depravity, and utter worthlessness in the Christian life. They made man not merely passive under grace, but actively and necessarily opposed to it, resisting it always with all his might, and to be overcome only by sovereign grace, the gratia victrix of the Jansenists. The church met this and its kindred errors in the holy Council of Trent, and while affirming the supernatural element, and defining the sphere and office of grace, rescued nature and reaffirmed its part in the work of life. But error has no principle and is bound to no consistency, and the Catholic has ever since had to defend nature against the exclusive supernaturalists, and grace against the exclusive naturalists; reason, for instance, against the traditionalists, and revelation and authority against the rationalists. To do this, it has been and still is necessary to distinguish between the two orders, nature and grace, natural and supernatural, reason and faith.

But we find a very considerable number of men who are not exclusively supernaturalists, nor exclusively rationalists, but who are syncretists, or both at once. They accept both orders in their mutual exclusiveness, and alternately, rather, simultaneously, assert exclusive supernaturalism, and exclusive rationalism. This is the case with the great mass of Protestants, who retain any reminiscences of grace, and even with some Catholics in countries where Jansenism once had its stronghold, and where traces of its influence may still be detected with people who deny its formally heretical propositions, and accept the papal constitutions condemning them. The two extremes are seen, and both are accepted; but the mediator between them, or the truth which conciliates or harmonizes them, seems to be overlooked or not understood. Of course, Catholic theology asserts it, and is in reality based on it; but, some how or other, the age does not seize it, and the prevailing philosophy does not recognize it.

The problem for our age, it seems to us, is to revive it, and show the conciliation of the two extremes. The labor of theologians and philosophers is not, indeed, to find a new and unknown truth or medium of reconciliation, as so many pretend, but to bring out to the dull and enfeebled understanding of our times the great truth, always asserted by Catholic theology, which conciliates all extremes by presenting the real and living synthesis of things. This Father Hewit has attempted and in great part achieved in his Problems of the Age.

There can be no question that the dominant philosophy, especially with the heterodox, does not present the conditions of solving this problem, and the scholastic philosophy, as taught in Catholic schools, needs to be somewhat differently developed and expressed before the age can see in it the solution demanded. According to the philosophy generally received since Des Cartes, the natural and supernatural are not only distinct, but separate orders, and reason without any aid from revelation is competent to construct from her own materials a complete science of the rational order. It supposes the two orders to be independent each of the other, and each complete in itself. Reason has nothing to do with faith, and faith has nothing to do with reason. The church has no jurisdiction in philosophy, the sciences, politics, or natural society; philosophers, physicists, statesmen, seculars, so long as they keep in the rational order, are independent of the spiritual authority, are under no obligation to consult revelation, or to conform to the teachings of faith. Hence the dual life men live, and the absurdity of maintaining in one order what they contradict in another.

This, we need not say, is all wrong. The two orders are distinct, not separate and mutually independent orders, nor parallel orders with no real or logical relation between them. They are, in reality, only two parts of one and the same whole. We do not undertake to say what God could or could not have done had he chosen. If he could have created man and left him in a state of pure nature, as he has the animals, we know he has not done so. He has created man for a supernatural destiny, and placed him under a supernatural or gracious providence, so that, as a fact, man is never in a state of pure nature. He aspires to a supernatural reward, and is liable to a supernatural punishment. His life is always above pure nature, or below it. The highest natural virtue is imperfect, and no sin is simply a sin against the natural law. The natural is not the supernatural, but was never intended to subsist without it. The supernatural is not an interpolation in the divine plan of creation, nor something superinduced upon it, but is a necessary complement of the natural, which never is or can be completed in the natural alone. In the divine plan, the two orders are coeval, always coexist, and operate simultaneously to one and the same end, as integral parts of one whole. The natural, endowed with reason and free-will, may resist the supernatural, or refuse to co-operate with it; but if it does so, it must remain inchoate, incomplete, an existence commenced yet remaining for ever unfulfilled, which is the condition of the reprobate. A true and adequate philosophy explains man's origin, medium, and end; and no such philosophy can be constructed by reason alone; for these are supernatural, and are fully known only through a supernatural revelation.

The natural demands the supernatural; so also does the supernatural demand the natural. If there were no nature, there could be nothing above nature; there would be nothing for grace to operate on, to assist, or complete. If man had no reason, he could receive no revelation; if he had no free-will, he could have no virtue, no sanctity; if not generated, he could not be regenerated; and if not regenerated, he could not be glorified, or attain to the end for which he is intended. To deny nature is to deny the creative act of God, and to fall into pantheism--a sophism, for pantheism is denied in its very assertion. Its assertion implies the assertor, and therefore something capable of acting, and therefore a substantive existence, distinguishable from God. The denial of God, as creator, is the denial alike of man, the natural, and the supernatural. To solve the problem, and remove the dualism which bisects the modern mind, it is necessary to study the Creator's works in the light of the Creator's plan, and as a whole, in the whole course or itinerary of their existence, or in their procession from him as first cause, to their return to him as final cause, and not piecemeal, as isolated or unrelated facts. If we know not this plan, which no study of the works themselves can reveal to us, we can never get at the meaning of a single the smallest part, far less attain to any thing like the science of the universe; for the meaning of each part is in its relation to the whole. What is the meaning of this grain of sand on the sea-shore, or this mosquito, this gnat, these animalculæ invisible to the naked eye? Have they no meaning, no purpose in the Creator's plan? What can you, by reason, know of that purpose or meaning, if you know not that plan? Your physical sciences, without a knowledge of that plan, are no sciences at all, and give you no more conception of the universe than a specimen brick from its walls can give you of the city of Babylon.

Though that plan is and can be known only as revealed by God himself, yet when once known we may see analogies and proofs of it in all the Creator's works, and study with profit the several parts of the universe, and attain to real science of them; for then we can study them in their synthesis, or their relation to the whole. We may then have rational science, not built on revelation, but constructed by reason in the light of revelation. We do not make revelation the basis of the natural sciences. They are all constructed by reason, acting with its own power, but under the supervision, so to speak, of faith, which reveals to it the plan or purpose of creation, to which it must conform in its deductions and inductions, if they are to have any scientific value. If it operates in disregard of revelation, without the light radiating from the Creator's plan, reason can know objects only in their isolation, as separate and unrelated facts or phenomena, and therefore never know them, as they really are, or in their real significance; because nothing in the universe exists in a state of isolation, or by and for itself alone; but every thing that exists, exists and is significant only in its relation to the whole. It is a mistake, then, to assume that the church, the witness, guardian, and interpreter of the faith or revelation, has nothing to say to philosophy, or to the physical sciences, cosmogony, geology, physiology, history, or even political science. None of them are or can be true sciences, any further than they present the several classes of facts and phenomena of which they treat in their respective relations and subordination to the divine plan of creation, known only by the revelation committed to the church.

The principle of the solution of the problem, or the middle term that unites the two extremes, or the natural and the supernatural, in a real and living synthesis, or reconciles all opposites, is the creative act of God. The supernatural is God himself, and what he does immediately without using any natural agencies; the natural is what God creates with the power to act as second cause, and what he does only through second causes, or so-called natural laws. Nothing is natural that is not explicable by natural laws, and nothing so explicable is properly supernatural, though it may be superhuman. A miracle is an effect of which God is the immediate cause, and which can be referred to no natural or second cause; a natural event is one of which God is not the direct and immediate cause, but only first cause--Causa eminens, or cause of its direct and immediate cause. The copula or nexus that unites the natural and supernatural in one dialectic whole, is the creative act of the supernatural, or God, which produces the natural and holds it joined to its cause. Creatures are not separable from their Creator; for in him they live and move and are, or have their being; and were he to separate himself from them, or suspend his creative act, they would instantly drop into the nothing they were before he produced them. The relation between them and him is their relation of entire dependence on him for all they are, all they have, and all they can do. There is, then, no ground of antagonism between him and them. If man aspires to act independently of God, he simply aspires to be himself God, and becomes--nothing.

But we have not exhausted the creative act. God creates all things for an end, and this end is himself; not that he may gain something for himself, or increase his own beatitude, which is eternally complete, and can be neither augmented nor diminished, but that he may communicate of his beatitude to creatures which he has called into existence. Hence God is first cause and final cause. We proceed from him as first cause, and return to him as final cause, as we have shown again and again in the magazine with all the necessary proofs.

Between God as final cause, and his creatures, the mediator is the Incarnate Word, or the man Christ Jesus, the only mediator between God and men. In Christ Jesus is hypostatically united in one divine person the divine nature and the human, which, however, remain for ever distinct, without intermixture or confusion. This union is effected by the creative act, which in it is carried to its summit. The hypostatic union completes the first cycle or procession of existences from God as first cause, and initiates their return to him as final cause, as we have said in our remarks on Primeval Man. It completes generation and initiates the regeneration, or palingenesiac order, which has its completion or fulfilment in glorification, the intuitive vision of God by the light of glory, or, as say the schoolmen, ens supernaturale.

Theologians understand usually, by the supernatural order, the order founded by the Incarnation or hypostatic union, the regeneration propagated by the election of grace, instead of natural generation. But between the natural and the supernatural, in this sense, the nexus or middle term is the creative act effecting the hypostatic union, or God himself mediating in his human nature. The Incarnation unites God and man, without intermixture or confusion, in one and the same divine Person, and also the order of generation with the order of regeneration, of which glorification is the crown. But as the two natures remain for ever distinct but inseparable in one person, so, in the order of regeneration, the natural and the supernatural are each preserved in its distinctive though inseparable activity.

These three terms, generation, regeneration, glorification, one in the creative act of God, cover the entire life of man, and in each the natural and supernatural, distinct but inseparable, remain and co-operate and act. There is no dualism in the world of reality, and none is apparent--except the distinction between God and creature--when the Creator's works are seen as a whole, in their real relation and synthesis. The dualism results in the mind from studying the Creator's works in their analytic divisions, instead of their synthetic relations; especially from taking the first cycle or order of generation as an independent order, complete in itself, demanding nothing beyond itself, and constituting the whole life of man, instead of taking it, as it really is, only as the beginning, the initial, or the inchoate stage of life, subordinated to the second cycle, the teleological order, or regeneration and glorification, in which alone is its complement, perfection, ultimate end, for which it has been created, and exists. Our age falls into its heresies, unbeliefs, and intellectual anarchy and confusion, because it undertakes to separate what God has joined together--philosophy from theology, reason from faith, science from revelation, nature from grace--and refuses to study the works and providence of God in their synthetic relations, in which alone is their true meaning.

