brief continuance of miraculous gifts would have "unwarily betrayed the Protestant cause into the hands of its enemies; for it was in those primitive ages, particularly in the third, fourth, and fifth, those flourishing times of miracles, in which the chief corruptions of Popery" were "introduced."* Middleton simply looks the matter in the face when he says: "By granting the Romanists but a single age of miracles after the time of the Apostles, we shall be entangled in a series of difficulties, whence we can never fairly extricate ourselves till we allow the same powers also to the present age." But what began as illogical Protestantism must end inevitably-there is no possibility of escape-in logical rationalism. The human intellect cannot persist for many generations in a palpable inconsistency. The theologians of Tübingen have simply reached that point already which must sooner or later be the reductio ad absurdum of all Protestant theology. Those who in effect deny the possibility of miracles in the nineteenth century must end by denying their possibility in the first. If no reasonable amount of evidence can substantiate a miracle to-day, no conceivable amount can establish the credibility of one which happened centuries ago, in a distant country and a credulous age. The only way of disposing of the unanimous and circumstantial testimony of the Fathers is by charging them, as Middleton did, en masse, with wholesale and habitual “forgery," with a "bold defiance of sacred truth;" and a scepticism (I might better say, a credulity) *Ibid. Introd. Chap. p. li. Notice, in passing, the admission of primitive' Popery.' + Ibid. p. xcvi. ‡ Ibid. p. lxxxiv. Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus. If the Fathers which can deal thus with the Fathers, will not long continue to reverence the veracity of their predecessors. The end is not far off. Three hundred years of Protestantism have left to Christianity only the distant tradition of a supernatural revelation; and "the idea of the miraculous, which a superficial observer might have once deemed its most prominent characteristic, has been driven from almost all its intrenchments, and now quivers faintly and feebly through the mists of eighteen hundred years.' For myself, now that I have come to look at this matter fairly and fearlessly, I hesitate not to say that, if ever sound reason should force me to reject in a body the miracles of the Catholic Church, I will follow reason further, and enroll myself as an humble disciple of Strauss, or Spencer, or Tyndall. But I also say, and with equal confidence, that reason itself will be dethroned before I can be brought to believe that the concurrent testimony of eighteen centuries is a gigantic fraud, and the blessed saints of all ages a set of cunning and consummate knaves. Protestantism-"Ah!" exclaimed Bossuet, 66 our heart beats at this name, and the Church, always a mother, can never, when she remembers it, repress her sighs and her desires." Protestants, the Holy Father has written to you. as to those who acknowledge the Lord Jesus Christ as your Redeemer, and glory in the name of Christian; he entreats you to examine anxiously whether you are in the true path marked out for us by our Divine Lord; he supplicates you were systematic liars, where is your evidence for even the authenticity of the New Testament Scriptures? *Hist. of Rat. i. 195. The italicizing is mine. + Quoted by Mgr. Dupanloup. to follow the yearnings of your souls, and to offer most fervent prayers to the God of mercy that the wall of division may be broken down and the mists of error be scattered; with hands outstretched he waits to welcome you to the fold of peace. Come, brothers, come back. The day is far spent-majoresque cadunt altis de montibus umbra. Aye! it is growing dark; and reason, if it must reign alone, will soon be reigning "like the night star, over shadows which it cannot dissipate." Come back, ere it be too late-lest haply you be found even to fight against God. Venite, fratres, si vultis ut inseramini in vite. Et in ordine illo patrum quis cui successit videte; * St. Augustine. CHAPTER V. THE CHURCH AND CIVILIZATION. HEN a man has once worked his way out of a huge prejudice, it is interesting to him (suffer me, dear reader, to be garrulous) to look back and see how completely he continued under the control of the delusion after he was in possession of knowledge which ought to have dispelled it for ever. In an address, delivered some fifteen months ago, upon 'The Relation of the Church to Education,' I am amused to find the following passage: "It is most instructive to observe-if we will but stop to appreciate with what amazing forethought the Church of Rome has acted with reference to the question of education in America. With subtle instinct she seems early to have sounded the American mind, and weighed the character of American institutions: at the outset of our national career she paused to calculate the resultant of the strange forces which then went into operation; and with consummate tact she laid her plans to meet the issues of the future. Silently, but with restless energy, she went to work; and all over the broad republic schools and colleges arose bearing the abused name, the spurious title, of 'Catholic.' And now men are astonished, are bewildered, to learn for the first time that the Roman Church, instead of being the deadly enemy of popular education, is its best friend and wisest supporter; that, instead of seeking to crush out intellectual enterprise, she is the true fosterer of science, the sympathizing encourager and promoter of investigation and discussion. We ourselves are not for one moment misled by these astounding claims. They are confuted by the history and policy of Romanism through centuries of time. But we do pay the tribute of our cordial admiration to what seems to us a master-stroke of shrewdness on a grand scale. The Church of Rome foresaw that in the new campaign it would not do to use the old and ponderous weapons. She laid them aside, and chose new ones. And she chose wiselyas the history of the next fifty years, we believe, will show. In the debate which has already opened upon questions of national education, she will take no insignificant and retiring part. When the crash comes in the present public-school system, she will be found prepared and equipped, and will start in the race which is to follow with immense advantage in her favor." The fact that Protestantism had been beaten on its own chosen ground, and with its own boasted weapons, was undeniable; and I seem to have been able to explain it only by some queer theory of a diabolical inspiration directing the tactics of the subtle Church of Rome. It never entered my mind to question what I took as simply axiomatic, that the traditional attitude of 'Romanism' had been one of hostility to progress and intellectual enlightenment. And yet in the very same essay occur a few words on the work of the Church in the Middle Ages which might have led me to suspect the soundness of the supposed truism: "We do not believe that the medieval Church is deserving of all the abuse which is sometimes so flippantly heaped upon it. Such abuse seems to us to betray a shallowness of historical appreciation. Those were dark days, God knows. The twilight was long and dreary. But let us |