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 THE CHURCH AM> THE CHURCHES.
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE CHURCHES; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE PAPACY AND THE TEMPORAL POWER. 
 
 Jttt Historical and f oliiiat S^ro. 
 
 BY 
 
 MI; DOLLINGER 
 
 TRANSLATED, WITH THE AUTHOR'S PERMISSION, 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM BERNARD MAC CABE. 
 
 IN ONE VOLUME. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 HURST AJND BLACKETT, P.UBLISHERb, 
 SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN, 
 
 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 
 
 1862. 
 
 The right of Translation is reserved.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY R. BORN, GLOUCESTER STREET, 
 REGENT'S PARK. 
 
 I
 
 StacK 
 Annex 
 
 5 
 070 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. 
 
 BY THE TRANSLATOR. 
 
 As it is possible this book may fall into the hands of 
 many but little acquainted with the claim which the Author 
 has upon the attention of the learned in every country, it 
 has been deemed advisable to collect some materials respecting 
 his antecedent biography. The life of an author is to be found 
 in his works ; and it will be seen by the subjoined narrative 
 that the years of Dr. Dollinger have been crowded with 
 events ; and that each of these reflects honour upon him as 
 a theologian, a scholar, and an historian, as a man of deep 
 research and of original thought. 
 
 Dr. Dollinger was born at Bamberg, on the 28th February, 
 1 799, and educated at Wiirzburg. After several years passed, 
 first at a curacy in Franconia, and as Professor at the Eccle- 
 siastical Seminary of Aschaffenberg, he was, in 1826, appointed 
 one of theFaculty of Theology in the new University of Munich. 
 The results of the French Revolution were felt in the youth 
 and early manhood of Dr. Dollinger. nationalism was every- 
 where predominant. There was no master-mind amongst the 
 Roman Catholics of Germany; and the young and ardent 
 student was thrown upon his own resources, and compelled
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 to rely on his own independent research for the acquisition 
 of knowledge and the formation of his judgment. The 
 results of such a course are apparent in the writings of Dr. 
 Dollinger ; for all exhibit profound and extensive learning, 
 a judgment free from personal and partial influences, the 
 habit of penetrating directly to original sources, and a 
 critical method to which the works of the patristic, the 
 scholastic, and modern writers are indifferently subjected. 
 Dr. Dollinger's earliest work was on " The Doctrine of 
 
 O 
 
 the Eucharist in the three first Centuries," 1826. Two 
 years later appeared a " History of the Reformation," form- 
 ing the third volume of " The Ecclesiastical History" of 
 Hortig. He then undertook to re-write the whole work, 
 and published in 1833 the first, and in 1835 the second volume 
 of that " Church History " by which his name first became 
 widely known for his learned and able defence of the 
 Catholic idea, and for the confidence with which many 
 views, so often repeated as to be believed unquestionable 
 and essential, were abandoned as untenable. Four more 
 volumes which had been announced were never written ; 
 but an elaborate treatise on " The History, Character, and 
 Influence of Islamism," appeared in 1838 ; and a Com- 
 pendium of the History of the Church down to the 
 Reformation, was published in the years 1836-1843. The 
 history of the six first centuries is given with extreme 
 brevity ; but the history of the Middle Ages, though much 
 compressed, displays even more copious erudition than the 
 account of the earlier period in the larger work. In the 
 English translation, these two histories have been unskil- 
 fully combined. Between the years 1846 and 1848, Dr. 
 Dollinger published three large volumes on the history of 
 German Lutheranism, " The Reformation, its Internal De- 
 velopment and its Effects." The original design was too 
 extensive to be completed; the work remains a fragment, 
 and the innumerable extracts from the writings of the period, 
 many of them rare, and some unpublished, whilst they confer 
 on these volumes a value they will never lose, yet render 
 them difficult to be read with pleasure. But the immense
 
 PREFACE. Vll 
 
 research with which the ideas of the Reformers and their 
 contemporaries, on the doctrine and the condition of their 
 Church, are exposed, make this by far the most instructive 
 account of the German Reformation. 
 
 During this period Dr. Dollinger delivered courses of lec- 
 tures on several other branches of Divinity besides that 
 which specially belonged to his chair ; " on the Philosophy 
 of Religion," " on Canon Law," " on Symbolism," and on 
 "the Literature of the Patristic Age." Having ceded, for 
 some years, his professorship of ecclesiastical history to 
 Mohler, whose lesser writings he afterwards collected, he took 
 that of dogmatic theology, which in his hands was trans- 
 formed into a history of revelation and of the development 
 of doctrine. None of these lectures have been printed, but 
 the author has published from time to time a large number 
 of occasional writings. Among the earliest were " An Es- 
 say on the Religion of Shakespeare," and a lecture " on the 
 Introduction of Christianity among the Germans." A "Com- 
 mentary on the Paradise of Dante," accompanied by the de- 
 signs of Cornelius in 1830; "Mixed Marriages a Voice for 
 Peace," came out in 1838, during the conflict between the 
 Prussian Government and the Archbishop of Cologne. In 
 the following years articles on " The Tractarian Movement," 
 "John Huss and the Council of Constance," "The Albi- 
 genses," appeared in the "Historisch-politische Blatter," over 
 which, though very rarely a contributor, he presided for 
 many years. A dissertation on " The Position of the Church 
 towards those who die out of Her Communion," was written 
 in 1842, on the occasion of the death of the Dowager Queen 
 of Bavaria; a lecture on "Error, Doubt, and Truth," was 
 originally delivered by Dr. Dollinger before the students, as 
 Rector of the University ; a speech on " The Freedom of 
 the Church," one of his most excellent publications, at Ra- 
 tisbon, in 1849. "Martin Luther, a Sketch," was reprinted 
 in the year 1852, from a theological Encyclopaedia to which 
 he also contributed articles on " Bossuet," and on " Duns 
 Scotus." A pamphlet on lf Coronation by the Pope," was 
 produced in 1853, when it was feared that Pius IX. would
 
 viii PREFACE. 
 
 be induced to crown the Emperor of the French ; and de- 
 scribed the different instances in which it had been done, 
 and the error committed on the last occasion. 
 
 From 1845 to 1847 Dr. Dollinger represented the Univer- 
 sity of Munich in the Bavarian Chamber, where he was re- 
 garded as one of the leaders of the Ultramontanes. Several 
 of his speeches have been published. In the latter year he 
 was deprived of his professorship, and consequently of his 
 seat in the Chamber, where the ministers who had been 
 raised to power by Lola Montez dreaded the influence of his 
 eloquence and character. Having been elected a deputy to 
 the National Parliament in 1848, he spoke and wrote with 
 great effect in favour of religious liberty, and the definition 
 of "the relations between Church and State," which was 
 carried at Frankfort, and was afterwards nominally adopted 
 both at Vienna and Berlin, is said to have been his work. 
 The same spirit and the same principles which made him in 
 religion the keenest of controversial writers, and the most 
 earnest advocate of reforms, guided him in political life, and 
 made him the exponent of the highest Catholic views, and 
 the champion of ecclesiastical freedom. He regarded the 
 oppression of the Church as the safeguard of absolutism in 
 the State, and the faults and errors of Catholics as a fruitful 
 source of the divisions and disputes among Christians. In 
 his desire to reconcile religion with society, and Protestantism 
 with Rome, Dr. Dollinger admitted no compromise, but, ac- 
 knowledging the just claims and real progress of the modern 
 world, and the evils that afflict the Church, he sought to dis- 
 
 ' O 
 
 tinguish that which is essential and true from those things 
 with which, from ignorance or superstition, interest or unbe- 
 lief, it had been surrounded. 
 
 In the spring of 1849, he returned to Munich and was 
 restored to his professorship, and also to his seat in the 
 Chamber, which he, however, resigned two years later, in 
 order to devote himself to the completion of his literary plans. 
 Three principal works have since appeared, each complete in 
 itselfj and superior, both in style and matter, to those by which 
 they had been preceded. The publication of the " Philoso-
 
 PREFACE. IX 
 
 phumena," by Miller, in 1851, gave rise to a prolonged dis- 
 cussion, in which many Catholics sought to 'weaken the testi- 
 mony of the author, whilst Protestant writers endeavoured 
 to use his authority for the purpose of throwing discredit on 
 the Church of Rome. In answer to both parties especially to 
 Gieseler, Baur, Bunsen, Wordsworth, and Lenormant Dr. 
 Dollinger published, in 1853, "Hippolytus and Callistus 
 The Roman Church in the Third Century," perhaps, of all 
 his writings, the one in which his ingenuity of combination, 
 his skill as a logician, and his lofty tone in handling the 
 interests of his Church, are most conspicuous. The classical 
 learning shown in this work was more abundantly displayed 
 in the introduction to the history of Christianity, which 
 appeared in 1857, under the title of "Paganism and 
 Judaism." In 1860 appeared a volume entitled "Christianity 
 and the Church in the period of their Foundation," which is 
 the author's masterpiece. It is understood to be Dr. 
 Dollinger' s intention to continue this work down to the 
 present time. The newspapers have also announced a 
 volume on the thirteenth century, and a rumour has long 
 circulated that a work on the Mediaeval Heresies, founded 
 on very extensive researches in Rome, Florence, Paris, and 
 Bologna, was in preparation. These labours were inter- 
 rupted by the course of events which called forth the 
 present volume. Of the value to be attached to this work, 
 it would not be becoming in the Translator to express an 
 opinion ; but a few words he cannot refrain from adding 
 with reference to the spirit in which the translation has been 
 executed. 
 
 In our Courts of Justice, when a witness speaking a 
 foreign language is called upon to give his evidence, there is at 
 the same time sworn an interpreter, to whom an oath to the 
 following effect is administered : 
 
 " You shall well and truly interpret to the Court and 
 Jury, and to the best of your skill and knowledge, the evi- 
 dence of the Witness in this Cause." 
 
 When undertaking to convey to English readers the 
 opinions and statements of the most distinguished of living
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 German scholars and writers, upon topics of paramount 
 interest, the translator felt himself under an obligation some- 
 what similar to that which binds the sworn interpreter. He 
 has, " to the best of his skill and knowledge," given as close 
 an English representation of Dr. Dollinger's German words 
 as the genius of the two languages would permit. 
 
 In accordance with such a desire, he has adopted, verbatim, 
 or, with only a few alterations, passages of Dr. Dollinger's 
 work, which he found translated in " The Eambler," vol. vi., 
 part 16. 
 
 The Author has, in the second part of this book " The 
 P>apacy and the Papal States " made frequent reference to 
 the favoured bureaucratic class in Rome, the "Prelatura." 
 A literal translation of the word " Pralaten " into English, 
 as " Prelates," might lead to a gross misapprehension. In 
 England, Ireland, and Scotland, the universal signification 
 given to the word " prelate," corresponds precisely with 
 Johnson's definition of it "an Ecclesiastic of the highest 
 order and dignity." Our "Prelates" are either archbishops 
 or bishops ; but it will be seen by the annexed account given 
 of the Roman " Prelates," that they are far different, in every 
 respect, from members of the Episcopal order. 
 
 " The ' Prelatura,' " (observes Mr. Lyons, in his letter to 
 the Marquis of Normanby, No. xxxi.,) "is essentially an 
 Ecclesiastical Body : its members, whether they actually 
 take orders or not, are looked upon as belonging to the 
 clergy. They wear the ecclesiastical habit ; they are ex- 
 pected to act, think, and speak as Churchmen. They form 
 a body apart from the rest of the community. They have 
 ecclesiastical privileges. It is true that they have not all of 
 them irrevocably taken a vow of celibacy ; nay, I believe there 
 are even some rare instances of prelates actually married. 
 But if a prelate marry, his career is almost inevitably closed 
 his hopes of high office and of the cardinalates are at an 
 end."* 
 
 To prevent misunderstanding, whenever this class of 
 
 * Despatches from Mr. Lyons, respecting the condition and adminis- 
 tration of the Papal States. London, 1860, p. 50.
 
 PREFACE. xi 
 
 officials is referred to in the following pages, they will be 
 found designated with the name by which they are known 
 in Rome, that is, as " Prelati" 
 
 W. B. M. 
 
 MILL HILL LODGE, HASTINGS. 
 April, 1862.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION 1 
 
 PART I. 
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE NATIONS 20 
 
 THE PAPACY .37 
 
 THE CHURCH AND CIVIL FREEDOM .... 82 
 
 THE CHURCHES WITHOUT THE PAPACY A PANO- 
 RAMIC SURVEY 122 
 
 THE CHURCH OF THE PATRIARCHATE OF CONSTAN- 
 TINOPLE 122 
 
 THE RUSSIAN CHURCH 130 
 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND AND THE DISSENTERS . 143 
 
 THE ENGLISH DISSENTING SECTS 173 
 
 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND 186 
 
 THE CHURCHES IN HOLLAND 197 
 
 PROTESTANT CHURCHES IN FRANCE .... 204 
 
 THE PROTESTANT CHURCHES IN SWITZERLAND . . 212 
 
 PROTESTANT DENOMINATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES 
 
 OF AMERICA . 219
 
 XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 THE LUTHERAN CHURCH IN SCANDINAVIAN 
 
 COUNTRIES . 250 
 
 THE PROTESTANT CHURCHES IN GERMANY . . 267 
 
 PAET II. 
 
 THE POPE AND THE STATES OF THE CHURCH TO 
 
 THE TIME OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION . .336 
 
 INTERNAL, CONDITION OF THE PAPAL STATES PREVIOUS 
 
 TO 1789 . . . 360 
 
 THE PAPAL STATES FROM 1814 TO 1846 . . .374 
 Pius IX. 1846-1861 . . . ... .408 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 THE AUTHOR'S Two LECTURES ON THE PAPACY AND THE 
 
 PAPAL STATES . . . 456
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE CHURCHES. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THIS work has arisen out of two lectures which were delivered 
 in the month of April of the present year. I feel myself 
 bound to explain how I came to speak, before a very mixed 
 auditory, upon the most difficult and complicated question of 
 our time ; and that, too, in a manner decidedly different from 
 what is usually adopted. I had at first determined, when the 
 request to deliver some lectures reached me, simply to speak 
 of the present state of religion in general, with a com- 
 prehensive view extending over all mankind. It happened, 
 however, that by those very circles (from which the impulse 
 to the delivery of the lectures had come) the question was 
 frequently put to me " How was the position of the Papal 
 See the partly consummated, partly threatened loss of its 
 temporal sovereignty to be explained 1 ?" "What" I was 
 repeatedly asked " what was one to say in reply to those 
 non-churchmen who pointed, with triumphant scorn, to the 
 numerous episcopal manifestoes in which the States of the 
 Church are declared essential and necessary to her existence, 
 even though the events of the last thirty years appear with 
 unerring distinctness to announce their downfall?" 
 
 I had, too, in newspapers, periodicals, and books, fre- 
 
 B
 
 Z INTRODUCTION. 
 
 quently found the hope expressed, that with the downfall of 
 the temporal sovereignty of the Pope, the Church itself 
 would not escape the doom of dissolution. At the same time, 
 I was struck by finding, in the Memoirs of Chateaubriand, 
 this expression of Cardinal Bernetti, Secretary of State to 
 Leo XII.: "That if he lived a long time, there was the 
 prospect before him of yet beholding the fall of the temporal 
 power of the Papacy." 1 I had also read in the commu- 
 nication of a Paris correspondent, whose name has been 
 mentioned to me as that of a well-informed and trustworthy 
 person, " that the Archbishop of Rheims, on his return from 
 Rome, had recounted what Pope Pius had said to him : ' I 
 yield to no illusions ; the temporal power must fall. Goyon 
 will abandon me ; I shall then disband my remaining troops. 
 I shall, as the King enters, excommunicate him, and calmly 
 await my death.' " 2 
 
 I already believed, in April, I could perceive that which is 
 still more plainly exhibited in October, that the enemies of 
 the temporal Papal-Sovereignty are resolute, united, predo- 
 minant, and that nowhere is there to be found a protecting 
 power which possesses at the same time the will and the 
 ability of averting the catastrophe. I considered it, there- 
 fore, probable that an interruption of the temporal dominion 
 would ensue an interruption which, like to others that had 
 preceded it, would again cease, and be followed by a restora- 
 tion. I resolved, therefore, to avail myself of the opportunity 
 which the lectures afforded me to prepare the public for those 
 coming events the shadows of which had been cast into the 
 present time, and thus to prevent the scandals, the doubts, 
 and the oftence which must inevitably arise if the States of 
 the Church should pass into other hands, although episcopal 
 pastorals had hitherto energetically asserted that they be- 
 longed to the integrity of the Church. I meant, therefore, 
 to say : That the Church can exist by and for herself, and 
 that she did exist for seven centuries without the territorial 
 
 1 " Memoires d'Outretombe," viii. 136. Ed. de Berlin. 
 