The Positivists understand very well the anarchy that reigns in the modern intellectual world, and the need of a doctrine which can unite in one all the scattered and broken rays of intelligence and command the adhesion of all minds. The church, they say, once had such a doctrine, and for a thousand years led the progress of science and society. Protestants, they assert, have never had, and never, as Protestants, can have any doctrine of the sort, and the church has it no longer. It is nowhere set forth except in the writings of Auguste Comte, who obtains it not from revelation, theology, or metaphysics, but from the sciences, or the positive facts of nature studied in their synthetic relations. But unhappily, though right in asserting the necessity of a grand synthetic doctrine which shall embrace all the knowable and all the real, they forget that facts cannot be studied in their synthetic relations unless the mind is previously in possession of the grand synthetic doctrine which embraces and explains them, while the doctrine itself cannot be had till they are so studied. They must take the end as the means of gaining the end! This is a hard case, for till they get the synthetic formula they can only have unrelated facts, hypotheses, and conjectures, with no means of verifying them. They are not likely to succeed. Starting from anarchy, they can only arrive at anarchy. Only God can move by his Spirit over chaos, and bring order out of confusion and light out of darkness.

Moreover, the Positivists do not reconcile the conflicting elements; for they suppress one of the two series of terms, and relegate God, the supernatural, principles, causes, and supersensible relations into the region of the unknowable, and include in their grand synthesis only positive sensible facts or phenomena and their physical laws. They thus restrict man's existence to the first cycle, and exclude the second or palingenesiac order, in which alone reigns the moral law. The first or initial cycle does not contain the word of the ænigma. It does not exist for itself, and therefore is not and cannot be intelligible in or by itself. If they could succeed in removing the anarchy complained of, they would do so by ignorance, not science, and harmonize all intelligences only by annihilating them.

Nor is it true that the church has lost or abandoned her grand synthetic doctrine, or that her synthesis has ceased to be complete, or sufficiently comprehensive. Her doctrine is Christianity; and Christianity leaves out no ancient or modern science; has not been and cannot be outgrown by any actual or possible progress of intelligence; for it embraces at once all the real and all the knowable, reale omne et scibile. If the church fails to command the adhesion of all minds, it is not because any minds have advanced in science beyond her, or have attained to any truth or virtue she has not; but because they have fallen below her, have become too contracted and grovelling in their views to grasp the elevation and universality of her doctrine. She still leads the civilized world, and commands the faith and love of the really enlightened portion of mankind. The reason why so many in our age refuse her their adhesion is not because her doctrine or mode or manner of presenting it are defective, but because they are engrossed with the development and application of the physical or natural laws, or with the first or initial cycle, and exhaust themselves in the production, exchange, and accumulation of physical goods, which, however attractive to the inchoate or physical man, are of no moral or religious value. The cause is not in the church but in them; in the fact that their minds and hearts are set on those things only after which the heathen seek; and they have no relish for any truth that pertains to the teleological or moral order.

The church does not object to the study of the natural or physical sciences, nor to the accumulation of material wealth; but she does object to making the initial order the teleological, and to the cultivation of the sciences or study of the physical laws for their own sake; for, with her, not knowledge but wisdom is the principal thing. She requires the physical and psychological sciences to be cultivated for the sake of the ultimate end of man, and in subordination to the Christian law which that end prescribes. So of material wealth; she does not censure its production, its exchange, or its accumulation, if honestly done, and in subordination to the end for which man is created. What she demands of us is that we conform to the Creator's plan, and esteem things according to their true order and place in that plan. She tolerates no falsehood in thought, word, or deed.

The natural is not suppressed or injured by being subordinated to the supernatural, for it can be fulfilled only in the supernatural. We find the indications of this in nature herself. There are, indeed, theologians who talk of a natural beatitude; but whether possible or not, God has not so made us that we can find our beatitude in nature; that is, in the creature or a created good. He has made us for himself, and the soul can be satisfied with nothing less. This is the great fact elaborated by Father Hecker in his Questions of the Soul, and his Aspirations of Nature. In the first work, he shows that the soul asks questions which nature cannot answer, but which are answered in the supernatural; in the second, he shows that nature desires, craves, aspires to, and has a capacity for, the supernatural; that the soul is conscious of wants which only the supernatural can fill. Man has, as St. Thomas teaches, a natural desire to see God in the beatific vision; that is, to see him as he is in himself; to be like him, to partake of his divine nature, to possess him, and be filled with him. This alone can satisfy the soul, and hence holy Job says, "I shall be satisfied when I awake in thy likeness."

There can be no real antagonism between the natural and the supernatural; for there can be none between nature and its Creator, and equally none between it and its fulfilment, or supreme good. There is none, we have shown, between reason and faith, any more than there is between the eye and the telescope, which extends its range of vision, and enables it to see what it could not see without it. There can be none between science and revelation; when the science is real science and is cultivated not for itself alone, but as a means to the true end of man; and there can be none between earth and heaven, when the earth is regarded solely as a medium and not confounded with the end. There can be none between liberty and authority; for man can be man, possess himself, be himself, and free only by living in conformity to the law of his existence, or according to the plan of the Creator; and finally there can be none between church and state, if the state remembers that it is in the teleological order, and under the moral law, therefore subordinated to the spiritual order.

We have passed over a great number of important questions, several of which, on starting, we intended to consider, and some of which we may take up hereafter; but we have given, we think, the principle that solves the problem of the age, and shows that the dualism which runs through and disturbs so many minds has no foundation either in the teaching of the church or in the real order. The Creator's works all hang together, are all parts of one uniform plan, and the realization ad extra of one divine thought, of which the archetype is in his own infinite, eternal, and ineffable essence. The trouble with men is, that many of them do not see that the church is catholic, even when professing to believe it; because their own minds are not catholic. They often suppose they are broader than the church, because they are too narrow to see her breadth. They also fancy that there are fields of science which they may cultivate which lie beyond her catholicity, and concerning which they are under no obligation to consult her. This shows that they understand neither her catholicity nor the nature, conditions, and end of science. They contract the church to their own narrow dimensions.

We conclude by saying that the men who undertake to criticise the church, and to unchurch her, are men who want breadth, depth, and elevation. They are mole-eyed, and have slender claims to be regarded as really enlightened, large-minded, large-hearted men.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] The Christian Quarterly. Cincinnati: Carroll & Co. July, 1869. Art IV. Spirit of Romanism.

SACRED AMBITION.

Hast thou indeed Sacred ambition, In word and deed Based on contrition? Pray low and long, Sowing and weeping; Promises strong Pledge thee thy reaping.

Thus hast thou prayed? Wait then contented; Blessings delayed Are blessings augmented. Every thing proves Holy ambition Is what God loves Next to contrition.

TRANSLATED FROM LE CORRESPONDANT.

PAGANINA.

XVIII.

We must not conclude that Master Swibert gave only a musical education to his child. His instruction was solid, and intended, beyond every thing, to develop in her a religious sentiment.

For metaphysics he had a love that years had not lessened. His philosophy was very simple; a few lines could comprise it--only what he took a liking to; and he never pretended to have invented it.

His soul exercised itself in applying every creature as a connection with the Infinite. He said summarily that if a thinker could not so comprehend things, he retarded his progress and lost his end.

Paganina could not always understand her father, but this did not distress him. Like the good laborer, he sowed thickly the land he had prepared, knowing well that much would be lost; but knowing, too, that he would come, some day, and find the luxuriant verdure that would repay his pains.

The young girl adopted with eagerness all that could elevate character and ennoble life. Happy to repose in the artistic emotions that shook her so deeply, she relaxed into the serene contemplation of the truth toward which her father conducted her.

XIX.

Such, in its principal characteristics, is the life Paganina led until she was twenty-two years of age. Her beauty had developed radiantly. She held her head aloft, as one who looks on high; and her eyes so sought the distance that she won the name of proud from the good women who met her in their daily walks.

She never was without her father, and the contrast between the two was painful. He was an old man--more from the effect of sickness than old age; and although he appeared active, it was easy to see that, undermined by an inward malady, he would soon be completely wrecked.

He felt it himself, and employed all his strength to instruct and enlighten his daughter.

Without saddening her in advance, by announcing his approaching malady, he endeavored to accustom her to a future separation, but she could not comprehend it. The last thing in which youth can believe is the rupture of holy affections. It never learns that such love can be interrupted.

One day, Master Swibert and his daughter were seated at the turn of the road, where they generally rested in their daily walk. The organist returned to the subject with which his mind was always preoccupied--that future in which he had no part--and finished by saying, "My daughter, your cousin loves you. What he felt for you here he has not lost by separation; his heart is devotedly yours. You are all in all to him, and I have long understood his affection for you. I should feel happy to know you returned his love."

Paganina, surprised, replied, "I love but you, my father; must you leave me?" The organist replied by this verse of St. Paul, "Insipiens: tu quod seminas, non vivificatur, nisi prius moriatur", and Paganina, who did not know Latin, began to weep.

From this day, Master Swibert declined rapidly. He made what he called his will; his last instructions, only to arm his daughter for the struggles of life. He urged her to see, through him, the immortality of the soul; so especially visible in the early Christians, in the mournful hour when, their bodies, falling to ruin, betrayed the interior flame that disengaged them from earth, to shine for ever among the stars in unfading lustre.

After several days of agony, the good musician found his peroration. He died.

It was morning. He had talked a long time with his daughter, and the peace he enjoyed announced the end of the struggle. His large, troubled eyes looked once more toward the mountain, on her, and on his crucifix, then closed for ever.

XX.

The world--even the best of it--don't like to be entertained with the sufferings of others; so I will not stop to relate those of Paganina. I will pause longer on the chapter of her consolations. She drew these from two sources, her memories and her labors.

Her memories were realities. She felt that her father had never left her; and lived in his presence, meditating on and practising his lessons. Her ardor for the study of her art redoubled. Often in the silence of the night, at a late hour, her voice was heard by an admiring crowd beneath her window. The young artist, without knowing or desiring it, became popular.

She had other joys, too, which helped her to live her isolated life. It is not of those of love I speak. Paganina did not know the passion. She lived apart from the world, and her character became half legendary. Fancy held play where love was excluded; and in the regions of the ideal grew her immortal works, and their imperishable beauty, to be shed on humanity.

Perhaps the memory of such things should only be intruded on the very few; for it is said that often a ray from on high illuminated the chamber where the young girl sat, and in that moment she felt a new world tremble in her heart.

XXI.

Happiness is not the guest of earth. The miserable and deceptive pleasure that pretends to this glorious name is a bait rather than a food, and never nourishes any body. Therefore such moments as we have spoken of are fugitive, and are mostly followed by exhaustion and bitter disgust, which would be a good price for them, could such moments be paid for. Paganina experienced the common law. She could not live on ecstasy. Her days, therefore, were mingled and diverse.

