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THE

CHRISTIAN REVIEW.

No. LXIV.-APRIL, 1851.

ART. I.-ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM.

1. Edinburgh Review, October, 1840. Art. IX. Macaulay's Review of Ranke's History of the Popes.

2. The Decline of Protestantism, and its Cause. A Lecture by ARCHBISHOP HUGHES. 1850.

3. The Decline of Popery, and its Causes. An Address by REV. N. MURRAY, D.D. 1851.

MR. MACAULAY's article relates, mainly, to the shocks which the Church of Rome has experienced from successive revolutions, and the manner in which she has survived them. "Four times since the authority of the Church of Rome was established in Western Christendom, has the human intellect risen up against her yoke. Twice she remained completely victorious. Twice she came forth from the conflict bearing the marks of cruel wounds, but with the principle of life still strong within her."

The first of these revolutions took place in Provence and Languedoc, at that time the most enlightened and civilized portion of Europe. "The clergy of the Catholic Church were regarded with loathing and contempt. 'Viler than a priest'-'I would as soon be a priest'-became proverbial expressions. The Papacy had lost all authority with all classes, from the great feudal princes down to the cultivators of the soil." Here the Paulician theology prevailed—a theology composed of many doctrines of modern Calvinism mingled in some degree with ancient Manicheeism. It was very nearly the theology of St. Augustin.

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This rebellion was put down by brute and merciless force. It was the Albigensian crusade of the warriors of northern France, sustained by the newly created orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic, and the dread Tribunal of the Inquisition.

The second revolution had its origin in the struggles between the ecclesiastical and civil powers. Frederick II. of Germany had struggled in vain. The vengeance of the priesthood had pursued his house to the third generation. Manfred had perished on the field of battle; Coradin on the scaffold. Then a turn took place. The secular authority, long unduly depressed, regained the ascendant with startling rapidity. The change is undoubtedly to be ascribed chiefly to the general disgust excited by the way in which the Church had abused its power and its success.'

Philip IV. of France was the prime mover of the revolution. "The fiercest and most high-minded of the Roman Pontiffs, while bestowing kingdoms and citing great princes to his judgment-seat, was seized in his palace by armed men, and so foully outraged that he died mad with rage and

terror."

The Papal seat was transferred to Avignon. Two Popes, one at Rome and one at Avignon, contended for the supremacy, and the Catholic world was confounded "amidst conflicting testimonies, and conflicting arguments," urged by "two worthless priests who were cursing and reviling each other."

It was about this time that John Wickliffe appeared, and made himself heard from England to Bohemia. "The Church, torn by schism, and fiercely assailed at once in England and in the German Empire, was in a situation scarcely less perilous than at the crisis which preceded the Albigensian crusade."

This danger was also overcome by some show of reformation on the part of the Church, by the Council of Constance, and by calling in the aid of the secular power. "The most distinguished teachers of the new doctrine were put to death. The English Government put down the Lollards with merciless rigor; and in the next generation no trace of the second great revolt against the Papacy could be found, except among the rude population of the mountains of Bohemia."

Next followed the Reformation under Luther. In this struggle the entire dissolution of the Papacy was threatened. Fifty years from the day on which Luther publicly burned the bull of Leo, "in England, Scotland, Denmark, Sweden, Livonia, Prussia, Saxony, Hesse, Wurtemburg, the Palatinate,

in several Cantons of Switzerland, in the northern Netherlands, the Reformation had completely triumphed ; and in all the other countries on this side of the Alps and the Pyrennees, it seemed on the point of triumphing."

But the Reformation did not completely triumph. It was to be expected that the most strenuous efforts would be made to stem this flood of revolution. The leading powers which took sides with the Pope were Italy and Spain. "It was in Italy that the tributes were spent, of which foreign nations complained so bitterly. It was to adorn Italy that the traffic in indulgences had been carried to that scandalous excess which had roused the indignation of Luther." Spain had been engaged in a crusade against the Mussulmans for eight hundred years. All her heroic recollections were bound up with the Church of Rome. The same power which had commissioned her against the Moors at home, now commissioned her to the conquest of Mexico and Peru. "Avarice stimulated zeal. Zeal consecrated avarice. Proselytes and gold mines were sought with equal ardor. In the very year in which the Saxons, maddened by the exactions of Rome, broke loose from her yoke, the Spaniards, under the authority of Rome, made themselves masters of the empire and the treasures of Montezuma."

This sufficiently explains the adherence and the devotion of these two powers. Next, the old religious orders were revived, purified from abuses, and stimulated to the most enthusiastic efforts. But far more than this, the new order of the Jesuits was created. In the south of Europe they first consolidated the Papal interest, and then went forth invading every region. "Inflexible in nothing but in their fidelity to the Church, they were equally ready to appeal in her cause to the spirit of loyalty and the spirit of freedom. Extreme doctrines of obedience and extreme doctrines of liberty; the right of rulers to misgovern the people; the right of every one of the people to plunge the knife in the heart of a bad ruler, were inculcated by the same man, according as he addressed himself to the subject of Philip or to the subject of Elizabeth. Some described these men as the most rigid, others as the most indulgent of spiritual directors. And both descriptions were correct. The truly devout listened with awe to the high and saintly morality of the Jesuit. The gay cavalier who had run his rival through the body, the frai beauty who had forgotten her marriage vow, found the Jesuit an easy, well-bred man of the world, tolerant of the little irregularities of people of fashion. The confessor was strict

or lax, according to the temper of the penitent. His first object was to drive no person out of the pale of the Church. Since there were bad people, it was better that they should be bad Catholics than bad Protestants. If a person was so unfortunate as to be a bravo, a libertine, or a gambler, that was no reason for making him a heretic also." An order so cunning, unscrupulous, and zealous, could not fail of success, not of course in converting men to Christ, but in holding or converting them to the Church. At the same time that the Jesuits were putting forth their policy and energy, there came successively to the Papal throne men who contrasted strongly with Adrian, Alexander, and Leo-men of ascetic habits and fanatical faith and zeal. Such were Paul IV., Pius V., and Gregory XIII. Under their administration the Inquisition was armed with its utmost terrors, and no measures of atrocity, as the massacre of St. Bartholomew's day may testify, were matters of hesitation.

Macaulay paints too in vivid colors the general polity of the Church of Rome: "The stronger our conviction that reason and Scripture were decidedly on the side of Protestantism, the greater is the reluctant admiration with which we regard that system of tactics against which reason and Scripture were arrayed in vain." He illustrates her policy in her mode of dealing with all sorts of fanatics and enthusiasts: "The ignorant enthusiast, whom the Anglican Church makes an enemy, and, whatever the polite and learned may think, a most dangerous enemy, the Catholic Church makes a champion. She bids him nurse his beard, covers him with a gown and hood of a coarse dark stuff, ties a rope round his waist, and sends him forth to teach in her name. He costs her nothing. He preaches not exactly in the style of Massillon, but in a way which moves the passions of uneducated hearers; and all his influence is employed to strengthen the Church of which he is a minister. With the utmost pomp of a dominant hierarchy above, she has all the energy of the voluntary system below."

Thus the Church of Rome maintained the conflict. In the end she triumphed in regions which for a long time were doubtful; and France, Belgium, Bavaria, Bohemia, Austria, Poland, and Hungary were held under her dominion with Italy and Spain. Protestantism had no central organization like that of Rome. She had no religious orders. She could employ no Jesuitical policy. Some of her crowned leaders, like James and Elizabeth, were but half Protestants. The mission of the Roman Church was only to maintain the old