 2 Such is the statement in the London Catholic weekly journal, the 
 Weekly Register, March 2, 1861, p. 4.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 possessions of the Popes ; but that at a later period this pro- 
 perty, through the condition of the world, became necessary, 
 and, in spite of great changes and vicissitude?, has discharged 
 in most cases its function of serving as a foundation for the 
 independence and freedom of the Popes. As long as the 
 present state and arrangement of Europe endures, we can 
 discover no other means to secure to the Papal See its free- 
 dom, and, through it, general confidence. But God's know- 
 ledge and power reach further than ours, and we must not 
 presume to set bounds to the Divine Wisdom and Omnipo- 
 tence, and cry out to it " This way, and not otherwise." 
 Should, however, the event which now threatens to occur 
 actually take place, and the Pope be despoiled of his landed 
 possessions, one of three eventualities will assuredly come to 
 pass : Either the loss of the Papal States is only temporary, 
 and the territory will revert, after some intervening casualties, 
 in its entirety or in part, to its rightful sovereign ; or Provi- 
 dence will bring about, by ways unknown to us, and com- 
 binations which we cannot divine, a state of things in which 
 the object namely, the independence and free action of the 
 Papal See, without those means which have hitherto sufficed 
 for it ; or, lastly, we are approaching great catastrophes in 
 Europe a collapse of the whole edifice of existing social 
 order events of which the downfall of the Papal States is 
 only the precursor, or, as it may be said, "the Job's- 
 messenger." 
 
 I have developed, in this book, the grounds upon which I 
 think of these three possibilities, the first the most probable. 
 As to the second possibility, there is nothing" to be said but 
 this that it is an unknown, and consequently indescribable 
 =x it is only good for this much : we must retain it against 
 certain over-confident assertions, which profess to know the 
 secret things to come, and trespassing on the Divine Domain, 
 wish to subject the Future absolutely to the laws of the 
 immediate Past. That the third possibility must also be ad- 
 mitted, few of those who studiously observe the signs of the 
 times will dispute. One of the shrewdest historians and 
 statesmen, Niebuhr, had, so long ago as the 5th October, 
 
 B2
 
 4 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 1830, written these words: "If God does not marvellously 
 help, there is impending over us a destruction such as 
 occurred to the Roman world in the middle of the third 
 century the annihilation of prosperity, freedom, civilization, 
 and literature." And we have proceeded much further on 
 the inclined plane since then. The Powers of Europe have 
 overturned, or permitted to be overturned, the two main 
 pillars of their edifice the principles of Legitimacy and 
 public international Law. Those monarchs who have made 
 themselves, like to slaves, the tools of revolution, are now 
 active performers in the world's historical drama the others 
 conduct themselves as quiet spectators, and are, in their 
 hopes, smiling heirs, like Prussia and Russia; or they are 
 bestowing applause and giving help, like England ; or they 
 are as passive invalids, like Austria, or the hectic-fever- 
 stricken Turkey. But the Revolution is a permanent 
 chronic disease, breaking out now in one place, now in 
 another, and then attacking several members at the same 
 time. The Pentarchy is dissolved ; the Holy Alliance, 
 even though a defective and misused form of European 
 political order, is buried. The right of the strongest alone 
 now prevails in Europe. Is it a process of renovation, or a 
 process of dissolution, in which European society is plunged ? 
 I still believe it to be the former; but I must, as I have 
 said, admit the possibility of the other alternative. If it 
 occurs then, when the powers of destruction have done 
 their work, it will be the business of the Church at once to 
 co-operate actively in the reconstruction of social order out 
 of the ruins, both as a connecting civilizing power and as the 
 preserver and dispenser of moral and religious tradition. 
 And for this, too, the Papacy has, with or without territory, 
 its own function and its own mission. 
 
 Such, then, were the ideas from which I started ; and it 
 may be supposed that my language concerning the immediate 
 fate of the temporal power of the Pope necessarily sounded 
 ambiguous that I could not, with the confidence that is 
 given to others, perhaps more keen-sighted men come 
 before rny auditors, and say : " Rely upon this the States
 
 INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 of the Church the land from Radicofani to Caperano, from 
 Ravenna to Civita Vecchia, shall and must and will remain 
 with the Popes heaven and earth shall pass away, before 
 the States of the Church pass away ! " I could not do this, 
 because I had not then any such conviction, nor do I now, in 
 the slightest degree, entertain it ; but of this I am alone 
 confident, that the Papal See will not be permanently 
 deprived of the conditions necessary for the fulfilment of its 
 mission. Hence, the substance of my words was this, " Let 
 no one lose faith in the Church, if the temporal principality 
 of the Papacy should disappear, whether it be for a season, 
 or for ever. It is not essence, but accident ; not end, but 
 means ; it began late ; it was formerly something quite 
 different from what it is now. It now justly appears to us to 
 be indispensable ; and so long as the existing order lasts in 
 Europe, it must, at all cost, be maintained ; or, if it is 
 violently interrupted, it must be restored. But it is possible 
 to suppose a political condition of Europe in which it would 
 be superfluous, and then it would be only a clogging burden." 
 At the same time, I wished to defend Pope Pius IX., and 
 his government, against numerous accusations, and to show 
 that the inward infirmities and deficiences which undeniably 
 exist in the country, and through which the State has been 
 reduced to such an astounding condition of weakness and 
 helplessness, are not attributable to him ; that, on the con- 
 trary, he has, both before and since 1848, shewn the best 
 will to reform; and that, actually by him, and under him, 
 many things are now much better than they had been. 
 
 The reports in the newspapers, written out at home from 
 memory, gave but an inaccurate representation of a discourse 
 which did not attempt to cut the knot in the usual way, but 
 which, with buts and ifs, and referring to certain elements 
 to critical and decisive events, for the most part left out of 
 the calculation alluded to an uncertain future and manifold 
 contingencies. This was unavoidable. Every report, not 
 absolutely verbal, must, despite of the best intentions of the 
 reporter, give rise to a distorted apprehension. When, 
 therefore, one of the most widely circulated journals reported
 
 6 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the first lecture, without any intentional falsification, but 
 with omissions, which altered the sense and tendency of my 
 words, 1 immediately proposed to the editor to print my 
 manuscript ; but this was declined. In other reports of the 
 daily organs I was often unable to recognize my own ideas ; 
 whilst expressions were put into my mouth to which I was 
 altogether a stranger. 
 
 And here I will admit that, when I gave the lectures, I did 
 not think that they would be discussed by the press ; but I 
 expected that, like others of the same kind, they would at 
 most be mentioned in a couple of words, in futuram ollivionem. 
 Of the controversy which sprang up at once in separate 
 works, and in newspaper articles in Germany, France, 
 England, Italy, and even in America I shall not speak. 
 Much of it I have not read the writers often did not even ask 
 themselves whether the report which accident put into 
 their hands, and which they carelessly adopted, was at all 
 accurate. But I must refer to an account in one of the 
 most widely read of English periodicals, because I am there 
 brought into a society to which I do not belong. In the 
 July number of the Edinburgh Review, there is an article, 
 written, as it is reported, by Mr. H. Cartwright, and 
 entitled " Church Reformation in Italy." The author first 
 analyses Rosmini's treatise, " Le cinque piaghe della chiesa ;" 
 he then speaks of what is congenial to it, of the existing 
 change of circumstances in Italy favourable to the views of 
 Rosmini, of the Dominican of St. Mark in Florence, of the 
 Capuchins, of a writing by the Oratorian Capecelatro of 
 Naples, which takes an unfavourable view of the Temporal 
 Sovereignty of the Pope and then, misapprehending the 
 tendency of my expressions, and under the erroneous 
 notion that I had already published an apology of my ortho- 
 doxy, he appeals to me and then comes a detailed descrip- 
 tion of the sentiments and sufferings of Passaglia and Tosti. 
 A sharp attack upon me in the Dublin Review I know only 
 from extracts in the English papers, but I can see, from 
 the vehemence with which the writer pronounces himself 
 against "liberal" institutions, that, even after the appear-
 
 INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 ance of this book, I cannot reckon on coming to an under- 
 standing with him. 
 
 Upon this matter every one now can judge for himself. 
 To fulfil a promise that I had given, I have had both 
 lectures printed as an appendix, just as they were origi- 
 nally composed, merely omitting the introduction, it not 
 touching upon the general Church and State question, and 
 being nothing more than casual reflections. As a matter of 
 course, in revision, many things that were introduced extem- 
 pore are left out, although not in the slightest degree at 
 variance with the sense of what is here published. 
 
 The excitement which was caused by my lectures, or 
 rather by the reports of them in the daily press, had this 
 advantage, that it brought to light, in a way which to many 
 was unexpected, in what wide circles, how deeply and how 
 firmly rooted is the attachment of the people to the See of 
 St. Peter. For the sake of this, I was glad to accept all the 
 attacks and animosity which fell on me in consequence. But 
 wherefore it will be asked, and I have been asked innumer- 
 able times wherefore not cut short misunderstandings by 
 the immediate publication of the lectures, which must, as a 
 whole, have been written previous to delivery? Why wait 
 for five months ? For this I had two reasons. First, it was 
 not merely a question of misunderstanding. Much of what 
 I had actually said had made an unpleasant impression in 
 many quarters, especially among our optimists. 1 should, 
 therefore, with my bare statements, have become involved in 
 an agitating newspaper and pamphlet squabble, and that 
 was not an attractive prospect. My second reason was I 
 expected that the further development of circumstances in 
 Italy, the irresistible logic of facts, would dispose many minds 
 to receive certain truths. I hoped that people would learn 
 by degrees, in the school of events, that it is not enough 
 always to be reckoning with the figures " Revolution," 
 " Secret Societies," " Mazziniism," " Atheism," or to esti- 
 mate things only by the standard supplied in " The Jew of 
 Verona," but that other factors must be admitted into the 
 calculation ; for instance the condition of the Italian clergy,
 
 8 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 and their position towards the laity. I wished, therefore, to 
 let a few months pass away, previous to my appearing 
 before the public. Whether I calculated rightly, the recep- 
 tion of this book will show. 
 
 I thoroughly understand those who think it censurable 
 that I should have spoken in detail of circumstances and 
 facts that are willingly ignored, or that are skipped over with 
 a light and fleeting foot, and that, too, especially at the 
 present crisis. I myself was restrained for two years by 
 these considerations, in spite of the feeling that urged me 
 to speak on the question of the Papal States ; and it required 
 the circumstances I have described, I may almost say, to 
 compel me to speak publicly on the subject. I beg, then, of 
 those persons to reflect on the following points. First, when 
 an author openly exposes a state of things already abun- 
 dantly discussed in the press ; if he draws away the necessarily 
 very transparent covering from the gaping wounds which 
 are not in the Church herself, but on an Institution nearly 
 connected with her, and whose infirmities she is made to feel 
 it may fairly be supposed that he does it, in accordance 
 with the example of earlier friends, and great men of the 
 Church, only to show the possibility and necessity of the 
 cure, in order, so far as in him lies, to weaken the reproach 
 that the defenders of the Church see only " the mote " in 
 the eyes of others, not " the beam " in their own ; and, with 
 narrow-hearted prejudice, endeavour to soften, or to dissimulate, 
 or to deny every fact which is, or which appears to be, un- 
 favourable to their cause. He does it in order that it may 
 be understood that where the impotency of man to effect a 
 cure becomes manifest, God interposes, in order to sift on 
 His threshing-floor the chaff from the wheat, and to consume 
 it with the fire-glow of catastrophes which are only His 
 judgments and His remedies. Secondly, I could not, as 
 an historian, present results without going back to their 
 causes ; and it was, therefore, my duty, as it is that of every 
 religious inquirer and observer, to try and contribute some- 
 thing to the Theodicea. He that undertakes to write on 
 such lofty interests, which nearly affect the weal and woe
 
 INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 of the Church, cannot avoid examining and displaying the 
 wisdom and justice of God in the conduct of terrestrial 
 events. The fate which has overtaken the States of the 
 Church must, before all things, be considered in the light of 
 a Divine Ordinance for the advantage of the Church. So 
 considered, it presents itself as a trial which will endure 
 until the object is attained, and the welfare of the Church, so 
 far, secured. 
 
 It seemed evident to me that, as a new order of things in 
 Europe lies in the design of Providence, so the disease 
 through which, for the last half century, the States of the 
 Church unquestionably have passed, might be the transition 
 to a new form. To describe this malady, without overlooking 
 or concealing any of the symptoms, was, therefore, an 
 undertaking I could not avoid. The disease has its source 
 in the inward contradiction and discord of institutions and 
 of circumstances ; for the modern French institutions stand 
 there in close and constant contact with a mediaeval hierarchy; 
 and neither of these two elements is strong enough to expel 
 the other; and either of them would, if it were the sole 
 predominant power, be in itself a form of disease. Yet, in 
 the history of the last few years, I recognise symptoms of 
 convalescence, however feeble, obscure, and equivocal its 
 traces may appear. What we behold is not death or hopeless 
 decay; it is a purifying process painful, consuming, and 
 penetrating bone and marrow such as God is wont to inflict 
 uponvHis chosen persons and institutions. There is no lack 
 of dross, and time is required before the gold can come pure 
 out of the furnace. In the course of this process, it may 
 happen that the territorial dominion will be interrupted 
 that the State may be broken up, or pass into other hands ; 
 but it will revive, though, perhaps, in another form, and with 
 a different kind of government. In a word, sanabilibus 
 laboramus mails ; that is what I wished to show, and that, 1 
 believe, I have shown. 
 
 Now, and for the last forty years, the condition of the 
 States of the Churth is the heel of Achilles to the Catholic 
 Church ; the standing reproach with opponents in every part
 
 10 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of the world in America as in Europe ; and a stumbling- 
 block for numbers. Not as though the objections which are 
 founded on the fact of this transitory disturbance and discord 
 in the social sphere possessed any weight in a theological 
 point of view. But still it is not to be denied that they are 
 of incalculable influence on the disposition of the whole world 
 external to the Church. 
 
 Whenever a state of disease has appeared in the Church, 
 there has been but one method of cure that of an awakened, 
 renovated, healthy consciousness ; and of an enlightened 
 public opinion in the Church. The very best will on the part 
 of ecclesiastical rulers and heads has not been able to effect 
 a cure, unless sustained by the general sense and conviction 
 of the clergy and of the laity. The healing of the great 
 malady of the sixteenth century, the true internal reformation 
 of the Church, only became possible when people ceased to 
 disguise or to deny the evil, and to pass it by in silence and 
 with concealment ; and when so powerful and irresistible a 
 public opinion had formed itself in the Church, that its 
 commanding influence could no longer be evaded. At the 
 present day, what we want, before all things, is the truth 
 the whole truth not merely the acknowledgment that the 
 Temporal Power of the Pope is required by the Church 
 for that is obvious to everybody, at least out of Italy ; and 
 everything has been said about it that can be said but what 
 there must be also is an acknowledgment upon what condi- 
 tions this power is possible for the future. The history of the 
 Popes is full of examples, shewing how their best intentions 
 remained unaccomplished, and how their most firm resolutions 
 had been baffled, because persons in inferior circles were 
 adverse to them, and because the interests of a firmly -com- 
 pacted class, like an impenetrable hedge of thorns, resisted 
 them. Adrian VI. was fully resolved to set about a 
 reformation in earnest; and yet he achieved virtually nothing; 
 and felt himself, though in possession of supreme power, 
 utterly impotent when he came into contact with the passive 
 resistance of all those who should have served as instruments 
 in the work. Only when public opinion even in Italy, and in
 
 INTRODUCTION. 1 1 
 
 Rome itself had been awakened, purified, and strengthened; 
 and when the cry for reform resounded imperatively on every 
 side, then only was it possible for the Popes to overcome 
 resistance in the inferior spheres, and gradually, and step by 
 step, to open the way for a more healthy state. May, 
 therefore, a powerful, salubrious, unanimous public opinion 
 in Catholic Europe come to the aid of Pius IX.! 
 