I must relate the crisis of her life; but I turn with regret to the chamber that sheltered her genius and her innocence. I see in spirit--shut in this place--a treasure that no one was permitted to contemplate; for Paganina bloomed in the shade, and reserved for her solitude her beauty and the perfume of her loveliness.

Sometimes, only when debauch slept and idleness prolonged its useless repose, the beautiful young girl appeared before her opened window. Robed with the reflection of the aurora, she saluted the growing day; and, as the antique statue, she exhaled divine harmony by contact with its earliest rays.

XXII.

Having, not without success, terminated his musical studies, André quitted Naples. His affection for his cousin had greatly increased. Love sang in his heart; for, if we may borrow such an expression from the poetical vocabulary, it assuredly belongs to a musician.

From the day he was free, he had but one desire--to see Paganina. He set out with this intention, and restless regarding his reception. Indeed, his future depended upon it.

During the journey, his thoughts went ahead, and heaped up every imaginable supposition on the manner in which his cousin would receive him; but she did not receive him at all. He entered a deserted mansion.

He wandered among the deserted places, where every thing recalled the days of his childhood. Death had passed by, and left, perhaps, some unknown scourge. In his poignant distress, he imagined the worst.

Perhaps he did not deceive himself. Paganina was to appear the next day at the theatre of Milan.

I must add that she was always worthy of her father, in the strictest sense of the word; though for three months, it is true, in order to prepare herself for the stage, she had mixed in the world of the theatres, and, what is far worse, in the world of parasites, insinuating themselves by every means and with every end. She breathed a poisoned air in the incense of impure flatteries. Her bitter contempt prevented its injuring her; but as soon as she was free, she ran to conceal her wounds in a retreat where no one could discover her.

XXIII.

Extract from the Gazette of Lombardy, the 20th of September, 18--.

"Her father was German, her mother an Italian; her father belonged to the church, her mother to the theatre. Both were superior musicians. Such a birth could promise her a more than common destiny, and this birth had a singular predestination. She was born in the side-scenes of the theatre during a soirée, the memory of which is still fresh among us. Her first cries were drowned in the passionate strains of the violin of Paganini, and the bursts of admiration from his auditory. The little creature, as if in reply to the powerful invocation of the master, appeared before the hour fixed by nature.

"This is all her history. From that hour she disappeared. Without doubt, the new-born vestal sought the retreat of the sacred fire.

"To-day she returns to the place of her birth. The words are literally true; we will hear her this evening in La Scala.

"I have desired to announce this fête. Let no one fail to be there, for I predict it will be an event.

"My task is finished. I would like to describe this cantatrice, but she belongs to no formula. It would require two to express the dualism of which her person and character bear the imprint.

"She seems to have received from her parents two natures which by turns inspire her. Even now we hear her pure and original voice mount to heaven; no breath of human passion seems to agitate it. We listen enchanted, lifted far above ourselves, and share the serenity, the peace she inspires; suddenly the air changes, the color mounts to her cheeks, passion absorbs her, and she bursts out in its most marvellous tones. I could see the spectre of the old Paganini grimacing by the side of his beautiful god-child, and goading on her enchained genius."

XXIV.

The result was as predicted. The young cantatrice excited immense enthusiasm.

The Italians are quickly roused, and never sell the evidences of their admiration. To show more than ordinary emotion, they invent unheard-of and extravagant expressions.

When Paganina could withdraw from these ovations, the night was far advanced; she took refuge in solitude.

Let us follow her. It will be curious to observe in her the intoxication of applause, and see how she bore her first triumph--she who had elicited such flattering testimony of love and admiration.

She wept, but not with happy emotions.

"My father," she cried, "my father, you are already revenged. To punish me, you have fulfilled my desires. I wished for the clatter of applause, for the tumult of bravos. I am satisfied already. Is it for this, great God, that I have deserted thy ways? Is it for such fugitive pleasure, whose bitterness I have known before even I have tasted it? O happiness of solitude! ineffable family joys! where have you fled?

"Those who have just applauded me little know the inexpressible sadness that overcame me. For a moment despair drew tears to my eyes. They thought it the triumph of my art--but I wept for thee, my father; for thee, my childhood--and the peace of the old, happy hours."

André at this moment appeared.

XXV.

He watched her in silence--he on the threshold, and she half turning toward him proudly in her surprise.

André was the first to break the silence.

"Paganina," said he, "I come from the home that you have left. I found the house deserted, and I went to seek you at the tomb of your father."

"Yes," she replied with bitterness, "and you find me here in the garb of a comedian. What do you wish with me?"

"I wish to snatch you from this cursed place; to fly with you so far that you may forget this fatal evening, and again become obedient to the voice of your father. Come, I will be your protector, your guardian, your slave--until the day," he added in a lower voice, "when I dare breathe to you my secret, and tell you that I love you."

"André, listen to me. I will speak to you sincerely. I wish to love you. I swear to you I wish it. To quit this country, fly with you, go into Germany and inhabit the house of my father, and there raise a family, would be my happiness; but it can never be."

"The love I bear you, Paganina, has taken deep root. Near you alone am I happy; but if it must be so, speak! If you have given your heart to a man worthy of you, tell me, and destroy in me all hope for ever. For you I can bear any thing. But if it is not so, do not answer me yet. Wait; my humility may disarm you, and some day my patience may end in moving your heart."

"No! my heart is but ashes; no affection blooms nor will bloom within it. It is too late."

"Do not speak so, I beg of you. You do not know what the future has in store for you, nor see the Providence that watches over you. It has sent me to you, and with me the remembrance of happy years and the presence of your father."

"The angel itself is not yet arrested in its fall. Go! let me hang suspended between the heaven that is shut against me, and the abyss whose depths I seek."

She burst into tears. André, after a silence, approached her.

"Paganina," said he, "do not weep. Come; see! the dawn already whitens the fields. Let the God of the morning comfort you. The wind rises forerunner of a new day. Bathe your forehead in its breath, and respire with its penetrating odors the forgetfulness of your sufferings. To-day, perhaps, will bring us back peace and happiness."

"No, to-day will be fatal. The beauty of the morning moves me no longer; for me the evening fires, the flames of the foot-lights, the éclat of triumph. I will go from fête to fête, from ovation to ovation. I want the whirlpool of the world to seize and carry me until I lose my health--and forget every thing. Immediately I set out for the Château Sarrasin."

"Ah! this, then," cried André with a sudden explosion of passion, "this, then, is the secret of your resistance and the avowal of your shame. The public cry that brought me here had already warned me. I refused to listen to it. Well, go; but fear every thing. You have roused in me a monster that I knew not of."

And raising his hands to heaven, the unhappy one fled.

XXVI.

Paganina was calumniated by her cousin; she was pure, though it is true she slid on a fatal declivity. Already appearances were against her reputation. André was deceived; but he was not the only one; and from thence the reports to which he had made allusion, and the pretext of which will be explained.

The Count Ludovic, proprietor of the Château Sarrasin and actual head of the house of the Ligonieri, inscribed in the golden book of European aristocracy, was a man of proud appearances, endowed with masculine beauty quite in accordance with his character; for he was superior to his race, and possessed many noble qualities.

His life was not without stain; but even his faults bore that chivalrous character that renders them honorable in the eyes of the world. We well know that the code of the world is not that of the saints.

And the Count Ludovic, who willingly mingled with the people of the theatre, had known Paganina while she was preparing for her début. At the first glance he had rightly judged the soul of the young artist, and saw her superior to her companions.

His heart was touched. Penetrated with sincere sentiments, he preserved in her presence an attitude of reserve and respect, and his influence was secretly employed to isolate and protect her. His manner toward her was observed; for it was not his usual way of adding to the conquests for which he was famous. It might have been believed a mutual admiration; but it is not well to credit the judgments of one's neighbors.

The Count Ludovic wished to celebrate the début of Paganina by one of those fêtes that an ostentatious tradition had preserved in his family. He made important preparations at the Château Sarrasin and sent out his invitations.

The delicate point was to gain for his project her who was the soul of it; so he proposed it to her at the moment when she received her first applause, trusting, no doubt, to her excitement and wish for future conquests. He knew his auditory would be of the first distinction; he knew his motive--but no matter.

The young girl, warned as if by instinct, feeling herself at the fatal point of her destiny, made him no reply. The next day, under the influence of her bad angel, she consented.

XXVII.

They set out alone in an open chariot. The Count Ludovic had proposed for himself a gallant tête-à-tête, without, however, the desired success; for all day long Paganina spoke not a word. Her wandering looks were on the horizon, perhaps there to discover the mysterious and avenging power with which she believed herself menaced.

Toward evening they arrived at Arèse. The young cantatrice was recognized and applauded; but she appeared totally unconscious of sight or sound, and maintained her obstinate silence. The count had long since renounced all effort at conversation. He rather liked the oddity of the adventure, and dreamed of the legend where the paladin carried away his bride and wondered she was pale--so pale that she was dead.

Meanwhile, the carriage labored on the declivity of the road to Germany. The heat was excessive, not a breath stirred the air; but a dull and heavy murmuring announced that the midday wind was pent up in the higher mountain regions. The setting sun was red as blood. At a turn of the road, Paganina shuddered, for she saw André on a rock above them; she could never explain by what energy of passion he had reached this point.

When the carriage neared him he seized the branch of a tree, and, throwing it before the horses' feet, cried out, "Paganina, stop! or, by the soul of thy father, be cursed for ever!" The Count Ludovic had some difficulty in managing his frightened horses; he did not observe that his companion was as pale as the bride of the paladin.

A little further on, in returning, he saw the same man in the same place, illuminated by the burning sky, and pointing with the laugh of a madman to the black mass of the Château Sarrasin.

The adventure was becoming more and more singular. The count wondered what part this man took in this unheard-of drama.

He was too much the gentleman to betray any surprise; but he profited by the incident to renew his efforts at conversation. "Do you know," he said to Paganina, "that these slight accidents might have had a tragical ending? The horses we drive have already caused the death of a man, and, like those of the fable, may be said to feed their ferocity on human blood. The whip has never touched them. If it had not been my pride to place at your disposal the most beautiful equipage in the world, I should have hesitated to trust you to them."

Still she did not reply. But the moment was approaching when she would speak, and in terrible words reveal her anguish.

The carriage entered the road that ended at the Château Sarrasin. As we said before, this road descends by a steep and dangerous declivity, and on the very edge of the precipice. The horses walked quietly. Seizing the whip, Paganina struck them violently, crying out,

"Go on, then! Is it not said that you can lead to death?"

"To death, indeed!" cried the count, surprised and alarmed. "In this road, and at this hour, a miracle only can save us."

