theologian, "so long as thou art supported by the probability of the other opinion, although that probability be a minor one.

"Then," cries the inquirer, am I to enter into a contract which I judge to be simoniacal ?" "Thou hast naught to fear," says the theologian, "seeing that thou art going upon a maxim that flows out of the direct principles relating to contract in its own nature, whereas a judgment so formed may readily consist with a different one flowing out of the reflex principles of lawful contract, because the latter judgment also may possess a certain probability, although a minor one."

To this the man replies: "Of those reflex principles I know nothing, and I do not care to know any thing. I take it as only too certain that to me a contract is not lawful which is held by me to be simoniacal." "Come, come," rejoins the theologian, "I shall relieve all thy scruples. This judgment of thine, being an opinionative one, is to thee voluntary.* Therefore just suspend it for a little while, till thou hast fulfilled the contract." "But," cries the man, 66 how will that help me, if I see that the reason and the authority affirming the simoniacal character of the contract are clearly greater than those denying it." To which the theologian rejoins: "For thy complete security turn away for a little while thy mind from dwelling on such reason or authority, and fix it only upon the proabbility of the contrary opinion. What can be easier?"

In this paper of a notable official many things are of importance; perhaps nothing of such far-reaching importance as the admission that particular opinions on specific cases would practically have little effect were it not for a general principle to cover and quicken them all. That general doctrine, as pointed at by Estrix, does not consist only of the one proposition that it is lawful to act on any probable opinion for liberty and against law, but to this it adds that it is lawful to act upon such opinion even when in our own judgment it is not the true one. It is against the latter point that the force of the paper is directed.

Probably Estrix himself scarcely saw the satire implied in representing a view favoring a vicious contract as a benignant view, although to us it is obvious that if you destroy the sacredness of contract you let in upon society plagues many. What he did clearly see was the absurdity of a spiritual director using his authority and learning to pervert an honest judgment and darken a clear conscience. An upright man is taught to sus

* Est tibi liberum. The authors render it in German, "hängt von deiner Freiheit ab."

pend his judgment until he shall have done a deed which he believes to be wrong. To enable him to suspend it he must turn his mind away from what condemns, and in the second place fix it upon what encourages the action. Even practicing in this manner self-deception appears to be of a deeper deprav ity than ordinary transgression self-avowed; but how much deeper still the depravity of teaching methods of self-deception in order to facilitate the doing of a bad action under the notion that we clear it of guilt when we blind ourselves to its character. Surely this is the black art, if black art there ever was! Here we have an encouragement to wrongful contract more subtle and fruitful even than the encouragement given by easy absolution.

Absolution presupposes foregoing sin, more or less; and, theoretically, he who seeks absolution is a "penitent;" but here we are taught how we may beforehand discharge the stain of sin from a gainful bargain simply by dismissing from our minds the remembrance that it involves a breach of holy law. The fact that men "did not like to retain God in their knowledge" was to St. Paul of the essence of deepest depravity; but here, not liking to retain the law of God in our knowledge becomes the by-path to innocence in offending.

The question seems suggested, For what should mention be made at all in confession of actions which are held by the "penitent" to be not sinful? Probably the mention of them has a double origin; first, a sub-consciousness that they are wrong in spite of all the "probables," and in the second place a desire to be relieved of this feeling, and to be sent away happy in the official assurance of innocence as to the past, happy in the warrant to do the same in the future, happy in authority to tell others that however ill those deeds might look in any forum externum they will pass in the forum internum! But it must be remembered that, according to his brother confessors, who plagued La Quintinye for his rigorism, if superior persons did not mention certain practices among their sins it was the part of a benignant confessor to believe that their own. consciences had acquitted them, and therefore to believe that the practices in them were not sinful. "Often have they complained," he says, that "not merely in confessing the vulgar and unlettered, but sometimes in confessing people of quality, I