 Here I must justify myself upon one point. Fault has 
 been found with me that I have appealed to the " Reports" 
 of Mr. Lyons, which had been printed by order of the English 
 Parliament. English "Reports," it is said, are undisguisedly 
 partial and unreliable. I have referred to them in proof 
 that the Pope, with the best-intended reforms, was not in a 
 position to content his dissatisfied subjects ; and that every 
 concession made by him was instantly perverted into an 
 instrument for undermining his government. Now, the 
 Count de Montalembert made use of the same " Reports " 
 in his celebrated second Letter to Count Cavour ; and he 
 did so with this remark : " M. Lyons le seul diplomate lionnete 
 que FAngleterre ait envoyd en Italie" 1 subscribe to this 
 eulogy ; but, remembering Lord Normanby and Mr. Sheil, 
 of whom my friend did not think in writing, I would strike 
 out the word " seul." 
 
 Concerning another part of this book, I have still a few 
 words to say. I have given a survey of all the churches 
 and ecclesiastical communities now existing. The necessity 
 of attempting this task presented itself to me, because I had 
 to make clear both the universal importance of the Papacy 
 as a world-power, and the things that it actually performs. 
 This could not be done fully without exhibiting the internal 
 condition of the churches which have rejected it, and with- 
 drawn from its influence. It is true that the plan increased 
 under my hands, and I endeavoured to give as clear a picture 
 as possible of the development which has accomplished itself 
 in the separated churches since the Reformation; and, through 
 it, in consequence of the views and principles which then had 
 been once for all adopted. I have, therefore, admitted into 
 my description no feature which is not, according to my
 
 12 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 conviction, an effect, a result, however remote, of those 
 principles and doctrines. There is doubtless room for 
 discussion in detail upon this point, and there will unavoidably 
 be a decided opposition to this book, if it should be noticed 
 beyond the limits of the Church to which I belong. I hope 
 that there also the justice will be done me of believing that 
 I was far from having any intention of offending ; that 1 
 have only said what must be said, if we would go to the 
 bottom of these questions ; that I had to do with institutions 
 which, because of the dogmas and principles from which they 
 spring, must, like a tree that is nailed to a wall, remain 
 in one position, however unnatural it may be. I am quite 
 ready to admit that, on the opposite side, men are often 
 better than the system to which they are, or deem themselves, 
 attached; and that, on the contrary, in the Church, individuals 
 are, on the average, inferior in theory and in practice to the 
 system under which they live. 
 
 And here is the proper place for me briefly to explain 
 myself with reference to the Erfurt Conference, and the 
 hopes connected with it, and especially as regards the 
 relative positions of the Confessions (different creeds or 
 religions) in Germany. I believe I am the more bound to do 
 this, because some expressions of mine addressed in a letter 
 to a friend, and bearing upon this subject, have been printed, 
 although my name was not published. The following points 
 may, perhaps, contribute in throwing some light upon the 
 state of affairs: 
 
 1. The re-union of the Catholic and Protestant Confessions 
 in Germany would, if it were now, or a short time hence, 
 effected, be, in a religious, political, and social sense, a most 
 salutary circumstance, both for Germany and Europe. 
 
 2. There is not the smallest probability that this union can 
 be immediately carried into effect. 
 
 3. It is not possible at present, first, because the greater, 
 more active, and more influential portion of German Pro- 
 testants do not desire it, for political or religious reasons, in 
 any form, or under any practicable conditions. 
 
 4. It is impossible, secondly, because negotiations con-
 
 INTRODUCTION. . 13 
 
 cerning the mode and the conditions of Union can no longer 
 be carried on. For this purpose plenipotentiaries on both 
 sides are required ; and these only the Catholic Church is 
 able to appoint, by virtue of her ecclesiastical organization 
 not so the Protestants. Upon that side there is now no 
 common basis, no one single starting-point (not even the 
 Augsburg Confession), and every decree, and every dog- 
 matic canon is underlaid with principles evoking the veto of 
 individuals, as well as of entire Schools and Parties. 
 
 5. The Catholic Church could, without the slightest 
 difficulty, enter into a negotiation with the separated 
 Greek and Russian Churches in reference to a re-union ; and 
 this negotiation, if not opposed by foreign interests, and 
 the stolid ignorance of the clergy and people of those 
 churches, might hold out a hope of the most favourable 
 results. There, both parties stand on the same ground, in 
 so far as they have both taken the same views as to the 
 Church, its authority, and its uninterrupted continuity. 
 This view is wanting on the Protestant side, and with it 
 fails a common basis, without which, negotiations and 
 attempts at coining to a common understanding are not 
 possible. Isolated points are not here to be taken into 
 consideration. 
 
 6. To take the Holy Scriptures as a common basis, upon 
 which Catholics and Protestants should make the attempt to 
 come to an understanding would be purely illusory ; for, 
 
 Primarily, so long as there have been Christians they 
 never by such means came to be unanimous. A striking 
 example of this is the dispute upon the Eucharistal conse- 
 cration between the Lutherans and Reformers (Calvinists), 
 which after countless colloquies, and thousands of books 
 published for three hundred years has never progressed a 
 single step. 
 
 Secondly, the great advances that have undoubtedly been 
 made, within the last thirty years, in expositions of the 
 Bible, have in no way produced, on the Protestant side, a 
 larger amount of faith or unity in doctrine so far from that, 
 the very contrary is perceivable.
 
 14 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 7. Nevertheless, Protestants and Catholics have, theo- 
 logically, come nearer to each other ; for that main doctrine 
 those " articles with which the Church was to stand or fall," 
 and for the sake of which the Reformers declared separation 
 from the Catholic Church to be necessary, are now confuted 
 and given up by Protestant theology, or are retained only 
 nominally, whilst other notions are connected with the 
 words. 
 
 8. The Augsburg Confession is not only "the fundamental 
 creed of the Reformation," but it is also the only one which 
 the great majority of Christ-believing Protestants now ac- 
 knowledge. Were this acknowledgment based upon a 
 perfectly serious, clear recognition and right understanding 
 of what it contains, then would the union of the separated 
 Churches be proportionably attainable. " But," as Heinrich 
 Leo 1 has lately observed, " everyone has this Confession in 
 his mouth, but there is scarcely one who knows what it is, 
 and no one seeks to embrace it in its original meaning. It 
 is declared to be the corner-stone of Protestantism, and 
 great festivals have been celebrated in its honour; it is 
 yearly lauded in every Protestant School, and scarcely one 
 individual knows what is contained in it." 
 
 9. The Augsburg Confession, in its seventh article, 
 declares, "that there is, and must continue to be at all times, 
 one holy Catholic Church, which is an assembly of all the 
 faithful, and by which the pure Gospel is preached, and the 
 holy sacraments, in accordance with the Gospel, ad- 
 ministered." If language has not been invented for the 
 purpose of concealing men's thoughts, then this is affirming 
 that, before the birth of the Protestant doctrine, there was 
 already in existence a church, " one," " holy," with " pure 
 doctrine," and "real sacraments." Can there be along with 
 " one holy Church " also a second and a third ? Has the 
 Church, which in the year 1517 was still "one," "holy," 
 suddenly ceased to be, because since then new Associations, 
 by separating from her, have arisen which Associations 
 instantly began to accuse her of false teaching, and of 
 
 1 " Xeue Preuss. Ztg.," 26th September.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 15 
 
 having untrue sacraments : without there being, according to 
 the Separatists' own avowal, any essential changes in her? 
 Could the authors of, and subscribers to, this article have so 
 understood its signification, that the "one holy Church" 
 was to consist of an undefined number of churchmen, sepa- 
 rated in doctrine, sacraments, order, and mutually accusing 
 one another of vital errors? Can the authority or sym- 
 bolical value of the Augsburg Confession be seriously spoken 
 of when this weighty and conclusive article is treated as non- 
 existent, and when science ignores, or strongly disputes, or 
 gives to it a directly contrary signification ? An affirmative 
 logical answer to these questions is an indispensable pre- 
 liminary to every Confessional understanding, and this, too, 
 it must, moreover, be in the interest of all laymen who are 
 struggling after religious purity and certainty. 
 
 10. So far as one can judge from literature, there appears 
 to be the wish amongst theologians and clergymen on the 
 Protestant side, that there should be a union amongst the 
 Germans, now separated by religious distinctions. How it is 
 to be effected some do not show some put it in the form of 
 a request that the Catholics should at once turn Protestants 
 whilst with others there is manifested the inclination, with 
 a complete dimness as to the ways and the mode. Seldom, 
 at least, has the author, in real life, met with a religious- 
 minded Protestant layman who did not feel a desire for this 
 union, and who also, for the most part, entertained the 
 opinion that the time for it is come, as the duration of the 
 separation has done much more evil than good. 
 
 11. Protestant theology is, at the present day, less hostile, 
 so to speak, than the theologians. For whilst theology has 
 levelled the strongest bulwarks and doctrinal barriers which 
 the Reformation had set up to confirm the separation the 
 theologians, instead of viewing favorably the consequent 
 facilities for union, often labour, on the contrary, to conceal 
 the fact, or to create new points of difference. Many of 
 them may participate in the opinion of Stahl of Berlin, who, 
 shortly before his death, said, " Far from allowing that the 
 breach of the sixteenth century can be healed, we ought, if
 
 16 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 it had not already occurred, to make it now." 1 This, 
 however, will not continue, and a future generation perhaps 
 even that which is now growing up will rather adopt the 
 recent declaration of Heinrich Leo : " In the Roman 
 Catholic Church a process of purification has taken place 
 since Luther's time; and if the Church had been in the 
 days of Luther what the Roman Catholic Church in 
 Germany is at present, it would never have occurred to him 
 to assert his opposition so energetically as to bring about a 
 separation." 2 Those who think thus will then be the right 
 men and the chosen instruments for the acceptable work of 
 the reconciliation of the Churches, and of the true unity of 
 Germany. 
 
 12. Upon the day when, on both sides, the conviction 
 shall arise, vivid and strong, that Christ really desires the 
 unity of His Church, that the division of Christendom, the 
 multiplicity of Churches, is displeasing to God that he 
 who helps to prolong this situation must answer for it to the 
 Lord on that day four-fifths of the traditional polemics of 
 Protestants against the Catholic Church will, with one 
 blow, be cast aside, like chaff and rubbish ; for four-fifths of 
 it consists of misunderstandings, logomachies, and wilful 
 falsifications ; or relate to personal, and therefore accidental, 
 things, which are utterly insignificant, where only principles 
 and dogmas are at stake. 
 
 13. On that day, also, much will be changed on the 
 Catholic side. Thenceforward the personal character of 
 Luther and of the Reformers will be no more dragged 
 forward in the pulpit. The clergy, mindful of the words, 
 " Interficite errores, diligite homines," will ever conduct them- 
 selves towards members of other Churches in conformity with 
 the rules of charity, and will therefore assume, in all cases where 
 there are no clear proofs to the contrary, the bona fides of 
 opponents. 3 They will never forget that no man is convinced 
 
 1 Address at the opening of the Berlin Pastoral Conference, in the 
 " Evang. Kirchen-Ztg.," June, 1861, p. 564. 
 
 2 " N. Preuss. Ztg.," 27th September. 
 
 1 After the example of one of the best prelates of our time, Cardinal
 
 INTRODUCTION. 17 
 
 and won over by bitter words and violent attacks, but that 
 everyone is rather repelled by them. Warned by the words 
 of the Epistle to the Romans (xiv., 13), they will be more 
 careful than heretofore to give to their separated brethren 
 no scandal, no grounds of accusation against the Church. 
 In popular instruction and in religious life they will accord- 
 ingly make the great truths of salvation the centre of all 
 their teaching : they will not treat secondary things in life 
 and doctrine as though they were of the first importance, but, 
 on the contrary, they will keep alive in the people the con- 
 sciousness that such things are but means to an end, and 
 are only of inferior consequence and subsidiary value. 
 
 14. Until that day shall dawn upon Germany, it is our 
 duty as Catholics, in the words of Cardinal Diepenbrock, " to 
 bear the religious separation in a spirit of penance, for guilt 
 incurred in common." We must acknowledge that here also 
 God has caused much good, as well as much evil, to proceed 
 from the errors of men, from the contests and passions of the 
 sixteenth century ; we must, too, admit that the anxiety of 
 the German nation to see the intolerable abuses and scandals 
 in the Church removed was fully justified ; and that it sprang 
 from the better qualities of our people, and from their moral 
 indignation at the desecration and corruption of holy things, 
 which were degraded to selfish and hypocritical purposes. 
 We do not refuse to admit that the great separation, and the 
 storms and sufferings connected with it, were an awful 
 judgment upon Catholic Christendom, which clergy and 
 laity had but too well deserved a judgment which has had 
 an improving and salutary effect. The great intellectual 
 conflict has purified the European atmosphere, has impelled 
 the human mind on to new courses, and has promoted a rich, 
 scientific, and literary life. Protestant theology, with its 
 
 de Cheverus, who, when he was Bishop of Boston in America, declared, 
 from his intercourse with Protestants, converted by him to the Catholic 
 faith : " Que plusieurs Protestans pouvaient etre dans la bonne foi ou 
 ignorance invincible qui excuse 1'erreur devant Dieu. II en conclut qu'il 
 falloit etre tres indulgent pour ceux qui se trompent, et tres reserve a 
 les condainner." Vie du Cardinal de Cheverus, 2d edit., p. 140. 
 
 C
 
 18 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 restless spirit of inquiry, has gone along by the side of the 
 Catholic, exciting and awakening, warning and vivifying ; 
 whilst every exalted Catholic theologian will readily admit 
 that he owes much to the writings of Protestant scholars. 
 
 15. We have also to acknowledge that in the Church the 
 rust of abuses, and of a mechanical superstition, is always 
 forming afresh ; that the servants of the Church sometimes, 
 through indolence and incapacity, and the people through 
 ignorance, brutify the spiritual in religion, and so degrade 
 and deform and misemploy it to their own injury. The 
 right reforming spirit must therefore never depart from the 
 Church, but, on the contrary, must periodically break out 
 with renovating strength, and penetrate the conscience and 
 the will of the clergy. In this sense we do not refuse to 
 admit the justice of a call to penance, when it proceeds from 
 those who are not of us, that is, of a warning carefully to 
 examine our religious life and pastoral conduct, and to 
 remedy what is found defective. 
 
 16. And yet it never must be forgotten that the separa- 
 tion did not ensue in consequence of abuses in the Church. 
 For the duty and necessity of removing those abuses has 
 always been recognised ; and only the difficulty of the thing, 
 the not always unjustifiable fear lest " the wheat" should be 
 pulled up with " the tares," prevented, for a time, the refor- 
 mation which was accomplished in the Church, and through 
 her. Separation on account of mere abuses in ecclesiastical 
 life, when the doctrine is the same, is rejected as criminal by 
 the Protestant Church, as well as by us. It was therefore 
 for the sake of doctrine that the separation occurred ; and 
 the general discontent of the people, the weakening of eccle- 
 siastical authority by the existence of abuses, only facilitated 
 the adoption of the new doctrines. But now, upon the one 
 side, some of these defects and evils in the life of the Church 
 have disappeared, and more have greatly diminished since 
 the reforming movement. And, on the other side, the prin- 
 cipal doctrines for which men separated, and on the truth of 
 which, and their necessity for salvation, the right and duty 
 of secession had been based, are given up by Protestant
 
 INTRODUCTION. 19 
 
 science, deprived of their Scriptural basis by exegesis, or, at 
 least, made very uncertain by the opposition of the most 
 eminent Protestant theologians. 
 