The horses, breathing fire, made frightful bounds, leaving starry tracks behind them. The stones rolled heavily into the abyss. The few inhabitants of these solitudes, stopping on the borders of the road, looked on pale and as in a dream, to see this fantastic chariot drawn by such furious horses, while a young girl, standing, and her hair flying in the wind, lashed them on to desperation.

If it needed a miracle to save them, this miracle took place. The team stopped; upset the carriage on the steps of the château. One of the horses was killed, the carriage broken to pieces. The count sprang up safe and sound, his first inquiry for Paganina.

"I am here," she replied; "the hand of God has led us hither."

With her intention, such words were blasphemy; but she spoke in delirium.

XXVIII.

Paganina, leaning on the arm of the count, promenades with him the highest terrace. The guests, in groups at a distance, regard them with hungry eyes.

A hot and violent wind agitates the half-stripped trees. The clouds traverse the sky hurriedly and quickly, and their moving shadows rest on the mountains. The moon, disengaging itself here and there, throws its pure light on the white form of the young girl. She seems to grow in the estimation of the admirers who seek her.

The Count Ludovic is strangely moved. His sincere sentiments are rekindled by the newness of the situation, and the strangeness of the adventure. He thanks his companion for having, at one stroke, played with their two lives. Exalted and nervous, enervated with the perfume of the life that she had so nearly lost only a few moments before, Paganina replies to him. The observers of the scene listen attentively. Detached from the murmur of the distant storm, their words are heard for a moment, but the tempest again arises and carries them away in its roar. Yes, ardent and mysterious breath, bear away these words of irony, of revolt, and of despair--bear afar the bitter laugh that accompanies them.

For a long time, O powerful voice! have men listened to your painful harmony. Long have you roamed the earth, picking up the notes of grief, the cries of the new-born, the sobs of mothers, the sighs of the dying, and the groaning of the crowds who groan and groan on. But never, never have you borne away any thing more sad or desolate than the laugh of this unhappy child.

XXIX.

The night advances. Already the moon has commenced to decline. Some of the invited ones have retired; others, grouped here and there, seated or half-extended, are sleeping in the hot breath of the storm. There are two powers that watch--Paganina and the tempest, and the thunder rolls and shakes the mountains.

Silent and isolated, Paganina looks at the shadow of the Château Sarrasin. She sees it advance and recede. She thinks of the legend of this cursed place--so fatal to the honor of women. And yet fate has led her there--the gulf is yawning for her. She advances; she will enter never there.

A cry is heard; the sleepers, wakened suddenly, run to and fro, pale and frightened. They find Paganina fainting and covered with blood. A deep wound is found in her throat. The count sustains her, and in a voice thundering above the tempest orders his people to seize the assassin.

The assassin was André!

When they wished to carry the wounded one into the Château Sarrasin, she could not speak, but betrayed, in signs of such mortal terror, her repugnance to enter, that they were obliged to relinquish the idea.

She said since, at the moment that the doors opened to make way for her, she again saw the scene which, several years before, had so forcibly struck her. Nothing was wanting; the brightness of the light, or the luxury of the dress. All the actors were there, all--but they were hideous skeletons; they still made gestures of applause, while above them, the woman with the green diamond showed a livid face, the eyes extinct, and an open mouth, from which no sound proceeded.

Paganina was laid on a litter and carried to Arèse.

André followed her, chained, and guarded from sight. They arrived next morning.

It is said the infuriated crowd rushed upon the assassin and his guard, and obliged them to fly for their lives. Paganina had him brought to her, took him by the hand, and so passed through the moved and disarmed assemblage.

XXX.

For a long time her life was despaired of. A burning fever consumed her. Her sufferings were such as belonged to her thirsty nature. She experienced the most terrible of earthly tortures; and prayed in her delirium for a stream of water to flow into her parched lips.

Her moral sufferings were still greater. Every evening she became the prey to a terrible hallucination, that she regarded as the punishment of her wish for popularity; she saw herself raised far above an immense crowd, and this crowd becoming by turns insulting and mocking. Its waves of fury flowed and reflowed at the feet of their victim, and covered her with their froth. Paganina, in despair, would have thrown herself into this shoreless tide; but in vain; she felt herself enchained to her height, and obliged to wait for the rays of morning to dissipate her phantoms.

These two features suffice to characterize her malady, which was moral as well as physical. Its intensity lasted during the winter months. In the spring only she appeared to be restored to health, but the blow had been a severe one, and the rest of her life was merely a prolonged convalescence.

XXXI.

But suffering in silence accomplished its work. Her long confinement had curbed if not wholly subdued her ardent nature, and those who thought to find the revived Paganina on the declivity where they had left her, were greatly mistaken.

Their surprise was greater, too, as no indication had prepared them for the change. The work in her soul was well and firmly done, and she remained calmly impenetrable to her friends, until there escaped from her, in spite of herself, a jet of revealing flame.

The Count Ludovic had never ceased his attentions during her illness. His passion, far from weakening, had grown stronger during his separation. When he could be admitted to her presence, he expressed his sentiments, perhaps, too tenderly; he who knew her, knew of what sudden movements and prompt returns she was capable, strove with all his energy, but remained confounded. Not without reason, for so Paganina answered him:

"Since the day when I first heard all you have just repeated to me, I have stood on the borders of eternity. New lights have been shed on all things since then; do not be surprised that my language is no longer the same.

"It must be true that you place yourself in very high and me in very low esteem! Do you consider my honor a worthy prey for your vanity? Do you not think that a few days of pleasure might be too well paid for by my past and my future? What, then, do you wish? You ask that I abjure the past, that I sacrifice to you my whole future, and even more! My immortal soul is what you would wish to debase. And in a few days you would give me, in exchange, your contempt, to run, freer and more honored than ever, into new pleasures. This is what you wish, and yet you say you love me.

"Good God! what might I have been to-day, if heaven had not arrested me--and what am I now?

"Ah! forgive me; I have lost the right to be severe. Words of blame or bitterness should not come from my lips. No, it is myself I despise; and this contempt, to which I am consecrated, plunges into my heart a poisoned iron. It oppresses, it stifles me, and leaves for my punishment the life I hate.

"Count Ludovic, you are the son of chevaliers. I know at the bottom of your heart is the nobility of your ancestors. Adieu; we have met for the last time."

And the count, retiring on this command, lost his reputation for a man of gallantry.

XXXII.

It was Easter-Sunday, the feast of eternal life. The sun shed through the clouds its humid rays, the trees--clothed in new verdure and brightly agitated--sent forth their sweet and subtle perfumes.

Paganina, still weak, was placed by the open window; she turned toward the church her eyes, grown larger in suffering, and listened to the notes of the feast, weakened by the distance. When Faust heard such songs the poisoned cup fell from his hands. In his desperation he believed no longer in God. The earth had reclaimed him. Heaven was going to reconquer Paganina.

The angels, approaching her, brought back a world of innocent and gentle memories; she wept.

At this moment the bells, pealing their joyous notes, announced the end of the ceremony.

The virgins, clothed in white, quitted the church in silent swarms. Paganina saw them pass before her in a vision, for they appeared in groups of such supernatural beauty that she was thrown into an ecstasy.

She saw them leave the second banquet--some retiring sweetly within themselves, as slender stalks bending under the weight of the heavenly dew; others, pale, with foreheads high and open, and eyes pure and ardent. They crossed their arms on their breasts, the better to guard their treasure. All wore the trace of that fire which for eighteen hundred years has marked the victory of the virgins and the martyrs. The ray of divine beauty which fell on these figures was reflected back on Paganina; her soul was transfixed and vanquished for ever.

She rose, and standing, pale as her long white vestments, she prayed:

"Thou seekest me again, my God; behold! I come. To thee I return, and with the frightful experience of the darkness of oblivion, and penetrated with the horror of those places where thou art not.

"Thou art witness that, before I abandoned the heights where thou residest, I sustained an infernal struggle. That day my vision was lowered, the dragon of the abyss mounted toward me, to drag me to its depths.... Thy angels have fallen, my God! But while they are lost for ever, why, why am I reclaimed?

"I come trembling in thy light. Do not reject thy victim; acknowledge the blood-stain with which thou hast marked me to save me, I hope; let me again contemplate thy eternal beauty. Thy beauty, my Lord, I must see. I thirst for it; one of its bright rays has shone before me, and the world has nothing more to offer.

"My last hour will be the hour of my deliverance; I wait for it. Accept the offering of a broken life, whose failing forces will be employed to repair the evil I have done. And thou, my father, I bless thee, because I may yet sleep again in thy bosom."

XXXIII.

The day fixed for the trial of André having arrived, a great mass of people pressed around the court of justice. In the memory of man, no celebrated cause had ever attracted so great a multitude. At every hour, the waves of the crowd mounted higher and higher against the walls of the palace. When it was known that Paganina would appear to give her testimony, such tumult and agitation arose that the judges were obliged to suspend proceedings. Calm being somewhat reëstablished, the president called Paganina to testify against the assassin. Then, without raising her eyes, in a low and trembling voice, which ran shuddering through the crowd, she answered, "He saved my honor!" Twice she said it, and when the president, renewing his interrogation, menaced her with the penalties of the law if she refused her testimony, she fixed upon him a steady gaze and repeated in a strong voice,

"He saved my honor!"

At these words there was a shout of enthusiasm. Men threw their caps into the air, and cried, "Hurrah!" Women wept and were agitated; and André, sobbing aloud, held out to her his trembling hands.

It is easily known he was acquitted.

XXXIV.

Soon after, a strange, unheard-of rumor was afloat. They said the Count Ludovic asked Paganina in marriage. The Count Ludovic! This flower of nobility, this last of an antique chivalry, condescend to propose to an actress, and tarnish his escutcheon! It was not to be believed. But the evidence was excellent. He said so himself, and even rudely, to the unlucky flatterers who thought to make capital out of the enormity of the story.

We can conceive the emotion was great, and spread rapidly.

Things stood so, when two other pieces of news, following closely on this, caused it to be forgotten.

And these were, first, that the demand of the Count Ludovic was not acceded to; the second, that his preferred rival was André, an obscure musician with a weak brain; and, even worse than that, that all his merit rested in his attempt at the assassination of the object of his passion.

I give the facts in their entire simplicity. Truth is worth more than its resemblance; so any extenuation, any covering of phrases, would be useless, and neither make them accepted nor understood by practical people--those who judge every thing from their own stand-point, and name it so well "common sense."

Paganina wished to repair the evil of which she was the cause. She found "at her hand" the sacrifice she desired.

From the terrible night passed at the Château Sarrasin, André had never resumed the complete use of his reason. To have the right to devote herself to him, his cousin married him; surrounded him with every care, and watched over the flame of his vacillating intelligence with a love more maternal than conjugal. In our existence, many things are strange. She never seemed the wife of André. She lived with him as a sister. And can you imagine what was her life, tête-à-tête with an idiot? Calculate the energy to sustain, and the patience to calm him.