have interrogated them as to sins which they did not confess." Now, according to their doctrine, the danger of so doing was that he would create a conscience on the point, and that the action would continue in spite of this newly created conscience, the consequence of which would be sin where previously there was innocence. For instance, if it were notorious that a high ecclesiastic held a certain benefice, or three or four benefices, by a simoniacal contract, and of this no trace appeared in his confession, that was reasonable proof that he saw no sin in it, and on a mild view the confessor should be content. Or, if the confessor well knew that a certain great official habitually cheated the king on the one side, and the king's subjects on the other, but of such fraud no word passed his lips, a benignant confessor would see that his own conscience did not condemn him, and he would not disturb him. Suppose, say, that on a day in lent, in Bordeaux, or Limoges, or Angoulême, or Pau, a reverend canonicus and a right honorable intendant, instead of leaving the confessional in peace, should have been harassed with questions respecting practices which they regarded as allowed in their respective professions, and should leave under exhortation to amend unless they meant to be condemned of the Great Judge, it is very possible that the superiors of the confessor would hear complaints of his roughness or rigorism. But if he had, peradventure, enjoined penances such as in the case of the "rude and unlettered" would be proper, then indeed probably would the superiors have serious reason to know that they had committed an error in confiding to such a bear the care of tender creatures. Was it to fall into such hands that his lordship had chosen a Jesuit confessor?

These are but first glimpses of the contents of this work; an adequate view of the several stages of the history and their respective disclosures would be of deep interest, but would need two or three papers. From Trent to Gonzalez may be taken as one stage; the Gonzalez conflict with its numberless lights on the ways both of the Roman curia and Jesuit official life may be taken as a second; the interval between that conflict and the suppression of the Jesuits, as a third; the rise of Liguori and his labors as a fourth; the final stage then would run from his day until the one in which he was raised to the position of teacher of the Church in morals such as that held by Thomas

Aquinas in theology, Doctor of the Church, none of whose opinions merit censure, all of whose opinions may be followed by the faithful and inculcated by their spiritual guides.

It is only when arrived at the point last named that, having gained a full view of the moral principles now assimilated by Rome, and of the form in which those principles are in our own day developing themselves, that we begin to catch glimpses of the magnitude of the interests involved-begin to appreciate the effects which must follow to every community in which the disciples of these doctrines form a considerable element of social or public influence. Theologians, moralists, and politicians of the future must master the facts and digest the lessons of this book. Lawyers and magistrates will never be able intelligently to weigh motives or evidence in suits civil or criminal if their own training has been in the morals of the Reformed Churches, and if it is from such works as are prepared by Roman Catholics for general information in the English tongue that they have derived their notions of how consciences are formed in the inner tribunal. If they will have some true insight into the roots and early bent of that portentous growth, the modern moral principles now prevalent within the Romish obedience, then let them read and ponder the documents in the second of these volumes.

From the study of those documents will he rise with devout thanksgiving to whom is real and felt at heart the blessedness of a moral code not shifting with the sands of time, not wavering with the subjective winds of imagination, but resting on the eternal rock of an objective law; a law in itself holy and just and good, a law which for us has its blessed embodiment in our living Exemplar, whose walk consisted in fulfilling all righteousness, and a law which for its vivifying force has the present action upon the soul of an All-Holy Spirit which puts that law into the mind and writes it upon the heart, thus giving us power to "become" in action "sons of God:" men living so that other men shall in them glorify our Father which is in heaven.

William Arthur

ART. V.-THE SCIENTIFIC ELEMENTS OF RELIGION. SAYS Herbert Spencer, "A religious creed is definable as an a priori theory of the universe." Science is not limited in its investigations to the visible, as so many erroneously deem it to be, even of its votaries. It does not stand in antagonism to religion, especially to its first or fundamental principles, but is so blended with those primary principles as to be incomplete and foundationless without them. Science not only postulates as a theoretic principle invisible forces or potencies, but affirms, as an absolute necessity, the existence of such invisible entities. There could be no science of astronomy without postulating the invisible force of gravity, which is in no way an object of sense, and whose nature no scientist assumes to understand. This science is based upon that invisible force whose laws and modes of action it makes the special subject of its investigation. The recognition of this invisible force, called gravity, and the investigation of the laws of its action are not only necessary to lay the foundations of the science of astronomy, but also needful to conduct its discoveries.

No power of the microscope has been able to discover the atom which chemical science postulates as the ultimate and primary form of matter. Faraday defines the atom as a point of force. Without the assumption of the existence of these atoms, or points of force, the science of chemistry could formulate no laws of chemical combination, and all the mysteries of chemical affinity would be insoluble. Here, also, is a force, invisible in itself, whose effects extend through all the multifarious changes of matter, and to whose workings the scientist is compelled, in the very phrase with which he names its operations, to ascribe selective intelligence by terming it "elective affinity."

Science has sometimes sought to evade the religious element necessarily involved in the recognition of an intelligent First Cause by affirming that the existence of forces is not only inherent in matter, but originates in matter. But, as a necessity of philosophic thought, science has been obliged to abandon the old materialism, and, while affirming that force is the substratum

*First Principles, p. 143.