 17. Meanwhile, we live in hope; comforting ourselves with 
 the conviction that history, or that process of development 
 in Europe which is being accomplished before our eyes (as 
 well in society and politics as in religion), is the powerful 
 ally of the friends of ecclesiastical union ; and we hold out 
 our hands to Christians on the other side, for a combined 
 war of resistance against the destructive movements of the 
 age. For this to use the words of Von Radowitz is the 
 state of affairs : " We plainly perceive that the minds of men 
 are ranging themselves under two banners upon one of 
 which is inscribed the name of ' Christ, the Son of God ;' 
 and beneath the other are incorporated all to whom That 
 Name is Foolishness and a Reproach." 
 
 Munich, 12th October, 1861. 
 
 C2
 
 20 
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE NATIONS. 
 
 IN all time, antecedent to Christ, there were none other 
 than National and State religions. The populations had each 
 their own divinities, and their peculiar form of worship. 
 Their religions essentially contributed to keep the peoples 
 more widely apart and more distinctly separated from one 
 another. One nation might derive its divinities and take 
 its form of worship from another; but a religious bond, 
 embracing both, and drawing them closer together, was not 
 thereby formed. The Christian religion, whose very existence 
 from the beginning rested upon the disruption of Jewish 
 national-religious individuality, was the first that appeared 
 amongst mankind with a claim to Catholicity. It declared 
 itself to be a universal religion ; one that did not belong to 
 any people in particular, but, on the contrary, whose calling 
 and innate qualification were to extend itself over the surface 
 of the globe ; to receive into its bosom every variety of 
 population ; to satisfy their real religious wants, and, regard- 
 less of national or geographical boundaries, to establish a 
 great kingdom of God on earth to found a Church for 
 humanity ! 
 
 The Roman Empire, through whose means the political, 
 lingual, and conventional boundaries and bulwarks of con- 
 quered nations had been broken down and levelled, had thus 
 prepared the way, and smoothened a path for the Christian 
 Church. And then, after a battle of three hundred years
 
 UNITY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 21 
 
 a battle in which there were suffering and confession on the 
 one side, of persecution and of slaughter on the other this 
 empire was conquered by the Church, which had, at the same 
 time, through the three principal languages of the period 
 the Greek, Latin, and Syrian produced a triple literature, 
 extended itself far beyond the limits of the Roman boundaries, 
 penetrated far into Persia, and travelled away to the North, 
 and amongst the German nations. The central point of 
 Church life was Rome the world-city " the sink of nations" 
 where Egyptians, Syrians, Asiatics, Armenians, Greeks, 
 Jews, Gauls, Spaniards, met and mixed together were 
 mutually attracted towards one another, or repelled. Next 
 to Rome, Alexandria the great emporium of commerce, the 
 seat of Greek and Oriental science and literature served to 
 nurture and develope the cosmopolitan character of Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
 And so was the Church nationally colourless. No one 
 could then, or at any subsequent period, ever affirm that any 
 one nation more than another had impressed the stamp of 
 individuality upon the Church. After the fall of the Western 
 Roman Empire the Church became the instructress and the 
 foster-mother of new States. In its bosom were developed 
 the ruling nationalities of the West, and all were penetrated 
 with the consciousness of forming one mighty Christian folk- 
 family; a European commonwealth, under the spiritual 
 supremacy of the Papal See, and the temporal headship of 
 the newly created Roman-Germanic Imperial Power. If 
 France was proud to be called " the first-born son of the 
 Church," it thereby recognized the fraternal relations in 
 which it stood as regarded the other sons of the one mighty 
 mother that is, to the people and states of the South, the 
 North, and the East. Wars between brothers could be no 
 more than a transitory phenomenon ; whilst a permanent 
 state of hostilities between members of the same great family 
 was in reality to be no longer conceivable. The Church 
 Councils were also national Congresses. If a heathen people 
 became Christian, and began to mould its customs, both 
 socially and politically, in accordance with the Christian
 
 22 NATIONAL RE-ACTION. 
 
 model, its chief or duke was raised to the kingly dignity by 
 the Pope, was solemnly consecrated and crowned by the 
 Church, and the people were enrolled as members of the 
 Christian folk-family, as the equals of all in birth, and like 
 to the rest in their rights. 
 
 In this manner was a problem solved, and a thought 
 realised, which would have been declared by both Greeks and 
 Romans to be alike absurd and impossible ; that is a multi- 
 tude of nationalities, through a community in faith, and of reli- 
 gious worship, as well as by the bonds of an all-embracing 
 ecclesiastical organization, united into one great whole. That 
 there should not be wanting a vigorous reaction on the part 
 of particular nationalities was a thing to be expected. The 
 long and sanguinary persecution which was carried on 
 amongst the Persians, under the kings of the Sassanides 
 dynasty, was a reaction of this description. The new strange 
 religion was hated and feared as being " un-Persian," as an 
 intrusive " Roman-Empire religion," as coming to them from 
 the territory of their hereditary foe ; and hence they wished 
 to exterminate its confessors, as men who had, at the same 
 time, abandoned the national religion of Persia, and with 
 their religion Persian patriotism ! 
 
 An element of nationality speedily mixed itself up with 
 the schism of the Donatists. The separation from the Church, 
 and its central point at Rome, which was effected in North 
 Africa, although it was an act repudiated by all the rest of 
 the Christian world, was, in point of fact, an outburst of the 
 North African spirit of nationality, which sought to establish 
 for itself its own thoroughly pure national Church, in opposi- 
 tion to all others, which were assumed to have become 
 corrupt and decayed. In the same manner was Egyptian 
 nationality urged to take a part, ever since the fifth century, 
 in the great Christological battle of the Monophysite doc- 
 trine, that brought it to its having its own national Coptic 
 Church, which still remains separated from the Catholic 
 world, and the fragments of which, in a truly lamentable 
 condition, subsist to the present day. In Armenia like 
 causes produced like effects.
 
 BYZANTINISM. 23 
 
 At a later period that is, since the twelfth century the 
 separation and isolation of the Church of the Byzantine 
 Empire has been gradually completed. Two Powers ruled 
 there, to whom a union with the Universal Church, and 
 with Rome, was incommodious, because with that union were 
 conjoined dependence and restraint : these two Powers were 
 the Emperor, and the Patriarch at Constantinople. 1 The 
 latter (the Patriarch) sought to extend his spiritual dominion 
 so as that it might be an absolute despotism over every 
 inhabitant of the empire. The Emperor, for his part, wished 
 to have in his hands the Church, and the Patriarch espe- 
 cially, as a useable political tool at his uncontrolled disposal. 
 Under such circumstances was developed Byzantinism, that 
 is, the national political spirit of the Greek Empire, and 
 whose two factors were the absolutism of Imperialism over 
 the State and the Church ; and ignorance, combined with the 
 arrogant self-exultation of the people. The Byzantines re- 
 garded their emperor as the successor of the old Roman 
 Caesars. Each Greek emperor was a new Constantine, 
 entitled to reign over the East and the West to the utmost 
 limits to which the old imperial power had extended ! The 
 establishment of the Western Empire, the separation of Italy, 
 the independence of the Pope, who, moreover, neither would 
 nor could be the subject of the Emperor at Constantinople 
 all these circumstances were, in the eyes of the Greeks, in- 
 surrections, usurpations, attempts against the oecumenical 
 power of the Emperor, who had been instituted by God as 
 the head of all Christendom ! And then, the people, who, 
 as they said, had, with the language, also inherited classic 
 Greek literature and civilization they haughtily and self- 
 complacently looked down upon all who were not Greeks, as 
 mere barbarians ! 
 
 In the complete control over the Church in their Empire, 
 
 1 The general notion, that Photius and Cerulerius were the originators 
 of the separation, is not quite correct. In the twelfth century, there is 
 still to be found frequent community in the Divine Services between the 
 Greek and Latin Churches ; as, for instance, in the year 1147, when 
 King Louis VII., of France, arrived at Constantinople.
 
 24 IMPERIAL CONTROL OVER THE CHURCH. 
 
 the Greek Emperors, especially after the exaltation of the 
 Comnenes dynasty, went much further than the Russian Czar 
 at a later period ever did. They willingly permitted the 
 Patriarch to have unlimited power over bishops aud clergy ; 
 but then, according to their own pleasure, they appointed, 
 and they deposed him. Every Emperor was a born theolo- 
 gian, 1 ; he was above the canons of the Church, and he was 
 above the laws of the State. 2 Through their anointment and 
 by their imperial dignity they had, as Isaac Angelus (who 
 came to the throne in 1185), 3 declares, obtained a supreme 
 superintendence in all matters of ecclesiastical doctrine and 
 discipline. In short, they were, with the exception of the 
 administration of the sacraments, in possession of all Church, 
 official, and governmental rights. And the new Byzantine 
 State and Court-Church laws had reduced all this to a 
 regular, systematic theory. 
 
 Contrasted with the active life, the juvenile freshness, 
 and expansive vigour of the West, the Byzantine exhibited 
 naught but that senile torpidity and haughty obstinacy which 
 are no longer capable of learning ; and are as sterile as they 
 are incompetent of improvement, or of expelling that which 
 is internally corrupting. As dethroned rulers, or as a person 
 who has been despoiled of his property, the Byzantine looked 
 at Rome and the restless movements of the Latin that is, 
 the half or wholly barbaric world. The great massacre, by 
 which, in the year 1182, such numbers of the Latins were 
 destroyed in the capital, was an outbreak of that national 
 hatred which had struck such deep and ineradicable roots, 
 from the moment that those foreigners had, with their army, 
 overthrown the Greek throne, and established a Latin 
 Emperor in Constantinople. In such a disposition, and in 
 such a state of affairs, all even the most trivial differences 
 
 1 So says the historian, CINXAMUS, p. 521. It is permitted to no one 
 to investigate into the nature of God, but doctors, bishops, and the 
 Emperor ! 
 
 3 BALSAMON, ap. " Bevereg. Cod. Canon," i. 338. 
 
 * Kotvos rS)i> {KAcX^criwj' t7ri<TTr)[ioi>a.pxr)s *ai u>v tcai ovo/iafo/xej/os, says 
 DEMETRIUS CHOMATERUS, ap. " Leunclav. Jur. Gr. Rom.," p. 317.
 
 BYZANTINE ANTI-LATINISM. 25 
 
 in dogmatic expressions, in rites, and in church life, were 
 carefully sought out, nurtured, and widened. It had formally 
 become a question of national honour to possess the capability 
 of accusing the Latins of heresy ; and ritual forms were 
 invented, for the purpose of tangibly expressing the pollution 
 which any contact with the Latins must occasion. In their 
 common conversation, they contrasted "Christians" that is, 
 Byzantines with the "Latins;" and in the capital, even 
 women, workpeople, and schoolboys chattered about " the 
 procession of the Holy Ghost;" and upon this abstruse (and 
 only to practised theologians in some measure comprehensible) 
 question, finally turned the controversy between the two 
 Churches. The later Emperors, rendered by their necessities 
 more prudent than their predecessors, yet found themselves 
 incapable of repairing this breach : they were unable to 
 contend against the national sentiment, which, though 
 impotent in all other matters, was, upon this one point of 
 anti-Latinism, obdurate and invincible. The union of 
 Florence was again torn asunder the Church of St. Sophia 
 was doomed to become a mosque I 1 
 
 The destructive schism which took place towards the end 
 of the fourteenth century, in consequence of the election of 
 a French anti-pope, and then convulsed the Church for more 
 than forty years, had, too, its origin in purely national interests. 
 For that which was really intended to be effected by it was 
 to have the Papal See and court, as the exclusive possession 
 of the French nation, located upon French soil, and under 
 the predominating influence of the French government. And 
 
 1 Some felt strongly what injury must accrue to the Church through 
 the operation of an Imperial Popedom ; but those entertaining such a 
 conviction appear to be but few. The strongest expression of opinion I 
 have met with is that of the Archbishop Simeon of Thessalonica (ap. 
 " Morin. de Ordin.," p. 138. Ed. Amstd.). He affirms that the perver- 
 sion of the Church order, through the assumptions and assaults of the 
 temporal power, is the cause of the decay both of the Empire and the 
 nation. " And hence it is," he observes, " that we have become impotent 
 and contemptible in the estimation of all nations ; and hence, too, it is 
 that our foes scorn us, consume our harvests before our eyes, and possess 
 themselves of our sacred relics and consecrated places," &c., &c., &c.
 
 26 GERMAN NATIONAL FEELING. 
 
 scarcely had this wound been healed, when the Hussite 
 movement took place that, too, was an attempt at a national 
 separation, and the formation of a particular peoples' church. 
 The Czechish antipathy against the Germans had from the 
 commencement a large share in their essay at a new Ecclesi- 
 astical Structure, which was to be limited to the race of 
 Czechs. 
 
 When, with the appearance of Luther, began that powerful 
 movement which split asunder Western Christendom, until 
 then whole and united ; and when new churches, with 
 doctrines and constitutions entirely different from the old, 
 were formed, there was not at its commencement to be found 
 the impulse of the supreme interests of a nationality pushing 
 onward reformation, and inciting insurrection against the 
 Pope and the Church. The German people had, for a series 
 of centuries, with a deep and complete devotion, been absorbed 
 by the spirit of the Catholic religion ; they had made their 
 churches the most nobly-endowed of any in the world ; they 
 had created a literature that was purely Catholic, and yet 
 was the genuine production of the German mind. But in the 
 beginning of the sixteenth century there was spread far and 
 wide in Germany a strong repugnance against the Popedom, 
 as it was then ; and no unrightful indignation with reference 
 to abuses in the Church, and the moral depravity of a much 
 too numerous and far too wealthy clergy. The national 
 feeling of the German people had been for a considerable 
 time offended by the treatment which German persons, 
 things, and interests had experienced in Rome; and by the 
 part which had been played, since the fourteenth century, by 
 German kings and emperors, as opposed to the See of Rome. 
 It was when this state of feeling prevailed, that the mightiest 
 democrat and most popular character that Germany has ever 
 possessed the Augustinian monk of Wittenberg presented 
 himself as a leader and eloquent orator. At the same time, 
 he, with his newly-invented doctrine of "Justification," had 
 discovered a lever of wonderful strength, by means of which 
 he might destroy the still great attachment of the people to 
 the Catholic religion. He tendered a compensation eagerly
 
 LUTHERANISM. 27 
 
 and joyfully to be sought for in repayment for what they 
 had lost. 
 
 Luther well understood how to draw into the service of 
 his cause the German national feeling, which then exhibited 
 itself in a decided manner, by its dislike of the Italian nation. 
 He shews this by his frequent expressions in reference to the 
 " Whalen" as the Italians were then called. There is 
 scarcely a single vice that he does not attribute to them ; 
 and he purposely descants upon their assumed " haughtiness, 
 and their contempt for the Germans, who, in their eyes, are 
 not even human beings." 1 
 
 When the separation had been completed, the new Church 
 system established, and the violent movement brought to a 
 stand-still and a conclusion, it was found that only the half 
 of Germany had submitted itself to the Lutheran doctrine. 
 The other half remained as it had been, or it had again 
 become Catholic. The Protestant portion was split up anew, 
 for Calvinism was introduced into some territories previously 
 Lutheran. Upon the whole, however, the Germans that is, 
 such of them as had broken off their communion with the 
 old Church were attached to the Lutheran doctrine ; for 
 Calvinism was in their estimation un-German and outlandish, 
 and did not satisfy their religious feelings ; whilst Luther- 
 anism, in the two first centuries of its existence, was felt and 
 comprehended as the most accurate product of the German 
 mind, in matters of religion. Outside of Germany, the 
 kindred Scandinavians were the only states that introduced 
 amongst them the Lutheran form of Protestantism ; whilst, 
 on the other hand, the Calvinistic form owed its existence 
 and diffusion on the German soil, for the most part, to the 
 constraint exercised by individual princes. 
 