When the spectres of madness approached the poor invalid, warned by his cries of terror, Paganina ran to him. Her presence, and the sound of her voice, dispelled the phantoms. Delivered from his terrors, he threw himself at her feet, covered her hands with kisses and tears, and invoked her as his angel, swearing to her inviolable obedience.

Since King David's time, we all know the power of music to dispel the spirits of darkness. Paganina made use of it, and found consolation in the mingled studies that brought her cousin such relief. So even they had hours of happiness.

The genius, too, of Paganina was not entirely lost to her contemporaries. She was heard once in Milan, in a religious ceremony; and once again in Germany, where she had gone, nearly two years after her marriage, to make, with André, a pilgrimage to the house of her father. For her it was the song of the swan, for her exhausted and uncertain life went out soon afterward.

This song of songs will reveal her last thoughts and conclude her history.

XXXV.

In one of those festivals which are the noble pleasure and the glory of Germany, an oratorio was to be given for the first time, the expectation of which excited a passionate impatience.

This composition, called The Angels' Fall, is due to a musician whose name will descend to the latest posterity, carried onward by the tempests his genius has evoked.

The part of the archangel Lucifer was awarded to Paganina. These phlegmatic Germans, when they give themselves to enthusiasm, lose all bounds; and Paganina might have been satisfied could she have known her success; but her soul was elsewhere.

This oratorio was divided into three parts. The first expressed heaven. If there is any thing in this world that can make man see what his eyes cannot, and understand what his ears have never heard, it is music; for the true musician knows that such harmony, quitting earth, mounts to the vaults of paradise, where it wakens the echoes that have nothing of earth, and falls again on us--the messenger of hope and consolation.

Paganina's rôle, in this part, was less important than in that which followed. Her voice was rarely detached from the whole; but now and then two or three dazzling notes rose through the harmony, and the transported auditors believed they saw the fluttering wings of the archangel already hovering on the eternal heights.

I will say nothing of the second part, although several found it superior to the two others, on account of the sombre energy, the terrible power with which is rendered the insurrection of the rebel angels.

Paganina should have been perfectly at her ease, to display here the richness of her voice--this voice which, in other parts, rang as a trumpet of gold and brass. But these accents of revolt choked her, and here she was unequal. She would soon surpass herself in the last air.

The composer, by one of those happy mistakes from which the best works grow, forgot the tradition. His angels were not thunder-struck in their pride, and shrieking in blasphemy; but vanquished. They were condemned, and wept. They weep for the heaven they have lost. Admiration believed there was nothing more to expect; but here the master recalls his power, reanimates his genius, and finds an inspiration supreme to chant the farewell to infinite happiness of the guilty phalanx.

The sobs of the orchestra and chorus are heard alternately, and the voice of the archangel rises once again. At this moment, Paganina sang her last air on earth with an intensity of love and grief that cannot be described.

No, Paganina! one who can so weep has not lost heaven.

Those who saw her then will never forget her. In this high-vaulted room, lofty as a church, she stood above the others, in a long black robe covered with stars. Her beauty was that of an archangel.

As she finished, a ray of sunlight, streaming through the red glass, and sparkling as the flaming sword that forbade the entrance into Eden, rested a moment at her feet and expired.

THE COUNCIL OF TRENT.

Now that the attention of the Catholic world is directed to the coming Ecumenical Council, and various questions are asked about the nature and the probable effects of such a meeting, one's eyes naturally turn to the latest general synod of the church. The history of the Council of Trent is, indeed, of great interest. "Than it," says its accomplished historian, Pallavicini, "no preceding council was more distinguished for length of duration, for the definition of important dogmas, for the efficient reformation of manners and laws; none hindered by greater obstacles, none more patient and accurate in discussion, none more highly praised by friends, or more bitterly censured by opponents."[2] A review of the history of this great council, its work, and its results, will not be out of place, at this time and in these pages.

The so-called Reformation was different from any other heresy that had attacked the church of God in this, that it impugned the vital principle of church authority. Other heresiarchs had denied one or another dogma; Luther and his followers denied the existence of any authority to define dogmas. Other schismatists had rebelled against the governing power, but, even in their rebellion, had admitted its existence, though they might wish to curtail its powers, or to dispute its legitimate possession; the reformers declared that there was no external authority appointed of God to govern the spiritual affairs of men. "The combat," says D'Aubigné, "was to be to the death. It was not the abuses of the pontiff's authority Luther had attacked. At his bidding, the pope was required to descend meekly from his throne, and become again a simple pastor or bishop on the banks of the Tiber." And his pastoral or episcopal charge was not to be recognized as delegated from God, but given to him by the consent of the faithful. Real church authority was utterly denied; it was not its exercise, but its very existence that was brought into question. As Dr. Ewer puts it, "This was the meanest mode of attack" to Christianity. "Protestantism made an ally of the Bible, and with it flew at the church to destroy her. Satan ... picked his men.... Protestantism, making an ally of the Bible, succeeded not in reforming the church, but in attacking and destroying her in many lands."[3] Against such a rebellion the church had to put on her strongest armor. No mere outworks were attacked; the strongest citadel, the key to the whole position, was the object of deadly assault. The lines of attack were twofold. It was said that the church, under the guidance of the pontiffs of Rome, had fallen away from the true faith, and proposed superstitious errors and mere human inventions to the belief of her children. It was furthermore charged that she had become horribly deformed in morals, a very sink of iniquity, instead of that spotless and stainless bride whom Christ had laved in his blood. The intricate and difficult questions of original sin, its nature, its effects, its remedy--the justification of the sinner--were again opened and discussed with force and acrimony, if not with discretion and candor. The whole sacramental system was practically denied; the altar and the priesthood removed; and the church, as it is seen by the eyes of men, reduced to a mere voluntary association of believers, for which indefectibility, infallibility, or authority could not by any means be claimed. The Bible was appealed to in support of these novel statements, and to each one's private judgment was generously granted the privilege of securely interpreting the sacred page. The new doctrine flattered the vanity of the human intellect; and there were found many not unwilling to sit as judges where they had before stood as hearers; to leave the humble bench of the scholar for the magisterial chair of the religious teacher. The constant attacks on real or pretended abuses added greatly to the temporary success of the reformers. Against these (to borrow an expression from Hallam) "Luther bellowed in bad Latin." That there was much to be reformed, the numerous decrees of the Council of Trent leave us no room to doubt. It is also clear that it would have been well for the church had prompter remedies taken away in advance the specious pretext of the turbulent Augustinian. But it pleased her Divine Head to permit that the wrong should continue to thrive, and, when the time of trial came, many gave as an excuse for their falling off, the scandals which they alleged could no longer be endured. A glance at the history of the times will, however, show how flimsy was such a pretext. The scandals of the lives of the seceders and their immediate followers contrast darkly with the honest reforms of Trent, and the dissoluteness which was the immediate result of the revolution, taken in connection with the acknowledged improvement inside of the church, would lead one to suppose that the authors and abettors of the real abuses had abandoned the ancient fold, and betaken themselves to freer and more congenial pastures. Of his own party, Luther, as quoted by Döllinger, said:

"Our evangelicals are now sevenfold more wicked than they were before. In proportion as we hear the Gospel, we steal, lie, cheat, gorge, swill, and commit every crime. If one devil has been driven out of us, seven worse ones have taken their place, to judge from the conduct of princes, lords, nobles, burgesses, and peasants, their utterly shameless acts, and their disregard of God and of his menaces."

Of the old church, Henry Hallam says:

"The decrees of the Council of Trent were received by the spiritual princes of the empire in 1566, 'and from this moment,' says the excellent historian who has thrown most light on this subject, 'began a new life for the Catholic Church in Germany.'... Every method was adopted to revive an attachment to the ancient religion, insuperable by the love of novelty or the force of argument. A stricter discipline and subordination was introduced among the clergy; they were early trained in seminaries, apart from the sentiments and habits, the vices and the virtues of the world. The monastic orders resumed their rigid observances."[4]

Luther, anticipating his condemnation by Pope Leo X., appealed in 1518 to a general council, a course, we may remark, frequently taken by heretics, if for nothing else, at least to gain time to enroll followers, and thus increase in importance, before the final condemnation. The diet of Nuremberg, in 1522, in answer to the conciliatory and truly apostolic communication of Pope Adrian VI., through his nuncio, Cheregat, requested his holiness to call a council in some city of Germany, with the double object of a thorough reformation, and of devising means of resistance to the menacing advances of the Turkish power. Adrian died before he could take any action on the subject, and the new pontiff, Clement VII., did not receive the proposal with favor. According to Pallavicini, he feared that under the actual circumstances the council would only aggravate the evil, especially if the fathers should revive the pretensions of their predecessors of Constance and Basle, an apprehension very prevalent at that time at Rome, and, it must be admitted, not altogether groundless; besides, the war then raging between Charles V. and Francis I., from whose dominions most of the bishops were to come, rendered the possibility of a successful convocation almost hopeless; and, lastly, the demand was for a council which would satisfy Luther and his party; namely, one in which any one that might choose, even laymen, should be allowed to take part, and the pontiff should lay aside his high prerogatives, and sit as a simple bishop. He consequently instructed his legate, Campeggi, that it was impossible to call a council until the conclusion of peace between the two great princes of Europe, offering, at the same time, to carry out the measures of reform decreed by the council of Lateran, held not long before by Leo X., and to provide by his own authority proper remedies on other points. The unfortunate war in which Clement became afterward involved with Charles V. delayed for some time all question of holding a council; but, with the return of peace, the negotiations were resumed, and at a consultation held in Bologna, in 1533, between the pontiff and the emperor, the former agreed to convoke the council within six months from the acceptation of certain very equitable conditions by all interested. But the Protestant princes of Germany, in a meeting at Smalcald, (1533,) refused to accept the two first conditions, "that the council should be free, and be held after the manner of the ancient general councils; and that those who wished to take part in it should promise beforehand to obey its decrees;" a refusal which justified, in part at least, the fears of the pontiff. He did not, however, desist, and was engaged in negotiations on the subject until his death, (September 25th, 1534.) His successor, Paul III., had never shared his fears, and, soon after his elevation, sent nuncios to the various princes to promote the speedy convocation of the council. In point of fact, he did convoke it, appointing Mantua, which had been agreed on by the emperor and the Catholic princes of Germany, as the place, and the 23d day of May, 1537, as the time, of the meeting. It is useless minutely to detail the obstacles placed in the way of the great event by the Duke of Mantua and others, the selection of Vicenza, the suspension of the council, and the bootless legation of Contarini to the diet of Ratisbon. At last, as the pontiff himself says, in his bull of convocation:

"While we awaited the hidden time, the time of thy good pleasure, O God! we were compelled to say that when we take counsel concerning things sacred, and pertaining to Christian piety, every time is pleasing to God. Wherefore, seeing, to our great sorrow, that the condition of Christendom was every day becoming worse, Hungary oppressed by the Turks, the Germans themselves in danger, and all the rest of Europe seized with fear and sadness--we determined no longer to wait on the consent of any prince, but to regard solely the will of Almighty God and the good of the Christian commonwealth."

To satisfy the Germans, he selected Trent as the place of meeting, though he himself would have preferred some city of Italy nearer Rome. But new obstacles arose, and the council, though convoked for the feast of All Saints, (November 1st, 1542,) was not opened until December 13th, 1545. Even then, it was necessary to commence with a very small attendance of prelates. At the first session there were present, besides the legates of the apostolic see and the Cardinal Bishop of Trent, only four archbishops, twenty bishops, and five general superiors of religious orders.[5] But it was thought better to make a beginning, even though the number of fathers was lamentably small, especially since, according to ancient ecclesiastical usage, a council, legitimately convoked by the apostolic see, legitimately celebrated under its presidency, and approved by its authority, is ecumenical, even though many of the bishops called to it were either unable or unwilling to take part in its deliberations.

Bishops in greater number gradually found their way to the assembly, and seven sessions were held in succession, the last on March 3d, 1547, so that the deliberations of this period of the council lasted over fourteen months. The work of reformation was commenced, together with the dogmatical definitions, and the same plan was followed throughout. On March 11th, the eighth session was held; but the only business transacted was the passing of a decree transferring the council to Bologna, the reason assigned being an epidemic, the existence of which in Trent was declared to be a matter of notoriety, and which had already caused some prelates to leave that city, others to protest against a further sojourn. Many fathers obeyed the decree, and the congregations were held regularly in Bologna. The Emperor Charles V. did not, however, relish this transfer from a city of his dominions to one under the temporal jurisdiction of the pope, and he detained at Trent the prelates from his states. The result was that, after two formal sessions, the synod was prorogued, "at the pleasure of the Sacred Council," on September 14th, 1547, and the remainder of the pontificate of Paul III. was spent in fruitless negotiations for its resumption. Paul died on November 10th, 1549, of whom Pallavicini says: "By his inordinate affection for his family, he showed himself to be only a man; for the rest, he has deserved in the church the name of hero."[6] His successor was Julius III., who as Cardinal del Monte had presided over the council in the quality of first legate apostolic. His first care was to reopen the sacred synod, and he immediately sent nuncios to the emperor and the French king, to bring about this desired result. The stand taken by Charles for Trent made it advisable again to select that city, and Julius was enabled, on December 1st, 1550, to publish a bull appointing the first day of May of the ensuing year for the reassembling of the council. The first session (eleventh of the whole series) was accordingly held on that day, but, to give time to the Germans to arrive, no business was transacted, September 1st being appointed for the next session. Meanwhile, the preparatory work went on, and on the appointed day, the archbishop, electors of Mayence and Treves, and many other prelates being present, another session was held, in which it was determined to wait until October 11th, for other bishops of Germany and other nations, who were known to be on their way. The thirteenth session was celebrated on this day, and it was followed by three others, in all of which important canons and decrees were passed. But civil war had broken out in Germany, and Maurice of Saxony, at the head of a Protestant army, in league with the French king, had occupied Augsburg and menaced Innspruch, where Charles held his court, and whence he soon afterward retired. It was not to be wondered at that the fathers in the neighboring city of Trent should wish to shun a danger before which even the great emperor was obliged to retreat, and, in the sixteenth session, held on April 28th, 1552, a decree was passed suspending the celebration of the council for two years, providing, however, that in case of a speedy return of peace it might be resumed sooner. Pressed by his enemies, Charles agreed to the pacification of Passau, which promulgated a kind of toleration of both the old and the new religion. It also provided for a diet of the empire, in which the question was to be discussed whether an ecumenical council, or a national synod, or a conference, or an imperial diet, afforded the surest method of settling the existing religious differences. This, of course, put off the council again. Meanwhile, Julius III. died on March 23d, 1555. His former colleague in the apostolic legation to the council under Paul III., Cardinal Cervini, succeeded him in the pontificate; but death summoned him on the twenty-second day of his reign. The austere, zealous, but by no means prudent Cardinal Caraffa was the next choice of the Sacred College. The career of Paul IV. affords a singular example of the fallacy of human expectations. Before his election, he was a subject of the emperor, (he was a Neapolitan by birth;) in the pontificate, he waged war against Charles, son and successor; himself pure and above all suspicion, his reign was disgraced by the worst form of nepotism, so that, under his successor, his nephews, one of them a cardinal, died the death of malefactors; a great and really zealous promoter of reform, he took no steps to reassemble the council. Nor indeed could he. He was for the greater part of his reign at war with Philip II., successor of Charles V., in the latter's hereditary dominions, and he would never recognize Ferdinand as Charles's legitimate successor in the empire, on account of the part taken by that prince in the pacification of Passau. Yet so opposed was he to heresy, that he had recalled from England the gentle and prudent Cardinal Pole, and was about to summon him to Rome to purge himself of the suspicion of heresy, and he actually imprisoned, on a similar suspicion, Cardinal Morone, who was destined to be the moving spirit, as he was the actual president of the last sessions of the great council. Paul died on August 18th, 1559. He was an excellent ecclesiastic, conspicuous for learning and virtue, and in less troubled times would have been a successful, as he was a holy pontiff. But, to quote Pallavicini, "he was braver in punishing crime, no matter how high the criminal, than prudent in preventing it. He took the amplitude of his sacred power as the proper measure of its exercise."[7] He waged war, however, on abuses, and was a severe ecclesiastical disciplinarian. His whole pontificate is a proof of the uselessness, not to say positive evil, in persons in high position, of determination, zeal, vigor, unless tempered by discretion, prudence, and meekness. His successor, Cardinal Medici, who took the name of Pius IV., a learned and virtuous prelate, though not so remarkable for natural parts or austere asceticism, accomplished much more for the glory of God and the good of Holy Church.

The new pontiff immediately turned his attention to the council. He had three princes of first class to deal with--the Emperor Ferdinand, and the kings of France and Spain. This last and the emperor desired the council to be reassembled at Trent; but the French sovereign objected to this place on account of its want of accommodations and unhealthy air, but especially because the Protestants had already commenced to hate the name, and proposed Constance. But at last the pontiff obtained the unanimous consent of all the Catholic princes of Europe for Trent, and on November 29th, 1560, issued a bull appointing Easter Sunday of the coming year for the reopening of the council. He sent his legates to Trent, and many prelates soon arrived; the congregations and other preparatory meetings were held; but the troubles in France, on the succession of Charles IX., prevented the arrival of the French bishops. At last, on January 18th, 1562, was held, with unusual solemnity, the first session under Pius IV., (seventeenth of the whole series,) at which there were present, besides the apostolic legates and the Cardinal of Trent, one hundred and six bishops, four mitred abbots, and four generals of religious orders. From this happy day, the council went on with its appointed work without any interference. There were grave discussions, sometimes warm and prolonged, but always ending in peace and harmony. The French bishops arrived, before the end of the year, under the leadership of the illustrious Charles of Guise, Cardinal of Lorraine. At last, to use the words of Jerome Ragazzoni, Bishop of Nazianzen, and coadjutor of Famagosta, orator at the last session, "the day arrived which Paul III. and Julius III. had yearned for, but which it was not given to them to see--a gladness reserved to Pius IV.--on which the Council of Trent, commenced long before, often interrupted, and sometimes transferred, was at last, thanks to God's great mercy, happily ended, to the great and unspeakable joy of all classes of men." The twenty-fifth and last session was held on December 3d and 4th, 1563. There were present at it four cardinal legates of the apostolic see, two other cardinals, those of Trent and Lorraine, three patriarchs, twenty-five archbishops, one hundred and sixty-eight bishops, thirty-nine procurators of prelates legitimately absent, seven abbots, and seven generals of religious orders--making, in all, two hundred and fifty-five prelates, whose signatures are attached to the decrees. Amid the festive acclamations, composed and intoned by the Cardinal of Lorraine, tears of joy testified the gladness of all hearts; opponents embraced one another, no longer rivals, but brethren; the Te Deum was sung with feelings of the deepest gratitude; and as the first legate, Morone, having given his solemn blessing to the fathers, bade them, in the name of the supreme pontiff, go in peace, the last solemn act of the great council was performed. The whole time, from the first session under Paul III. to the last under Pius IV., was within a few days of eighteen years; but that actually occupied by the council was four years and about eight months. The canons and decrees, both in faith and discipline, were solemnly approved, at the request of the fathers, by "the most blessed Roman pontiff," Pius IV., as the council styled him, on January 25th, 1564; and, by a subsequent bull, they were declared obligatory on the whole church, from the first day of May of the same year.

This historical sketch will serve to give some idea of the difficulties the work of the council had to encounter. Whatever may be said in the abstract of the union of church and state, their relations in the sixteenth century were very unsatisfactory. Popes Paul III., Julius, and Pius wanted a general council; but it was very difficult so to arrange matters as to obtain the necessary consent of all the Catholic powers, and this difficulty always afforded an excuse for delay when delay was really desired. Then there were courtiers at Rome "to whose ears the word reform sounded harsh," as Pallavicini says; and who were suddenly animated by the most ardent zeal in defence of the prerogatives of the holy see, which, they alleged, would be unduly curtailed by the council. But the firmness of the pontiffs, under the grace of God, which never abandons his church, brought these machinations to nought. They refused to interfere to save their dependents from a thorough reform; and Pius IV., especially, declared that he left full liberty to the fathers in the matter. And in a discourse in the Consistory of Cardinals, on December 30th, 1563, he expressly thanked the fathers "for the religious zeal and resolute freedom with which they had spared no labor, no care, to remove all heresies and corruptions." "We are also," he continued, "not a little indebted to them for having been so moderate and indulgent in the work of reformation, in regard to our own affairs, (that is, the papal court,) that, had we preferred to take this duty on ourselves, and not commit it to their discretion, we should certainly have been more severe. Wherefore, as salutary measures have been adopted, it is our firm determination forthwith to carry the reform into effect by the observance of the decrees of the sacred synod. We shall rather, when necessary, make up by our own diligence for the moderation and leniency of the fathers; so far are we from wishing to neglect or diminish one iota."[8] And he appointed Cardinals Morone and Simonetta, both legates to the council, to see that nothing was done by any of the papal officials in contravention of the so lately approved decrees. The courtiers had to submit, and the court of Rome since that day has given little or no occasion for serious complaint, and certainly no pretext for a schism under the name of reform. Another difficulty arose from the multitude of counsellors, and the liberty left in discussion. Now that the council has passed into history, it is pleasant to see that such ample freedom was allowed; but it must have been sometimes a sore task for the legates to keep order. They well deserved the encomium of Ragazzoni, "You have been our excellent leaders and directors in action. You have used incredible patience and diligence in guarding against any violation of our liberty, either in speaking or in legislating. You have spared no bodily labor, no mental exertion, to bring the undertaking to its desired end." But the principal difficulty arose from the Protestants themselves. They had asked for the council, but when it was assembled they would have nothing to do with it. Three different safe conducts were issued for them--one under Paul III., another under Julius III., and the last under Pius IV.--all of them as ample as could be desired; but to no purpose. They did not really want a council, but an ecclesiastical mob without a head; in other words, they wanted the main question of church authority to be decided in advance in their favor. Their course was substantially that of all former heretics; first, to appeal to the council, to gain time and cause trouble; then, after their condemnation, to abuse the council as much as they had formerly abused the pope. It would be difficult to determine which is to-day the greater bugbear of the average Protestant, the Council of Trent or the holy see.