 A Lutheran national Church was not established in 
 Germany. The whole ecclesiastical power such power as 
 in the Catholic Church had been exercised by primate and 
 episcopacy was systematically intrusted to the temporal 
 princes, and (in the imperial cities) to the municipal authorities, 
 
 1 See " Luther's Werke," Walch, Ausg., xiv. 273 ; xix. 1155 ; xxii. 
 2365 ; ii. 1429.
 
 28 DISMEMBERMENT OF THE CHUKCH. 
 
 so that there were just as many churches as there were states 
 and territories. Every prince and every Germanic-Empire 
 titled noble was now both Pope and Bishop in his land or 
 little holding. He was, in fact, something more ; for he 
 could alter the religion of his subjects according to his own 
 pleasure ; and the Palatine Electoral princes did actually, 
 in a single generation, and through the instrumentality of 
 depositions and banishments, four times violently change the 
 religion of their country. And, then, so weakened has 
 been the Church impulse in Protestant Germany, under the 
 influence of the Lutheran doctrine, that, in three hundred 
 years, there never has been one serious attempt made for the 
 establishment of one all-embracing Lutheran Church-like 
 band, having one common Church action. 
 
 They content themselves with the conviction that they are 
 in the exclusive possession of the pure doctrine, in which is, 
 beyond all other things, to be understood " self-attributed 
 righteousness," and upon which is founded unconditional 
 personal " salvation." This is called "the Gospel ! " Besides 
 this, they console themselves for this lamentable condition, 
 dismemberment, and territorial servitude of Church affairs, 
 with thoughts of the assumed glory of the invisible Church, 
 which possesses in richer abundance and more fanciful 
 perfection all that is wanting to the visible. 
 
 In the rest of Europe, the Lutheran doctrine was a decided 
 failure. It was either rejected, or it had to give way to the 
 Calvinistic reform doctrine. It devolved upon the Saxons in 
 Transylvania, after the German inhabitants of the cities 
 amongst Hungarians and Poles had paved the way for it. 
 But even so, it was plainly nothing more than the creed of a 
 small minority, which saw itself on all sides overridden and 
 pressed down by the logical, and (on that which is the main 
 point) still more consolatory Calvinism. It was the same in 
 the Netherlands and France. It was, therefore, correctly 
 (even though but lately) said : " That the Lutheran Church 
 was so absolutely modified, and so thoroughly animated with 
 the German character, that, in another country, and under 
 different national conditions, it could never exist. The
 
 CALVIN AND THE CALVINISTIC CHUKCH-FORM. 29 
 
 Scotch, for instance, could never be Lutherans, so long as 
 they are Scotchmen." 1 According to SchafPs remark, 
 " Lutheranism loses more or less of its original features, and 
 imperceptibly assimilates itself to the Reform Confession, so 
 soon as it, through emigration, is transplanted to French, 
 English, or American soil. This," he adds, " is to be seen 
 very plainly in the United States, if we compare the 
 Anglicised portion of the Lutheran denominations with the 
 foreign German Synods of Missouri and Buffalo." 2 
 
 Calvin was as decidedly the creator of the so-called 
 "reform" doctrine, as Luther was the originator of that which 
 has been called after him. Calvin had only Zwinglius as a 
 predecessor, whilst Luther was dependent on no one, and 
 indebted to no one for anything. Calvin was not able, 
 however, in his own country, France, to obtain the success 
 and the high position which accrued to the German Reformer 
 at home. The great majority of his countrymen still con- 
 tinue to see in him only the founder of erroneous doctrines, 
 and of a false Church ; but as regards other nations, which, 
 either wholly or partially, have accepted his system, he remains 
 still a foreigner; and their national feelings will not tolerate 
 the Church in their own land to be called by his name, and 
 so be made known as the work of a stranger. They would 
 have, therefore, their Church only known as being reformed', 
 whilst the German Protestants, with the conviction that 
 Luther is flesh of their flesh, and bone of their bone, that 
 he is the nation-born prophet of Germans name with 
 satisfaction themselves " Lutherans," and their church 
 " Lutheran." 
 
 Upon the whole, the Calvinistic Church-form, which had 
 not at its commencement the stamp of a particular nationality 
 upon it, has had a wider expansion than the Lutheran. 
 Scotland, as regards the great majority of its inhabitants, 
 became Calvinistic; whilst in the Netherlands and in Swit- 
 zerland the larger portion of the population that adopted 
 
 1 " Allgemeine Kirchenzeitung," 15th May, 1855. 
 
 2 " Germany ; its Universities, Theology, and Religion." Edinburgh, 
 1857, p. 168.
 
 30 THE EPISCOPAL STATE-CHURCH IN ENGLAND. 
 
 Protestantism accepted it in that form. In Germany 
 Calvinism attained an entrance into the Palatinate, Anhalt, 
 Hesse, Bremen, and finally (since the conversion of Sigismond 
 in 1614) into the Brandenburg territory. In Hungary the 
 Magyars, so far as they fell off from the old Church, did so, 
 for the most part, to become Calvinists. In France, up to 
 the time of the incorporation of Alsace, " Calvinist " and 
 " Protestant " were synonymous terms. The churches of 
 this confession, however, remained separated according to 
 the territories in which they were placed; and in Switzerland, 
 according to the Cantons in which they were located. Only 
 once was there found to take place one common action, and 
 one general confederation of all or the most of the com- 
 munities conforming to the Calvinistic doctrine. It was at 
 the Dordrecht Synod, in the year 1618, when it was desired 
 to defend and confirm genuine Calvinism in its practical 
 doctrines, and such as they were most wished for by the 
 masses, against the alterations of the Arminians. This was 
 also the culminating point of Calvinistic Church development. 
 From that time began its internal dogmatic and Church 
 decomposition. 
 
 As a third chief form of Protestantism, and with a complete 
 national colouring and exclusiveness, the Episcopal State- 
 Church in England instituted itself. Wholly differing from 
 Lutheranism, it was, at the beginning, in its dogma super- 
 abounding with Calvinism. It is, in its constitution, a 
 mixture of Catholicity and Protestantism ; it is territorially 
 Protestant, or imperially papistical, in its principles and 
 institutions ; it is, in its Liturgy, more Catholic than 
 Protestant, and in its creed " the 39 Articles " more 
 Protestant than Catholic. It suffers from its internal con- 
 tradictions ; and resembles a building which, erected out of 
 heterogeneous materials, can only be prevented from falling 
 to pieces by the strong hand of the State. The struggle with 
 the Calvinistic elements contending for the supreme power, 
 and which had been carried on for a long time in its bosom, 
 gradually led to the separation of the Puritans, and to the great 
 civil and religious war of the seventeenth century. At last the
 
 NATIONAL CHUECHES. 31 
 
 more logical Protestant parties the Presbyterians, Congrega- 
 tionalists, and Baptists gave to themselves a constitution of 
 their own, and placed themselves in opposition to the State 
 Church as independent Churches. It then shut out all the 
 Protestant communities on the Continent so completely, that 
 an ordained Lutheran or Calvinist preacher in England passes 
 simply as a layman ; and, in order to enter into the service 
 of the Anglican Church, has to submit himself once more to 
 Episcopal ordination. 
 
 When we look over the whole course of the Reformation- 
 century, at the result of the great movement, and the state 
 of the newly-formed religious communities, we find everywhere 
 the victorious principle of national distinct Churches mani- 
 festing itself. "Principle" is not, perhaps, the right expres- 
 sion to make use of ; for this state of things was by no 
 means systematically brought about it should rather be 
 said that it was self-formed it was the inevitable consequence 
 of the opposite principle that is, of Catholicity, of a Church 
 for the entire world having been, with deliberate design, 
 renounced. To the Temporal Power, to Princes, and their 
 officials, in Protestant lands, was assigned, in its fulness, 
 ecclesiastical power, with a supremacy in spiritual matters. 
 The Reformers had willed that it should be so, 1 and 
 therewith must necessarily cease every religious tie between 
 different nationalities. In Germany there were as many 
 Protestant Churches as there were distinct territories ; and 
 
 1 This has been frequently denied, but let any one confront the denial 
 with the Wittenberg Consistorial Ordinance of the year 1542, in Richter's 
 "Sammlung der Kirchen-Ordnungen," p. 371, which was either com- 
 posed or approved of by Luther and Melancthon. With reference to it 
 Professor Schenkel says : " In this manner, with a single stroke of the 
 pen, was the important matter of Church discipline placed wholly in the 
 hands of the heads of the State, and this, too, without any reservation of 
 ecclesiastical rights ; so that affairs of conscience were, from this time, 
 treated precisely like worldly matters, and were to be settled altogether 
 according to the form of temporal legal proceedings. The subjection of 
 the Church to the State was therewith completed, and the gate thrown 
 wide open for boundless tyranny by the State over men's consciences." 
 " Studien und Kriticken," 1850, p. 459.
 
 32 THE MISSION OF NATIONALITIES. 
 
 each lord of the land was invested with the highest ecclesi- 
 astical power. If a general " Lutheran " Church, or an 
 "Evangelical" Church, were mentioned, this expression, in 
 reality, meant no more than an aggregate of National Churches, 
 each one of which was limited by the frontiers of its own coun- 
 try ; and, in no point of view, representing a living whole an 
 organically associated unity. In the same manner there were, 
 and there still are, in " reformed " Switzerland only Cantonal 
 Churches. It is, however, as a Protestant theologian correctly 
 remarks, untrue and perplexing to speak of a " unity," 
 when it only represents " something present in one's 
 thoughts ;" and where we can point to nothing in which 
 this assumed unity manifests itself. "Unity" and "similarity," 
 or " relationship," are very different ideas. 1 
 
 Nationalities are certainly not the products of accident ; 
 they are not the children of a blindly-ruling force of nature. 
 On the contrary, in the great world-plan of Divine Providence, 
 every distinct people have their own peculiar problem to 
 solve, their own assigned mission to fulfil. They may mis- 
 take it, and, by a perverted course, wander away from it, or, 
 by their sloth and moral depravity, leave it unperformed 
 and of such we have examples before our eyes. This mission 
 is determined by the character of the people themselves, by 
 the boundaries within which nature and circumstances confine 
 them, and by their own peculiar endowments. The manner 
 in which a nation undertakes to solve the problem re-acts, 
 again, upon its position and character, determines its welfare, 
 and decides the place it shall occupy in history. Each dis- 
 tinct people forms an organically connected limb of the great 
 body of humanity it may be a more noble and distinguished 
 limb it may be a people destined to be the guide and 
 educator of other nations or it may be an inferior and a 
 subservient limb ; but, then, each nationality has an original 
 right (within easily-recognised limits, and without interference 
 on the part of any other equally privileged nation) to vindi- 
 cate and freely develope itself. The suppression of a nation- 
 ality, or of a manifestation of its existence within its natural 
 1 LECHLER, " Lehre vom heiligen Amte.," 1857, p. 139.
 
 THE CHURCH A FAMILY OF NATIONS. 33 
 
 and legitimate limits, is a crime against the order decreed by I 
 God, and which sooner or later brings its own punishment | 
 along with it. 
 
 Higher, however, than associated nationalities, stands that 
 Community which unites the multiplicity of nationalities into 
 one God-connected totality, which binds them together 
 in one brotherly relation, and forms them into one great 
 peoples' family ; the Community that does this is the Church 
 of Christ. It is the will of its Founder that it should be just 
 with every national peculiarity; "one shepherd and one 
 flock." It must, therefore, in its views, in its institutions, 
 and in its customs, bear no peculiar national colour. It must 
 neither be prominently German, nor Italian, nor French, nor 
 English, nor to any of those nations show a preference ; and 
 still less must it desire to impress upon any one people the 
 stamp of a foreign nationality. The thought will never 
 occur to it to despoil or injure one people for the advantage 
 of another ; nor to molest them, as regards their rights and 
 properties. The Church takes a nationality as it finds it, 
 and bestows upon it a higher sanctity. The Church is far 
 from desiring that all the nationalities received into its 
 bosom, should bend down beneath the yoke of a monotonous 
 uniformity, much less does it wish to annihilate the differences 
 of races, or to put an end to historical customs. As the 
 firmest, and at the same time the most pliable of all institu- 
 tions, it is able to become " all things to all men," and to 
 educate every people, without doing violence to their 
 nature. The Church enters into every nationality, purifies 
 it, and only overcomes it, when assimilating it to itself. The 
 Church overcomes it when it struggles against excrescences 
 upon national character, and when it removes from the 
 popular traits whatever had previously been intractable. It 
 is like to the house of the father, in which, to use the words 
 of Christ, "there are many mansions." The Pole, the 
 Sicilian, the Irishman, and the Maronite, have each their 
 national character a character not in common with each 
 other whilst still each of these is, in his own way, a good 
 Catholic. Should there, however, be nationalities or races 
 
 D
 
 34 THE PRINCIPLE OF CATHOLICITY. 
 
 so deeply degraded, and so thoroughly corrupt, that the 
 Church, with all its appliances, can do nothing with them, 
 then they must gradually die out, and give place to others. 
 
 There is a reciprocal gain. As each new and vigorous 
 population enters into the circle of the Church, the Church 
 becomes not merely numerically, locally, and externally 
 strong, but also inwardly and dynamically enriched. Every 
 people, in whatever way gifted, gradually contributes its 
 share in religious experiences, in peculiar ecclesiastical 
 customs and arrangement!', in its interpretation of Christian 
 doctrine, in its impress upon life and science. It adds all 
 these to the great Church capital to that which is the 
 product of former times and older nationalities. Every 
 Catholic people can learn from another, and may borrow 
 from foreign nations institutions worthy of being imitated. 
 This has often already happened. It has occurred, too, even 
 in the most recent times, and mostly with an evident bless- 
 ing; and it will for the future (with the advantage of rapidly 
 increasing communication, and the greater means for recip- 
 rocal knowledge) take place to a much greater extent. In 
 this sense, populations long since degenerated have continued 
 to exercise a beneficial influence. Even still the Church 
 feels the operations of the old African and Egyptian Churches 
 of the first century. 
 
 The course which the history of Christianity has taken from 
 the beginning, even to the present day, may be thus measured : 
 With the first issuing forth of the Christian Church, from 
 the maternal bosom of the Jewish, there developed itself, as 
 a fundamental law of Church life, the principle of Catholicity, 
 that is, of a world-religion, of a world-Church, of one that 
 has space and air, laws and liberty, for all nations ; which 
 summons all, and receives into itself all who obey its call. 
 This principle is, however, in reality superhuman ; and it 
 can only be maintained among men by institutions to which 
 strength from above is given, and with which a permanent 
 blessing abides. It will always elicit the most violent resist- 
 ance on the part of natural humanity. The centrifugal 
 forces and tendencies of individual nations are aroused ; they
 
 SINGULAR POSITION OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 35 
 
 tear themselves loose ; they make for themselves a creed, and 
 manage themselves, ecclesiastically, according to their own 
 plan and fancy ; and then have to experience what is to be 
 their o\vn special history, which is found to be dependent on 
 the fact of original separation from the Church, modified by 
 the character of the nation, and of the doctrine it has 
 accepted. As to the Church, it proceeds on its path ; the 
 majority remains faithful to it ; new members replace those 
 that have fallen off; and it approaches slowly, yet with a 
 firm step (for with its great losses there are still great com- 
 pensations and advantages), and so it at last arrives at its 
 goal absolute Catholicity. That goal is still far distant; 
 and the Church will only have reached it when it shall have 
 an abiding place in every part of the earth, and when the 
 words of Malachi (i. 11,) shall be completely fulfilled. 1 
 
 So singular is the position of the Catholic Church, both in 
 the past and the present, that no other religion, or religious 
 society can, even in the most remote manner, be compared 
 with it. There are, indeed, besides the Catholic, two other 
 religions, which, since they have passed beyond the bound- 
 aries of one nation or state, may make a claim to the title of 
 being " a world-religion : " these are the Mahommedan and 
 the Bhuddist. 2 If we look to Islaininism, we find it never 
 
 1 " For from the rising of the sun even to the going down, my name is 
 great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there 
 is offered to my name a clean oblation." 
 