Few, if any, assemblages have received such praise for learning, moderation, and zeal--not only from friends, but from candid opponents--as that of Trent. We will give as a sample the judgment of Hallam, himself not at all well disposed toward Catholic dogma. His testimony is the more valuable that he acknowledges to have taken his facts from the disingenuous account of the more than half Protestant, Fra Paolo Sarpi,[9] and never to have read the able and exhaustive history of Pallavicini:

"It is usual for Protestant writers to inveigh against the Tridentine fathers. I do not assent to their decisions, which is not to the purpose, nor vindicate the intrigues of the papal party. But I must presume to say that, reading their proceedings in the pages of that very able and not very lenient historian to whom we have generally recourse, an adversary as decided as any that could have come from the reformed churches, I find proofs of much ability, considering the embarrassments with which they had to struggle, and of an honest desire of reformation, among a large body, as to those matters which, in their judgment, ought to be reformed."[10]

Again:

"It will appear, by reading the accounts of the sessions of the council, either in Father Paul, or in any more favorable historian, that, even in certain points, such as justification, which had not been clearly laid down before, the Tridentine decrees were mostly conformable with the sense of the majority of those doctors who had obtained the highest reputation; and that upon what are more usually reckoned the distinctive characteristics of the Church of Rome, namely, transubstantiation, purgatory, and invocation of the saints and the Virgin, they assert nothing but what had been so engrafted into the faith of this part of Europe as to have been rejected by no one without suspicion or imputation of heresy. Perhaps Erasmus would not have acquiesced with good-will in all the decrees of the council; but was Erasmus deemed orthodox?... No general council ever contained so many persons of eminent learning and ability as that of Trent; nor is there ground for believing that any other ever investigated the questions before it with so much patience, acuteness, temper, and desire of truth. The early councils, unless they are greatly belied, would not bear comparison in these characteristics. Impartiality and freedom from prejudice, no Protestant will attribute to the fathers of Trent; but where will he produce these qualities in an ecclesiastical synod? But it may be said that they had only one leading prejudice, that of determining theological faith according to the tradition of the Catholic Church, as handed down to their age. This one point of authority conceded, I am not aware that they can be proved to have decided wrong, or at least against all reasonable evidence. Let those who have imbibed a different opinion ask themselves whether they have read Sarpi through with any attention, especially as to those sessions of the Tridentine Council which preceded its suspension in 1549."[11]

To the praise of ability, industry, and fairness, all of the highest order from a natural point of view, Hallam unconsciously adds a still greater, in the eyes of any true Catholic, namely, that the council, on controverted dogmatic points, adhered to the tradition of the Catholic Church. And this on the authority of the carping Sarpi! What more could the greatest admirer say? Right in its view of dogma from the traditional--the true Catholic--stand-point, honest and unswerving in reforming abuses, patient in discussion, diligent in research, calm in decision--such is the substantial verdict of a Protestant writer, in the nineteenth century, on the great council of the sixteenth.

If we consider the variety of matters treated of in the council, its work will appear immense. The following accurate synopsis is taken from the oration of Ragazzoni, at the last session, which we have quoted before. In matters of faith, after the adoption of the venerable creed sanctioned by antiquity, the council drew up a catalogue of the inspired books of the Old and New Testament, and approved the old received Latin version of the Hebrew and Greek originals. It then passed to decide the questions that had been raised concerning the fall of man. Next, with admirable wisdom and order, it laid down the true Catholic doctrine on justification. The sacraments then claimed attention, and their number, their life-giving power through grace, and the nature of each one were accurately defined. The great dogma of the blessed eucharist was fully laid down; the real dignity of the Christian altar and sacrifice was vindicated; and the moot question of communion under one or two kinds settled both in theory and practice. Lastly, the false accusations of opponents were dispelled, and Catholic consciences gladdened by the enunciations on indulgences, purgatory, the invocation and veneration of saints, and the respect to be paid to their relics and images. The decision on so many important and difficult questions was no light task, and of the utmost importance. A "hard and fast line" was drawn between heresy and truth; and if the wayward were not all converted, the little ones of Christ were saved from the danger of being led astray. In her greatest trial, the church gave no uncertain sound. Nations might rage, and the rulers of the earth meditate rash things; but the truth of God did not abandon her, and she fearlessly proclaimed it in her council. In regard to some abuses in practical matters, dependent on dogma, from which the innovators had seized a pretext to impugn the true faith, a thorough reform was decreed. Measures were taken to prevent any impropriety or irreverence in the celebration of the divine sacrifice, whether from superstitious observances, greed of filthy lucre, unworthy celebrants, profane places, or worldly concomitants. The different orders of ecclesiastics were accurately distinguished, and the exclusive rights and duties of each one clearly defined; some impediments of matrimony, which had been productive of evil rather than good, were removed, and most stringent regulations adopted to prevent the crying wrongs to which confiding innocence and virtue had been subjected under the pretext of clandestine marriages. All the abuses connected with indulgences, the veneration of the saints, and intercession for the souls of purgatory, were fully and finally extirpated. Nor was less care taken in regard to purely disciplinary matters. Measures were taken to insure, as far at least as human frailty would permit, the elevation of only worthy persons to ecclesiastical dignities; and stated times were appointed for the frequent and efficient preaching of the word of God, too much hitherto neglected, the necessity of which was insisted on with earnestness and practical force. The sacred duty of residence among their flocks was impressed on bishops and all inferiors having the care of souls; proper provision was made for the support of needy clergymen, and all privileges which might protect heresy or crime were swept away. To prevent all suspicion of avarice in the house of God, the gratuitous administration of the sacraments was made compulsory; and measures were taken to put an effectual stop to the career of the questor, by abolishing the office. Young men destined for the priesthood were to be trained in ecclesiastical seminaries; provincial synods were restored, and regular diocesan visitations ordered; many new and extended faculties were granted to the local authorities, for the sake of better order and prompter decision; the sacred duty of hospitality was inculcated in all clerics; wise regulations were passed to secure proper promotions to ecclesiastical benefices; all hereditary possession of God's sanctuary prohibited; moderation prescribed in the use of the power of excommunication; luxury, cupidity, and license, as far as possible, exiled from the sanctuary; most holy and wise provisions adopted for the better regulation of the religious of both sexes, who were judiciously shorn of many of their privileges, to the proper development of episcopal authority; the great ones of the world were warned of their duties and responsibilities. These, and many other similar measures, were the salutary, efficient, and lasting reforms with which God, at last taking mercy on his people, inspired the fathers of Trent, legitimately congregated under the presidency and guidance of the apostolic see. Such was the great work done by the council--so great that even this summary review makes our wonder at the length of its duration cease. One remark seems worthy of special notice. The usual complaint of Protestants against the council was, and is, that it was too much under papal influence. Now, one of the most notable features of its legislation is the great increase of the power of bishops. Not only was their ordinary authority confirmed and extended, but they were made in many cases, some of them of no little importance, perpetual delegates of the apostolic see, so that Philip II. of Spain is reported to have said of his bishops, that "they went to Trent as parish priests, and returned like so many popes."[12] So groundless is the statement that the papal jealousy of episcopal power prevented any really salutary reforms.

Such was the great work of the Council of Trent. But a tree is best judged by its fruits, and this test will give us even a better idea of its importance and magnitude. Perhaps the best encomium of the council is that the Catholic of to-day reads with astonishment of abuses and measures of reform in the sixteenth century. The prophecy of Ragazzoni, in his often-quoted oration, has been literally fulfilled--the names of many of the evils of that period have been forgotten. Thank God! to understand the work of Trent, we have to study the internal troubles of the church of those days in the pages of history, for we do not find them in our own time. They have utterly disappeared. We have already quoted Hallam on the revival of faith and piety in the church that was the immediate effect of the council. All historians agree that the triumphs of Protestantism closed with the first fifty years of its existence. After that it gradually declined. "We see," says Macaulay in his famous Edinburgh Review article on the papacy, "that during two hundred and fifty years Protestantism has made no conquests worth speaking of. Nay, we believe that as far as there has been a change, that change has been in favor of the Church of Rome." Hallam has noticed the same fact, and assigned its real causes; we shall give his words, as, with a few obvious exceptions, they might have been written by a Catholic: "The prodigious increase of the Protestant party in Europe, after the middle of the (sixteenth) century, did not continue more than a few years. It was checked and fell back, not quite so rapidly or completely as it came on, but so as to leave the antagonist church in perfect security." He goes on to give the causes of the reaction. The influence of the Council of Trent in its reform of the clergy, both secular and regular, (we have already given his words,) is mentioned as the principal cause; and, "far above all the rest," he says, "the Jesuits were the instruments of regaining France and Germany to the church they served." "They conquered us," says Ranke, "on our own ground, in our own homes, and stripped us of a part of our country." The following passages will give some idea of the extent and causes of the change:

"Protestantism, as late as 1578, might be deemed preponderant in all the Austrian dominions, except the Tyrol. In the Polish diets, the dissidents, as they were called, met their opponents with vigor and success. The ecclesiastical principalities were full of Protestants; and even in the chapters some of them might be found. But the contention was unequal, from the different characters of the parties; religious zeal and devotion, which, fifty years before, had overthrown the ancient rites in northern Germany, were now more invigorating sentiments in those who rescued them from further innovation. In religious struggles, where there is any thing like an equality of forces, the question soon comes to be, which party will make the greatest sacrifice for its own faith? And, while the Catholic self-devotion had grown far stronger, there was much more secular cupidity, lukewarmness, and formality in the Lutheran Church. In a very few years the effects of this were distinctly seen. The Protestants of the Catholic principalities went back into the bosom of Rome. In the bishopric of Wurtzburg alone, sixty-two thousand converts are said to have been received in the year 1586. The Emperor Rodolph and his brother archdukes, by a long series of persecution and banishment, finally, though not within this century, almost outrooted Protestantism from the hereditary provinces of Austria. It is true that these violent measures were the proximate cause of so many conversions; but if the reformed had been ardent and united, they were much too strong to be thus subdued. In Bohemia, accordingly, and in Hungary, where there was a more steady spirit, they kept their ground. The reaction was not less conspicuous in other countries. It is asserted that the Huguenots had already lost more than two thirds of their number in 1580;[13] comparatively, I presume, with twenty years before; and the change in their relative position is manifest from all the histories of this period. In the Netherlands, though the seven united provinces were slowly winning their civil and religious liberties at the sword's point, yet West Flanders, once in great measure Protestant, became Catholic before the end of the century; while the Walloon provinces were kept from swerving by some bishops of great eloquence and excellent lives, as well as by the influence of the Jesuits planted at St. Omer and Douay. At the close of this period of fifty years, the mischief done to the old church in its first decennium was very nearly repaired; the proportion of the two religions in Germany coincided with those which had existed at the pacification of Passau. The Jesuits, however, had begun to encroach a little on the proper domain of the Lutheran church.