 2 Bhuddism is usually mentioned as the most numerous of all-religions ; 
 and counting the entire of China as being Bhuddist, it is said to have 
 five hundred millions. This, however, is incorrect. The Bhuddist religion 
 in China is, in fact, only tolerated ; and to ask a Chinese whether he is 
 a Bhuddist or not, would be, as Wassiliew (in the " Abhandlungen 
 der Petersburger Akademie," xi. 356) observes, absurd. The three 
 religions of China are those of Confucius, Taosse, and Bhudda. They 
 subsist not only by the side of one another, but they mingle with each 
 other, and the Chinese occasionally take a part in all. It can therefore 
 only be said that there are in China many Bhuddist confraternities, and 
 that a great number of the people regularly, or from time to time, observe 
 some Bhuddist rites. Hence it becomes indispensable, if we wish to 
 compare the religions of mankind, with reference to the numbers of their 
 disciples, to pass over that of the Bhuddists. 
 
 D2
 
 36 CATHOLICISM THE ONLY WORLD-RELIGION. 
 
 has exhibited the organic unity and brotherhood of a Church, 
 and that it is split right asunder. The Sunnites are opposed 
 to the Shiites; the head of the Sunnites, the Turkish, is 
 hostile to the Shiite head, the Persian. Bhuddisrn is con- 
 fined to Eastern Asia. It is in fact only a religion of the 
 clergy. It knows only " brotherhoods," and has no congre- 
 gations there is no organic relation between the clergy 
 and the laity; no Church powers, and no ceremonies of 
 reception. 
 
 Thus, then, is there the Catholic religion, which counts 
 more disciples than all the other Christian communities 
 taken together nearly two hundred millions and it is the 
 only world-religion in the true sense of the word ; and, as 
 there was formerly only given but one world-religion, so is it 
 at present, and so it will remain for ever !
 
 37 
 
 THE PAPACY. 
 
 THAT a Church of nations is not able to maintain itself 
 without a primate, without one supreme head, must be 
 evident to every one ; and history has demonstrated it. 
 
 Every living totality requires a central point of union, a 
 chief head, which shall hold its parts together. In the 
 nature and structure of the Church it is established that this 
 central point shall be a determined personality ; the chosen 
 bearer of an office corresponding to the nature of the thing 
 and the requirements of the Church. 
 
 He who declares : "I do not recognize the Pope T, or 
 the Church to which I belong, will stand for itself, the Pope 
 is for us a stranger, his Church is not ours," he who 
 declares this thereupon says : " We separate ourselves from 
 the Universal Church, we will be no longer members of that 
 body." 
 
 Or, if it is theologically maintained: "That there may be, 
 and shall be no primacy in the Church ; that the Papacy is 
 an institution in contradiction with the will of Christ, that it 
 is a usurpation," then that is only saying, in other words, 
 that one Universal Church, comprehending a variety of 
 nations, should not exist ; that it ought to fall to pieces, and 
 that the normal state of religion ought to be that there 
 should be as many various churches as there are nations or 
 states. But that the state of this one Church should be that
 
 38 "THE INVISIBLE CHURCH." 
 
 of one composed of the scattered multitudinous fragments 
 of several national or political churches, is such a church as 
 cannot afford a shadow of claim either from higher authority, 
 or be based upon a Biblical foundation ; and, it may be 
 added, there has not even the attempt been made to establish 
 it theologically, as approved of by God. 
 
 It lies in the nature of things, that a State Church, in its 
 isolation, can no longer inspire piety, or evoke veneration ; 
 that it appears as something conventional, from which, as 
 soon as the political constraint that maintains it is withdrawn 
 or crippled, one may separate with ease, and without any 
 scruple of conscience. Thus the principle and law of 
 Church-dismemberment being once for all sanctioned, new 
 Church communites arise, the Sectarian system flourishes, 
 and theologians, reflecting upon the article of faith which 
 speaks of "one Universal Church," in despair, betake them- 
 selves to an abstraction, an idea, which they call " the 
 invisible Church." And so there must be euphonious sound- 
 ing inanities of a hidden, holy community, a silent band of 
 spirits there must be fine phrases, that are culled but to cover 
 over the abyss caused by the loss of the Church ! J 
 
 1 Julius Miiller makes use of such phrases in his remarkable essay, 
 " The Universal Church," in u The German Journal of Christian Science," 
 1850, p. 14. It is naturally easy for him to show what is untenable and 
 erroneous in the recent efforts of Lutheran theologians to make out a 
 visible Church confined to the professors of the pure Lutheran doctrine ; 
 and he is able also to demonstrate that the Reformation had forced them 
 out of a " visible," and compelled them to the conception of an " invisible 
 Church." But when he wishes to establish this idea he can give to his 
 readers nothing more than solemn sounding and hollow phraseology. He 
 tells us of u a silent band of spirits, independent of space and time ; 
 conscious of itself, but free from all guildship with external institu- 
 tions ; as distant and yet near, as scattered and yet gathered together, 
 as unknown and yet known, permeating the variety of Church confessions 
 and constitutions, and in all places, wherever it is, carrying with it the 
 consciousness that this Band is the highest that has been formed on 
 earth," and so forth ! So then " this silent spirit band " has really been 
 formed upon this earth, and is " conscious of itself," and so forth. When 
 or where was it then formed ? By what signs can one know the members 
 of " the band," or can they recognize each other ? Soberly and pro-
 
 POETICAL IDEA OF THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. 39 
 
 The more distracted and forlorn is the actual condition of 
 a Church, so much the more poetical and enthusiastic becomes 
 the talk of unity and love in mysterious undiscoverable 
 regions, where the invisible Church is said to be at home ! 
 
 saically expressed, the matter will stand thus : "It may be assumed that 
 in every one of the various Christian communities some well-meaning 
 pious souls are to be found, earnestly seeking for salvation, and for them 
 we must hope that, with God's grace, they will find it." But no man of 
 common sense can, for that world-institution, the one Universal Church, 
 with its settled doctrines, and its means of Salvation, find a compensation 
 in the fancy that has been feigned about " a band of spirits," and which 
 may be compared to the stone that Rhea presented to her husband 
 in place of a child a false notion, enveloped in the swaddling clothes of 
 rhetoric ! By Jean Paul (Richter) the advice was once given to a 
 Swedish pastor in winter, to walk up and down in his room and eat 
 barley sugar, and thus have on his tongue, and before all his senses, a 
 notion of lovely Italy and its gardens. H. Miiller thus advises his 
 followers to take his " still spirit band" into their mouths, and then to 
 fancy they have with them " the Church." That the visible Church has 
 also its invisible portion and precisely that which is best and holiest in 
 it is invisible that is a fact which may be taken as understood. But it 
 is indeed something very different to rend asunder the soul and body of 
 the one Church, and oppose them to each other as two Churches, in 
 order to be able to withdraw into this " silent band of spirits ; " that so it 
 happens when one has quarrelled with the Universal Church, and made 
 the unpleasant discovery that the branch to which he adheres is rent 
 away, that it no longer belongs to the tree, and is suffering for want of 
 the living sap. The sharp-sighted Richard Rothe ("Anfange der 
 Christl. Kirche," p. 100) has openly said, "An invisible Church is a 
 contradictio in adjecto. In no way can it be made a substantiality. It 
 suffers from one of two evils either the expression is quite unsuitable 
 to it, or it has in itself no real existence. The idea was first, formed 
 when it was sought to give a factitious notion of a Church in its full 
 development, and that idea was acted upon when the idea of leaving the 
 Catholic Church was carried into effect.'' That the whole theory of an 
 invisible Church is self-destructive for the community which desires 
 seriously to adopt it, is a fact that becomes more and more generally 
 acknowledged. It is said in the " Gottin. Gel. Anzeigen," 1848, p. 224, 
 " With this theory of an invisible Church something truly sectarian has 
 found its way into Protestantism ; something that has shown itself as 
 self-destructive ; and it is only to the circumstance that it has never come 
 to a general recognition, we are indebted for finding limits set to its self- 
 destructiveness."
 
 40 THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 "The silent spirit band" has, in sooth, neither hand nor foot ; 
 it speaks not, hears not ; it gives forth neither doctrine, nor 
 discipline, nor the administration of Ecclesiastical means of 
 grace. All these being matters that may, indeed, be dis- 
 pensed with, since not one of " the spirits " knows anything 
 of the other, nor can act upon another, either for good or for 
 evil. 
 
 It is well known that, in order to escape from subjection 
 to the Papal authority, the following phrase was adopted at 
 the time of the Reformation, and has again been recently 
 brought into vogue : " We who have separated ourselves 
 recognize only Christ as the head of our Church." And 
 with this it has been intended openly to declare, or such, at 
 least, as an inevitable consequence is to be said : " There 
 may be, and there shall be no earthly office, which shall 
 confer upon its possessor the supreme guidance of the 
 Church," or, " No one is entitled to guide the common affairs 
 of many particular churches connected together, and forming 
 one Whole. For the guidance of individual communities or 
 local churches, and for the conduct of some ecclesiastical 
 departments, there may be offices, and earthly bearers for 
 them ; but as regards the guidance of the whole Church, 
 there shall be no office, and no bearer of such an office. 
 That is a place which must always remain empty." A 
 suitable symbol of this theory (in accordance with which 
 the head of the Church can only be in Heaven, and never 
 must come too near it on earth, lest His presence might be 
 an inconvenience) may be found in that stately empty arm- 
 chair which is still to be seen in the magnificent ancient 
 Gothic cathedral of Glasgow, and that, to the inexpressible 
 disappointment of the spectator, is placed upon the very 
 spot where formerly stood the high altar. Thus had the 
 Manicheans, in their halls of assembly, " the Bema" a 
 pulpit always empty and for them the representative of 
 their invisible Lord and Master, and before which their 
 believing members prostrated themselves on the earth. 
 
 When a community says : " Christ alone is the head of 
 our Church," it is at the same time, in other words, saying :
 
 PROGRESS OF PROTESTANT DISORGANIZATION. 41 
 
 " Separation and isolation constitute a principle of the Church 
 such is its normal condition." When, in common life, a 
 person says, " I leave that to God, He may provide for it," 
 the meaning of such words is at once appreciated. It is to 
 the effect, " I will trouble myself no more about the matter, it 
 does not concern me." When, for example, the Church of 
 Greece declared, " No one shall be the head of the Church, 
 but Christ alone," the declaration ultimately resulted in this, 
 " We provide only for ourselves, and do not trouble ourselves 
 about other Churches. Christ may see to them, and do with 
 them as He pleases." And so, under the mask of piously 
 sounding phrases, we find the most common-place national 
 selfishness. 
 
 Church communities have, in this respect, moved upon a 
 declining path. At first, it was said by the Byzantines, 
 " We recognize only Patriarchs, and each of these governing 
 a portion merely of the Church ; but no Pope, no head of 
 the Patriarchs." Then came the English Church, and it 
 said, " Neither Pope nor Patriarchs, but merely Bishops." 
 Upon their side, the Protestants of the Continent declared, 
 " No Bishops either, but merely pastors, and above them the 
 sovereign of the country." Subsequently came the new 
 Protestant sects of England, with the declaration, " We 
 have no need of pastors, but only preachers." Finally 
 appeared " the Friends " (the Quakers), and many more new 
 communities who had made the discovery " that preachers, 
 also, are only an evil, and that every man should be his 
 own prophet, teacher, and priest." One step still further 
 downward has to be made. It has not yet come to pass, but 
 already in the United States they are considering about it. 
 
 Let us now approach somewhat nearer to the institution 
 of the Papacy, which is comparable with no other; and let 
 us cast a glance at its history. Like to all living things, 
 like to the Church itself of which it is the crown and the 
 corner-stone, the Papacy has passed through an historical 
 development full of the most manifold and surprising 
 vicissitudes. But in this its history is the law which lies at 
 the foundation of the Church the law of continual develop-
 
 42 HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE PAPACY. 
 
 inent of a growth from within outwards. The Papacy had 
 to pass through aH. the changes and circumstances of the 
 Church, and to enter with it into every process of construc- 
 tion. Its birth begins with two mighty, significant, and far- 
 extending words of the Lord. He to whom these words 
 were addressed, realised them in his own person and actions, 
 and planted the institution of the infant Church in the 
 central point at Rome. There it silently grew, occulto relut 
 arbor aevo ; and in the oldest time it only showed itself forth 
 on peculiar occasions ; but the outlines of the power and the 
 ecclesiastical authority of the Roman Bishops were ever 
 constantly becoming more evident, and more prominent. 
 The Popes were, even in the time of the Roman Emperors, 
 the guardians of the whole Church, exhorting and warning 
 in all directions, disposing and judging, "binding and 
 loosing." Complaints were not seldom expressed of the use 
 which, in particular cases, Rome had made of its power. Re- 
 sistance was offered, because the Pope was supposed to have 
 been deceived ; an appeal was preferred to him, when it was 
 believed he had been better informed ; but there was no 
 refusal to obey his commands. In general, his interference in 
 Church affairs was less necessary ; and the reins of Church 
 discipline needed less to be drawn tightly, so long as the 
 general Church, with few exceptions, was found within the 
 limits of the Roman Empire, when it was so firmly kept 
 together by the strong bands of the civil order, that there 
 could neither be occasion nor prospect of success to any re- 
 action on the part of various nationalities, which, on the 
 whole, were broken and kept down by Roman domination. 
 
 Out of the chaos of the great Northern migrations, and 
 the ruins of the Roman Empire, there gradually arose a new 
 order of states, whose central point was the Papal See. 
 Therefrom inevitably resulted a position not only new, but 
 very different from the former. The new Christian Empire 
 of the West was created and upheld by the Pope. The 
 Pope became constantly more and more (by the state of 
 affairs, with the will of the princes and of the people, and 
 through the power of public opinion) the Chief Moderator
 
 DECLINE OF THE PAPAL POWER. 43 
 
 at the head of the European commonwealth and, as such, 
 he had to proclaim and defend the Christian law of nations, 
 to settle international disputes, to mediate between princes 
 and people, and to make peace between belligerent states. 
 The Curia became a great spiritual and temporal tribunal. 
 In short, the whole of Western Christendom, formed, in a 
 certain sense, a kingdom, at whose head stood the Pope and 
 the Emperor the former, however, with continually increas- 
 ing and far preponderating authority. The efforts of the 
 Hohenstaufen Emperors to subject Italy, and with Italy also 
 the Papal See, led to a prolonged conflict, from which both 
 powers, the imperial and the papal, come forth weakened 
 and wounded ; for ever since then the position of the Papacy, 
 in its political relations, has been more difficult and un- 
 favourable. The Papacy saw itself compelled to lean more 
 and more upon France, and, when the aspiring plans of 
 Boniface VIII. were frustrated, it naturally passed into 
 French hands, and upon French soil; and a resistance on 
 the part of other nations was then inevitable ; its high 
 position over peoples and princes could no longer be success- 
 fully maintained. The authority of the Papal See sank still 
 lower through the Franco -Italian schism. Then followed 
 the reformatory efforts of the Councils, in the fifteenth /> , 
 century, which were mainly directed against the oppres- J\> / - 
 sion of the Curia ; and, subsequently, the Popes became 
 entangled in the devious path of Italian politics. The 
 former social-political, universal power led, when it was 
 attempted to be realised, to troubles and disputes, and then 
 it went utterly to wreck in the storms of the age of the 
 Reformation. 
 
 From that time forth the whole of Europe assumed a new 
 form. Powerful and internally united political bodies, each 
 having a special interest, and pursuing a fixed policy of its 
 own, came into the foreground, and a new system of "a 
 balance of power" was formed amidst severe struggles. The 
 Papal See could no longer be the regulator of a European 
 Commonwealth, and the centre of a general polity. It could 
 not be so, amid the confusion of merely political interests,
 
 44 MISSION OP THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 
 
 and changes of Catholic and Protestant states sometimes 
 in alliance, and sometimes hostilely opposed to each other. 
 The popes withdrew themselves more and more to their 
 purely ecclesiastical domain. They could stand in no 
 other relation to the new principles (the Territorial system, 
 and such like), which had found their way, through Pro- 
 testantism, into the laws of European states and peoples. 
 Thus has the matter stood to the present time. On eccle- 
 siastical grounds the Papal See is, at present, as strong and 
 powerful as ever, and as free in its action as it ever had been. 
 Dangers and perplexities await it in temporal affairs in the 
 position of Italy, and in the possession of the States of the 
 Church. . 
 
 What is now, and in point of fact, the actual function and 
 vocation of the Papacy, and why is the whole existence of 
 the Church at this time, and in future, so inseparably bound 
 up with the existence of the papal authority, and with its 
 free exercise? 
 
 The Catholic Church is a most opulent, and, at the same 
 time, a most multifarious organism. Its mission is nothing 
 less than to be the teacher and moulder of all nations ; and 
 however much it may find itself hampered in this task; 
 however limited may be the sphere of action allowed to it, 
 by this or that government, its task always remains the same, 
 and the Church requires and possesses an abundance of power 
 to attain its purpose : it has a great number of various insti- 
 tutions, all directed to the same end ; and with these it is 
 continually creating new. All these powers, these institu- 
 tions, these spiritual communities, stand in need of a supreme 
 guidance, with a firm and strong hand, in order that they 
 may work harmoniously together; that they may not dege- 
 nerate, and may not lose sight of their destination ; that they 
 may not suicidally turn their capabilities, one against the other, 
 or against the unity and welfare of the Church. It is only 
 an ecclesiastical primacy can fulfil this mission it is the 
 Papacy alone that is in a position to keep every member in 
 its own sphere, and to pacify every disturbance that may 
 arise.
 
 MEASURE AND EXTENT OF THE PAPAL POWER. 45 
 
 Besides this, there is another task, just as difficult as it is 
 important, which it lies upon the Papal See to fulfil. 
 
 It is the duty, namely, of the Pope to represent and to 
 defend the rights of individual Churches against the domina- 
 tion of states and monarchs ; to watch that the Church be not 
 altered in its character, nor crippled in its power, by be- 
 coming interwoven with the State. For this purpose, with 
 the voice and action of the church immediately concerned, 
 the intervention of the Supreme Church authority becomes 
 indispensable ; since this stands above and outside of the 
 conflicts, which may possibly arise between any one church 
 and the state ; and it solely is capable, in its high and inac- 
 cessible position, and in possession of the richest experiences, 
 won in centuries of ecclesiastical government, to specify 
 accurately the claims of both parties, and to serve as a stay 
 and support to the weaker to the one which otherwise 
 must inevitably succumb before the manifold means of com- 
 pulsion and seduction which lie at the command of modern 
 states. 
 
 It is, moreover, a beautiful, sublime, but certainly difficult 
 mission of the Papal See a mission only to be fulfilled by 
 the strength of an enlightened wisdom and a comprehensive 
 knowledge of mankind and that is, to be just to the claims 
 of individual nations in the Church; to comprehend their 
 necessities, and restrain their desires within the limits re- 
 quired by the unity of the Church. 
 
 For all this there is wanted a power opulently endowed 
 with manifold views and prerogatives. If there were a 
 primacy of dignity and honour, without any real power, the 
 Church would be but badly served. This is not the place to 
 enumerate all the particular rights which the Pope exercises 
 in the ordinary course of his administration over the Church. 
 They may be found in every hand-book of ecclesiastical law. 
 But concerning the measure and extent, the limitation or 
 illimitability of the Papal power, a few words, amid the pre- 
 vailing confusion of ideas on the subject, cannot be consi- 
 dered as superfluous. 
 
 Outside of the Catholic Church it has become almost a
 
 46 THE RESTRICTION OF PAPAL AUTHORITY. 
 
 common form of speech to brand the Papal power as being 
 boundless, as being absolutist, as one which recognizes no 
 law capable of controlling it. There is a great deal of talk 
 of " Romish omnipotence," or of one at least with a never 
 unceasing pretension to universal dominion. Persons main- 
 tain that " Rome never foregoes a claim which she has once 
 put forward ; that she keeps such constantly in view, and 
 upon every favourable opportunity strives to enforce it." All 
 these representations and accusations are untrue and unjust.' 
 The Papal power is in one respect the most restricted that 
 can be imagined, for its determinate purpose is manifest to 
 all persons; and as the Popes themselves have innumerable 
 times openly declared that purpose, " to maintain the laws and 
 ordinances of the Church, and to prevent any infringement 
 of them." The Church has long since had its established 
 ordinances, and its legislation determined on, even to the 
 most minute points. The Papal See is thus, then, before all 
 others, called upon to give an example of the most rigid ad- 
 herence to Church tenets ; and it is only upon this condition 
 that it can rely upon obedience to itself on the part of indi- 
 vidual churches, or calculate upon the respect of the faithful. 
 Hence every one thoroughly well grounded in a knowledge 
 of ecclesiastical legislation can, in most cases, with certainty 
 anticipate what the Papal decision will be. Besides this, a 
 considerable portion of Church ordinances rests, according to 
 the views of Catholics, on the Divine Commandment, and 
 are consequently for every one, and of course for the Papal 
 power also, not to be tampered with. The Pope cannot dis- 
 pense with things which are commanded by Divine Law. 
 This is universally acknowledged. What then can restrain 
 the Pope? De Maistre says, " Everything canons, laws, 
 national customs, monarchs, tribunals, national assemblies, 
 prescription, remonstrances, negotiations, duty, fear, pru- 
 dence, and especially public opinion, the Queen of the 
 World." 
 
 In another respect, the Papal authority is certainly truly 
 sovereign and free, one, too, which, according to its nature 
 and purpose for extraordinary accidents and exigencies,
 
 EXTRAORDINARY APPLICATION OF CHURCH POWER. 47 
 
 must be endowed with an altogether extraordinary power to 
 control every mere human right, and to permit or ordain 
 exceptions to general rules. It may occur that serious em- 
 barrassments, new situations of things, may be placed before 
 the Church ; and to which existing ecclesiastical ordinances 
 do not extend, and in which a solution can be found only by 
 overstepping the regulations in force. If the necessity of 
 the case requires it, " the Pope," as Bossuet says, " can do 
 all," 1 of course with the exception of what is contrary to the 
 Divine Law. 
 
 The most conspicuous instance of an extraordinary 
 application of the highest Church power, because the weal of 
 the Church urgently required it, was the step taken by Pius 
 VII., on the conclusion of the French Concordat, in the 
 year 1801. With a stroke of the pen (by his Bull of the 
 29th November of the same year), he deprived of their 
 dignity thirty-seven French bishops who had refused to 
 resign. He, too, abolished all the episcopal churches for 
 ever, with their Chapters and privileges ; and he erected, at 
 the same time, ten Metropolitan sees and fifty Bishoprics. 
 A proceeding so unprecedented, such an abolition of well- 
 founded rights, was only to be justified by the most extreme 
 necessity by the imperative duty of creating a new system 
 of order out of the deeply-convulsed Church of France. 
 Pius himself declared to individuals in whom he reposed his 
 confidence, that, of all the circumstances in his eventful life, 
 " the act which he then found himself compelled to perform 
 was that which had cost him the greatest effort, and caused 
 him the deepest pain "; but the necessity of the measure he 
 had taken was so obvious, that everyone in the Church, 
 with the exception of those affected by it, had approved of 
 his conduct. 
 
 The delusion that the Papal See has arrogated to itself a 
 despotic and absolute power, and exercised it wherever it 
 was not restrained by fear, is so generally diffused, especially 
 in Germany and England it is so customary to proclaim 
 the boundlessness of that power, and the defencelessness in 
 1 " Defens. Declar.," 2, 20 ; " Oeuvres," vol. xxxiii. p. 354.
 
 48 PIUS VII. ON PAPAL AUTHORITY. 
 
 which individual Churches and persons find themselves 
 when opposed to it, that I cannot refrain from exposing the 
 error by a few decisive testimonies. Let us hear on this 
 matter one who was a pope himself Pius VII. : 
 
 " The Pope," he says, in an official document drawn up in 
 his name, and having reference to Germany 1 "The Pope is 
 bound by the nature and the institutions of the Catholic 
 Church, whose head he is, within certain limits, which he dare 
 not overstep, without violating his conscience, and abusing 
 that supreme power which Jesus Christ has confided to him to 
 employ for the building up, and not the destruction, of His 
 Church. Inviolable limits for the head of the Church are 
 the dogmas of the Catholic faith, which the Roman bishops 
 may, neither directly nor indirectly, violate ; and although 
 in the Catholic Church faith has always been regarded as 
 unalterable, but discipline as alterable, yet the Roman 
 Bishops have, with respect even to discipline, in their actual 
 conduct, always held certain limits sacred, although by this 
 means they acknowledge the obligation never to undertake 
 any novelty in certain things, and also not to subject other 
 parts of discipline to alterations, unless upon the most im- 
 portant and irrepugnable grounds. With respect to such prin- 
 ciples, the Roman Bishops have never thought that they could 
 admit any change in those parts of discipline which are 
 directly ordained of Jesus Christ Himself; or of those 
 which, by their nature, enter into a connection with dogmas; 
 or of those which may have been attacked by erroneous 
 believers to sustain these innovations ; or also in those parts 
 on which the Roman Bishops, on account of the conse- 
 quences that might result to the disparagement of religion 
 and of Catholic principles, do not think themselves entitled 
 to admit a change, whatever the advantages might be 
 offered, or whatever the amount of evils might be threat- 
 ened. 
 
 "So far as concerns other parts of Church discipline, 
 
 1 " Esposizione dei sentiment! de Sua Santita," in the treatise, " Die 
 Neuesten Grundlagen der Deutsch-Katholischen Kirchenvervassung." 
 Stuttgard, 1821, p. 334.
 
 VIEWS OF AN AMERICAN ARCHBISHOP. 49 
 
 which are not comprehended in the classes above-men- 
 tioned, the Roman Bishops have felt no hesitation in 
 making many changes; but they have always been grounded 
 on the principles on which every well-ordered society rests; 
 and they have only given their consent to such changes 
 when the need or the welfare of the Church required them." 
 
 I will here quote the words of an individual, who, to a 
 certain extent, speaks in the name of the whole Church of a 
 country, which is, in point of fact, the youngest member of 
 the Universal Church. He is the first prelate of the 
 American Church the present Archbishop of Baltimore, 
 Father Patrick Kenrick. "The power of the Pope," he 
 says, " is chiefly employed in maintaining the general laws 
 already established, regulating the mutual relations of the 
 clergy, and mitigating the strictness of disciplinary observ- 
 ance, whensoever local or individual causes demand it. The 
 faithful are sufficiently protected against the abuse of power, 
 by the freedom of their own conscience, which is not bound 
 to yield obedience to authority when flagrantly abused. The 
 Pope only addresses conscience : his laws and censures are only 
 powerful inasmuch as they are acknowledged to be passed 
 under a divine sanction. No armies or civil officers are 
 employed to give them effect ; and in case of flagrant abuse 
 of authority, he loses the only influence by which they can 
 become effectual." 1 
 
 The work of the Archbishop is, even for Europe, a 
 remarkable phenomenon. It shows how the two millions of 
 Catholics who live in the free states of America regard their 
 relations both to the Pope and the Republic. " The 
 obedience," says Kenrick, ft which we owe to the Pope has 
 regard only to matters in which the salvation of souls is con- 
 cerned it has nothing to do with the loyalty and allegiance 
 which belong to the civil government. The Church is 
 indifferent as to the various forms of political administration. 
 The acknowledgment of the primacy of the Bishop of Rome 
 
 1 "The Primacy of the Apostolic See Vindicated." Philadelphia, 
 1845, p. 358. 
 
 E
 
 50 THE TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPE. 
 
 cannot have the most remote connexion with any danger to 
 our republican institutions, but will much more serve to 
 render them stronger and more lasting, since they will 
 moderate the enjoyment of civil liberty by moral restraints, 
 and so prevent the evils of licentiousness and anarchy. 1 
 
 There is now lying before me the most recent production 
 of a very respectable individual, who stands at the head of 
 an important party in Holland this is Groen van Prinsterer. 
 He declares against Stahl, who had maintained, " that the 
 temporal sovereignty of the Pope, and the persecution of 
 heretics by the temporal power, were not dogmas, or articles 
 of faith, with respect to which Rome could assert its claim 
 to infallibility." Groen will not admit this ; he says, " Rome 
 roust, in principle, acknowledge the independence and 
 sanctity of the temporal powers ; it must no longer claim the 
 right of disposing of heretical kingdoms, or of altering the 
 law of succession, et cetera : it must, too, acknowledge that 
 the Bull of Boniface VIII., with the assertion as to the two 
 swords at the command of the Church the spiritual and 
 temporal no longer affords an authentic resume of the long 
 sought for Roman omnipotence; and, finally, it must recall 
 its protest against the Peace of Westphalia. And when all 
 this has been done," he adds, " Rome will have spoken its 
 own condemnation." 2 
 
 My first reason for selecting Herr Groen van Prinsterer, 
 out of a whole troop of persons entertaining similar opinions, 
 is, that his is one of the most recent declarations on the same 
 subject which I have been able to find; and next, because, 
 in point of fact, there are hundreds of our literati who do not 
 know that of which he also is either actually ignorant, or 
 which he intentionally ignores. 
 
 In the first place, the matter is put thus : " Rome must 
 acknowledge the independence of the Temporal Power, and 
 renounce the right of deposing non-Catholic monarchs." 
 But this has been done long since. Cardinal Antonelli, 
 
 1 " Kenrick's Primacy," p. 475. 
 
 * " Le Parti Anti-revolutionnaire et Confessionel." Amsterdam, 1860.
 
 INDEPENDENCE OF THE TEMPORAL POWER. 51 
 
 Prefect of the Propaganda (under whom the Irish Bishops 
 are placed), addressed, on the 23d June, 1791, a Rescript to 
 the Archbishops and Bishops of Ireland, wherein it was said: 
 " We must very carefully distinguish between the real rights 
 of the Apostolic See, and what have been, with an inimical 
 intention, in modern times imputed to it. The Roman See. 
 has never taught that faith was not to be kept with heretics; 
 or, " that an oath of allegiance made to kings, in a state of 
 separation from the Catholic Community, could be broken ;" 
 or, " that it was allowable for a Pope to interfere with their 
 temporal rights and possessions" This Rescript has been 
 often enough printed, and I do not know what could be said 
 more clearly or distinctly. 1 
 
 Some years ago, the Bishops of the United States, in 
 North America, when assembled in their fifth council, pre- 
 pared an address to the Pope, in which, when complaining of 
 their numerous "calumniators" in the country, they expressed 
 themselves in the following terms: "They (the calumniators) 
 strive to cast suspicion and bring the odium of Government 
 on us, their Catholic fellow-citizens, although our fathers 
 poured out their blood like water in defence of liberty, 
 against a sectarian oppressor ; and falsely assert that we are 
 enslaved to a foreign prince namely, under the political and 
 civil authority of the Roman Pontiff; and that we are faithless 
 to the Government." 2 We see here the same things alleged 
 which have been a thousand times before stated in Germany, 
 and that still continue to be repeated. The Archbishop of 
 Baltimore, who communicates this fact, adds : " This dis- 
 claimer of all civil power in the Pontiff, which many of us 
 have made on our oaths, was graciously received by Gregory 
 XVI. Can any further evidence be required that the 
 authority which we recognise in him is spiritual, and nowise 
 inconsistent with the most unqualified allegiance to the civil 
 Government ? " 
 
 Four and seventy French Bishops, with two Cardinals at 
 
 1 See " Ami de la Religion," vol. xviii. ; also in the works of Arch- 
 bishop Affre of Paris, " Essai sur la Suprematie temp, du Pape," p. 508. 
 