"This great revival of the papal religion, after the shock it had sustained in the first part of the sixteenth century, ought for ever to restrain that temerity of prediction so frequent in our ears.... In the year 1560, every Protestant in Europe doubtless anticipated the overthrow of popery; the Catholics could have found little else to warrant hope than their trust in heaven. The late rush of many nations toward democratical opinions has not been so rapid and so general as the change of religion about that period. It is important and interesting to inquire what stemmed this current. We readily acknowledge the prudence, firmness, and unity of purpose that for the most part distinguished the court of Rome, the obedience of its hierarchy, the severity of intolerant laws, and the searching rigor of the Inquisition, the resolute adherence of great princes to the Catholic faith, the influence of the Jesuits over education; but these either existed before, or would at least not have been sufficient to withstand an overwhelming force of opinion. It must be acknowledged that there was a principle of vitality in that religion, independent of its external strength. By the side of its secular pomp, its relaxation of morality, there had always been an intense flame of zeal and devotion. Superstition, it might be, in the many, fanaticism in a few; but both of these imply the qualities which, while they subsist, render a religion indestructible. That revival of an ardent zeal, through which the Franciscans had, in the thirteenth century, with some good and much more evil effect, spread a popular enthusiasm over Europe, was once more displayed in counteraction of those new doctrines that themselves had drawn their life from a similar development of moral emotion."[14]

In the Council of Trent were again fulfilled the words of the prophet concerning the Messiah: "Behold, he cometh ... like a refining fire, and like the fuller's herb; and he shall sit refining and cleansing the silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and shall refine them as gold, and as silver; and they shall offer sacrifices to the Lord in justice; and the sacrifice shall please the Lord, as in the days of old, and in the ancient years."[15]

The zeal of the fathers did not, it is true, succeed in bringing back all the Protestants; but neither did the Council of Nice succeed with the Arians, or that of Ephesus with the Nestorians, or that of Chalcedon with the followers of Eutyches. But they kept the Catholic faith pure; they sternly applied the pruning-hook to the numerous excrescences which had been allowed to accumulate. God blessed their work; and the tree of life, planted by running waters, again produced new flowers and fruits of holiness.

Though from the moment the decrees were solemnly approved by the holy see, with the exception of that on clandestine marriages, for which special provision had been made, they commenced to be obligatory on the whole church; yet it was thought well to obtain a special promulgation in the different Catholic countries of Europe. The republic of Venice and the king of Portugal first gave the example; Philip II. of Spain followed, and was imitated, after some little delay in the hope of reconciling the Protestants, by the German emperor. France, then governed by Catharine of Medici, alone, of Catholic countries, refused. The excuse given was, principally, the turbulence of the Huguenots; the real reason, the desire to preserve certain royal prerogatives in church matters,[16] with which the reforms of the council interfered. So, in the name of Gallican liberties and royal privileges, the disciplinary portion was not published in France. Most of the measures were actually adopted by the bishops in provincial councils; but the seed of great evils was sown. These same liberties, so called, rendered possible the chicanery by which the Jansenists subsequently sought to elude the solemn condemnations of the holy see; and at the revolution gave the idea of the civil constitution of the clergy, rather than accept which so many noble bishops and priests gladly met death. But the French Church has tired of them; a terrible experience has taught her that the only true safeguard of her liberty is, in a close union with the see of him to whom Christ confided the duty of strengthening his brethren. In regard to the decrees on faith, there was never any hesitancy in France; and we owe some of our very best apologetic or controversial works against Protestantism to zealous and learned writers of that nation.

One remarkable consequence of the council was a great outpouring of the spirit of sanctity. St. Charles Borromeo, as prime minister of his uncle, Pius IV., contributed greatly to its successful termination. Afterward, as archbishop of Milan, he set an example of enforcing its decrees which has ever since served as a rule for zealous bishops. He changed the face of affairs in Lombardy, and may be said to have led the way in practically carrying the reforms into effect. Numbers of holy bishops aided him, or imitated his example; and before he died the new discipline was well established. At Rome, St. Philip Neri excited in a wonderful way the spirit of zeal in the clergy, and of piety in the laity; and his work and example remain to this day. It is impossible not to be struck with the new spirit that had seized the papal court. The popes themselves were men not only of blameless lives, but zealous and active for the good of religion. A glance at Ranke's history--especially the notes at the end--will satisfy the reader of this; while Catholic works abound in edifying accounts. Such men as Baronius and Bellarmine were ornaments of the Sacred College, not only for their learning, but for their solid, extraordinary piety, which has barely failed of obtaining the honors of the altar. The Society of Jesus, and other religious orders, were seminaries of virtues, of zeal, of missionary spirit; and the heralds of the cross went to the very ends of the earth to bring the glad tidings of salvation to those sitting in darkness. Every state and condition of life has its saints of this period. St. Mary Magdalen di Pazzi, the nun; St. Francis Borgia, the rich man who gave up all for Christ; St. Felix of Cantalice, the unlettered lay brother; St. Aloysius, the pattern of youth; St. Francis Xavier, the apostle; St. Charles, the model bishop; St. Philip Neri, the perfect secular priest; St. Pius V., the pope who added to his triple crown the fourth, and greatest, of sanctity; and many others, whose names are not so well known to the world. It was emphatically the age of saints: war always produces heroes.

There have been shortcomings since Trent, because the church has her human as well as her divine element, and heresies and scandals, it was foretold by her divine Founder, must come; but, by far, not so many as before it. The contrast between the ease with which Pius IX. convokes a general council and the difficulties with which his predecessors had to contend in the sixteenth century, is so plain as to require no comment, and, at the same time, affords striking evidence of the efficacy of the work done at Trent. It was a great work, in every sense of the word. It met from the beginning with great difficulties, which were overcome by equal constancy; it was devised and executed by men great in learning, prudence, and zeal; it effected a reaction in favor of Catholicity than which there never occurred "one on a larger scale in the annals of mankind;"[17] it thoroughly purified the church from wretched and inveterate abuses; it revived a spirit of sanctity that emulated the palmiest days of the church; and it has handed down to us the boon of pure faith and strict observance which our unfortunate opponents cannot but admire, even though they attempt to decry it. While Protestantism was pulling down, the council built up on a sure foundation; and its work has been lasting.

Through the lapse of three centuries the grateful church has ever re-echoed, as she re-echoes at this day, the acclamation of the Cardinal of Lorraine, "The sacred ecumenical Council of Trent--let us profess its faith; let us always observe its decrees. Semper confiteamur, semper servemus."

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Pallavicini. Historia Conc. Trid. Apparatus. Chap. 1, § 4. We quote from the Latin translation of F. Giattini, S.J.

[3] Sermons on the Failure of Protestantism. Sermon v.

[4] Introd. to The Literature of Europe. Part ii. ch. 2, §§ 7, 8.

[5] Pallav. Lib. v. c. 17, § 8.

[6] Lib. xi. c. 6, § 4.

[7] Lib. xiv. c. 9, § 5.

[8] Pallav. Lib. xxiv. c. 9, § 5.

[9] We append the estimate which Hallam himself forms of the Catholicity of this unfortunate friar: "Dupin observes that the long list of errors imputed by Pallavicini, which are chiefly in dates and such trifling matters, make little or no difference as to the substance of Sarpi's history; but that its author is more blamable for a malicious disposition to impute political motives to the members of the council, and idle reasonings which they did not employ. Ranke, who has given this a more minute scrutiny than Dupin could have done, comes nearly to the same result. Sarpi is not a fair, but he is, for those times, a tolerably exact historian.... Much has been disputed about the religious tenets of Father Paul: it appears to me quite out of doubt, both by the tenor of his history, and still more unequivocally, if possible, by some of his letters that he was entirely hostile to the church, in the usual sense, as well as to the court of Rome; sympathizing in affection, and concurring generally in opinion, with the reformed denomination." (Lit. of Europe, Part iii. ch. 2, § 3.) "This confirms the principal points in Pallavicini's main charge, that Sarpi was hostile to the church, and substituted his own malicious conjectures for the truth of history." (See Apparatus, ch. 1.)

[10] Literature of Eur. Part i. ch. 6, § 25.

[11] Literature of Europe, Part ii. ch. 2, § 18, note.

[12] Pallav. Hist. Appar. ch. 9, § 4.

[13] In a note, quoting Ranke as authority, he adds, "The number is rather startling."

[14] Lit. of Europe, Part ii. c. 2, §§ 14, 15.

[15] Mal. iii. 2-4.

[16] One of these was the power of giving regular benefices in commendam, that is, conferring the style, title, rank, and revenues of abbot, or other religious superior, on some one not a member of the religious community, who enjoyed the advantages but never performed the duties of his office. Two evils followed: 1. An ecclesiastical benefice was a mere matter of political patronage, and liable to be conferred on unworthy persons. 2. Owing to the absence of the chief superior, discipline became very relaxed in religious communities so afflicted. At least one regular congregation, in France, entirely died out on this account.

[17] Hallam. Lit. of Eur. Part ii. ch. 2, § 6.

MATTHEW XXVII.

"And He answered them nothing."

O mighty Nothing! unto thee, Nothing, we owe all things that be. God spake once when He all things made, He saved all when He nothing said. The world was made of nothing then; 'Tis made by nothing now again.

CRASHAW.

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF CONRAD VON BOLANDEN.

ANGELA.

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