 2 KENRICK, p. 434, where he appends the Latin text of the Council. 
 
 E2
 
 52 DECLARATIONS OF THE FRENCH AND IRISH BISHOPS. 
 
 their head, presented, on the 10th April, 1826, a memorial to 
 the King, in which they declared that they held fast to the 
 old doctrine of the French Church upon the rights of their, 
 monarchs ; and of their full and absolute independence in 
 temporal matters of any authority, direct or indirect, on the 
 part of every spiritual power. Archbishop Affre has reprinted 
 this document. 1 
 
 A short time before this, on the 25th January, 1826, the 
 Archbishops and Bishops of Ireland put forth a similar 
 declaration, in which they renounced, in the strongest terms, 
 any jurisdiction or power in the Pope to interfere in tem- 
 poral matters within the British Kingdom. 2 As a matter of 
 course, both these Declarations were made with the consent 
 of the Papal See. 
 
 Secondly, it is briefly to be observed, with respect to the 
 Bull of Boniface VIII., and the theory therein put forward, 
 as to the Spiritual and Temporal Power, that the retractation 
 or abrogation of the same had been made a few years after 
 its assertion ; and that, too, by Pope Clement V. 3 Arch- 
 bishop Affre of Paris, who, in the discharge of his pastoral 
 functions, afterwards died an heroic death at "the barricades," 
 has, in reply to La Mennais, clearly shewn that the Bull of 
 Clement could recall nothing else than the assertion made in 
 the Bull of Boniface viz., that the exercise of the Temporal 
 was subject to the correction of the Spiritual. 4 
 
 Thirdly, and finally, " Rome is to recall its Protest against 
 the Peace of Westphalia." This Protest is, in fact, a favourite 
 theme, which is regularly discussed whenever an attack is to 
 be made upon the Pope, or the Catholic Church in Germany. 
 In the year 1846, this Protest was brought forward as a 
 powerful argument against me in the Bavarian Chambers. 
 Not long since, in the Prussian Chambers, Herr von Ger- 
 lach resisted a proposal of the Catholic Deputies (the justice 
 of which, as well as I recollect, he was obliged himself to 
 
 1 AFFRE, " Essai," p. 505. 
 
 * Unam Sanctam, so it stands in the Lib. vi. Decretal. 
 
 * The Bull " Meruit," in the Collection of Decretal. 
 4 AFFRE, u Essai,'' p. 340.
 
 PROTEST AGAINST THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA. 53 
 
 admit), by a reference to this very Protest. It will, there- 
 fore, be allowable for me to go a little further back, and to 
 enter somewhat more minutely into the true state of the case. 
 I must here make what at first sight may be regarded as a 
 paradoxical confession, when I say that I rejoice that there 
 should have been, at that time, one man found in Europe, 
 who, in the name of God and of Christian conscience, entered 
 a Protest against the Peace of Westphalia ; and that this 
 man should have been precisely the one who was the bearer 
 of the highest ecclesiastical office upon earth. The Pope, 
 indeed, did not pi'otest for the reason that he would not 
 admit that there could be any peace between Catholics and 
 Protestants the whole course of subsequent history has 
 proved the contrary but he protested because it was for 
 him a sacred duty to resist the deeply immoral and unchris- 
 tian principles that lay at the foundation of the religious 
 stipulations of that entire Treaty of Peace. I allude to the 
 territorial system to the principle " that to whomsoever 
 the country belongs, to him also belongs its religion." 1 Un- 
 happily ! they were German Theologians and German Jurists 
 who first brought forward this doctrine, hitherto unheard of 
 in the Christian world namely, that it was a right of 
 princes to alter the religion of their subjects, as it seemed 
 good to them ; and to change Catholics into Protestants, and 
 to make Calvinists out of Lutherans ! It is well known 
 how willingly princes made use of this new doctrine. In the 
 states of the Middle Ages there certainly was religious com- 
 pulsion ; but how completely different were the ideas and 
 practice of former times when compared with the new ! In 
 those times people and princes were members of the Catho- 
 lic Church, by the side of which none other existed. All 
 were agreed that the State, by its close connection with the 
 Church, could tolerate no falling off from it ; could allow no 
 new religion to be introduced ; and that every attempt of the 
 kind was an attempt against existing social order. Every 
 heretical doctrine which broke out in the Middle Ages, either 
 had distinctly avowed, or bore, as its inevitable consequence, 
 1 " Cujus est regio, illius est religio."
 
 54 CHURCH AND STATE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 a revolutionary character. It must, in proportion as it 
 attained influence and authority, bring with it a dissolution 
 of the existing condition of the State, and effect a political 
 and social revolution. The sects of the Gnostics, the Ca- 
 thari, and the Albigenses, which especially elicited the harsh 
 and relentless legislation of the Middle Ages against heresy, 
 and that had to be resisted in sanguinary wars, were the 
 Socialists and Communists of that time. They attacked 
 marriage, family, and property. Had they been triumphant, 
 the consequences would have been general ruin a collapse 
 into barbarism and heathenish licentiousness. As to the 
 Waldenses, it is well known to every one acquainted with 
 history that their principles concerning oaths, and the right 
 of the State to inflict punishments, were such as could find 
 no place in the European world at that time. 
 
 In the Middle Ages the laws and rights in religious matters 
 were the same for all. It was everywhere taught that not 
 only every bishop, but the Pope himself, must, should he 
 have fallen into erroneous doctrines, be deposed ; and, in case 
 of his perseverance in error, he must, like every other, be 
 condemned. The King knew that a separation from the 
 Church would inevitably cost him his crown, and that he 
 would cease to be sovereign over a Catholic people. Never, 
 during the thousand years before Luther, was an attempt 
 even made by a monarch to introduce into his states a new 
 religion, or a new doctrine, or in any form to separate himself 
 from the Church. If there ever was one, like the Emperor 
 Frederick II., who was, in fact, an unbeliever, yet he had 
 it publicly denied, and got a testimony of his orthodoxy 
 made out for him by bishops and theologians. 
 
 All this was changed with the Reformation. The Reformers 
 committed to temporal princes from the beginning " the 
 authority" that is to say, power over the religion of their 
 country and their subjects. It was the duty and the right 
 of " the authority " to plant the new Church and the new 
 Gospel, to root out Popery, and to allow no strange doctrine 
 to spring up. This was at every opportunity impressed 
 upon temporal sovereigns. There resulted, indeed, from this
 
 CHANGE EFFECTED AT THE REFORMATION. 55 
 
 an irreconcileable contradiction ; for Luther at the same time 
 represented it as a sacred duty for every individual to please 
 himself in religious matters to place himself above every 
 authority, and, before all things, above the Church, and even 
 to disregard princes ! " Notwithstanding every human 
 command," he says, " each one must determine his own faith 
 for himself. Even a miller's wench, or a child nine years of 
 age, who decides according to the Gospel" (that is to say, 
 according to the new dogma of Justification), " may under- 
 stand the Scriptures better than Pope, and Councils, and all 
 scholars collected together ! " In another place he says : 
 "You must decide for yourself; your own life is at stake" 
 and so forth. 1 Luther never attempted to reconcile this 
 contradiction. In practice he adhered to it ; and it became 
 the religious Protestant doctrine, that princes had the highest 
 juridical office over religious doctrines and the Church ; and 
 that it was their right and their vocation to suppress every 
 opinion in matters of faith that should differ from their own. 
 In this opinion Lutherans and Reformers were consentaneous. 
 In the Augsburg Confession Melancthon, who was at that 
 time inclined to uphold Episcopal authority, or to help in 
 re-establishing it, reckons it as the office of the Bishop to 
 judge of doctrine ; but he had already, in his " Apology," 2 
 declared that it is to kings and princes that the protection and 
 maintenance of the pure doctrine is, as an office, committed 
 by God. The Lutheran princes assumed, then, to them- 
 selves expressly this right in the Preface to the Con- 
 cordian-Book ; and have, since then, exercised it to the widest 
 extent. The Calvinistic writings upon the creed give to 
 " the authority " the right of opposing false doctrine, and 
 defending the true. 3 Luther himself reckons it as a matter 
 
 1 LUTHER'S AVerke, Walch's Ausgabe, xii., Sermon, v. 3, 1522 ; xi. 
 1887. 
 
 2 At the end of the 9th Article. 
 
 8 The Swiss Confession in the 30th, the English in the 37th, the Scotch 
 in the 24th, and the Belgic in the 36th Articles. In the Brandenburg 
 Electorate this is placed at the head of the Confession of Faith. In the 
 Confession of Basle it is said : u Hoc officium gentili magistratui com- 
 mendatum esse debet, ut vero Dei vicario." For this reference is made 
 to the example of the Jewish kings, who had abolished idolatry.
 
 56 RISE OF A NEW DESPOTISM. 
 
 to his especial credit, that he had, in this respect, benefited 
 the temporal Powers, who, in the Catholic Church, had 
 been robbed of their good right ; and thus, by him, those in 
 supreme authority were u exalted, enlightened, and adorned." 1 
 The Danish Court-preacher, Masius, mentions it as a parti- 
 cular advantage of the Lutheran religion, that, according to 
 it, princes are "the highest vicegerents of God upon earth ;" 
 that they may at their pleasure appoint and depose the 
 servants of the Church, and freely govern the whole terri- 
 tory of ecclesiastical rites and ceremonies. 2 This doctrine 
 was long the prevailing one, and it still has its defenders ; for 
 example, Petersen, who, after having assured us that the 
 German people are the specific people of the New Testament, 
 then proceeds to declare its " lords of the land " as the only 
 possessors of power over the whole Christian world, and as 
 those " in whom the Evangelical Church reverences the dele- 
 gates of Christ." 3 
 
 And so arose a despotism, the equal of which has never 
 before been seen. 4 The new system, as it was expounded by 
 
 1 Walch's Ausg., xiv. 520 ; xix. 2287 : " If any gratitude," he says, 
 "from this scandalous and accursed world were to be gained, and 1, 
 Doctor Martin Luther, had taught and done nothing else than this, that 
 I have enlightened and adorned the temporal rule or ' authority' and 
 for this thing alone should men be favourable and thankful to me, since 
 even my worst enemies well knew that a like understanding as to the 
 temporal authority was completely concealed under the Papacy," &c., 
 &c., &c. The favour of princes was, in truth, not wanting to him. He 
 gives another reason why princes and authorities ought to be especially 
 grateful to him. Formerly, that is in Catholic times, they had felt great 
 anxiety about executions. Many princes had, from religious scruples, 
 and under the influence of their confessors, avoided signing numerous 
 sentences of death ; but now, by Luther's doctrine, they were perfectly 
 tranquillized. See " Colloquia et Meditationes Lutheri." Ed. Reben- 
 stock, i. 147. 
 
 a " Interesse principum circa religionem evangelicam." Hafn, 
 1687, p. 31. 
 
 1 " Die Idee der Christlichen Kirche," vol. iii., pp. 224-227. 
 
 4 To mention only one example : At the Westphalian Peace Con- 
 gress, Wolfgang von Gemmingen, a deputy of the Imperial Equestrian 
 Order, stated that the city of Oppenheim, pawned to the Palatinate, 
 had, since the Reformation, been forced to change its religion ten times ! 
 PFANXEKI, " Hist, pacis Westph.," i., p. 42.
 
 ITS INFLUENCE ON THE GERMAN PEOPLE. 57 
 
 theologians and jurists, was worse than the Byzantine practice; 
 for there no attempt had ever been made to change the 
 religion of the people. The Protestant princes were not 
 merely Popes in their own country, but they were much 
 more ; and were able to do what no Pope had ever dreamed 
 of attempting. Every Pope knew that the power he pos- 
 sessed was a conservative one that he held it to maintain the 
 doctrine that had been transmitted to him, and that an 
 attempt on his part to alter the teaching of the Church 
 would infallibly be frustrated by a universal resistance. 
 To the Protestant princes, however, it had been said and 
 they themselves believed and declared it that their power 
 in religious matters was entirely unlimited ; and that, in the 
 use of it, they need attend to no other standard than their own 
 consciences. They also, as a matter of course, declared that 
 they were subject to " the Gospel," or the Holy Scriptures ; 
 but then it was to the Scriptures according to their own 
 interpretation of them, or that of the court-preachers of their 
 selection. The Reformers had naturally so understood 
 the matter, that the princes should proceed according to 
 the advice of theologians, and that they would especially 
 allow themselves to be guided in all questions of doctrine 
 by the theological faculties of the universities of their 
 country. But these changed, or were changed ; and as often 
 as it pleased the sovereign to alter the religion of his terri- 
 tory the old professors were dismissed, and new professors 
 were summoned. 
 
 With this new system of ecclesiastical and political power 
 united in the person of the prince, was introduced a change 
 of incalculable gravity in the condition of the entire German 
 people. The distinction and the contrast between the two 
 Powers, which, on the whole, had acted beneficently for the 
 people, and which, through collisions and counterpoises, had 
 aroused and maintained intellectual activity and political 
 freedom, were now completely put an end to. The Church 
 became altogether incorporated in the State, and was re- 
 garded as a wheel in the great state machine. He who can 
 exercise an absolute power over that which is noblest and,
 
 58 DEVELOPMENT Or THE BUREAUCRATIC SYSTEM. 
 
 for the most part, invisible he who can so rule over religion 
 and conscience is also one who, if he chooses, can have at his 
 disposal everything which the State can bestow or the people 
 yield. With the establishment of the Consistories, as 
 sovereign authorities ruling ecclesiastical affairs, began the 
 development of Bureaucracy of monarchical and political 
 omnipotence of Administrative Centralisation. As soon as 
 ecclesiastical and religious affairs were placed in the hands 
 of Government officers, a mechanical, clerk-like-scribbling 
 system, and the benumbing spirit of a mere administrative 
 machine, whose functions were to command and issue ordi- 
 nances, took the place of a living organism of an authority 
 acting through moral motives. It went on then as it goes 
 on still ; the Bureaucratic system became a polypus, per- 
 petually putting out new branches, and swallowing up more 
 materials. 1 
 
 An inevitable consequence followed a still more onerous 
 system of despotism weighed down upon the greater part of 
 Germany. The Protestant people were oppressed by a 
 slavery such as had never before existed, through their 
 monarchical supreme Bishops. Pecuniary fines, imprison- 
 ments, and banishments, were inflicted for non-appearance in 
 church on Sunday, for not attending regularly at Communion, 
 and for a few persons meeting together for the purpose of 
 private edification. 
 
 Upon this system of princely dominion over religion and 
 conscience the Westphalian Peace had put its seal. This 
 
 1 So remarks the well-known jurist, LEYSER ( u Medit. ad Pandect.," 
 vol. vii., p. 292) : u In former times, and far even into the seventeenth 
 century, the governmental business of the German princes was so 
 limited that it could be disposed of by a few Councillors and a single 
 College. But afterwards, and when, by the Peace of Westphalia, the 
 territorial authority became so very widely extended, the business of the 
 Administration had multiplied tenfold, and a crowd of Colleges, Courts, 
 and official persons became necessary. It was then seen what influence 
 must have upon the Government the committing into its hands the whole 
 of the Church business and religious affairs." The same Leyser also 
 reminds us (vol. vi., p. 49), that " the Protestant Consistories conducted 
 themselves in a much more tyrannical manner than the Pope."
 
 THE TERRITORIAL SYSTEM. 59 
 
 Reformation law was only limited by the fixed normal year 
 1624. But, beyond the right of quiescent continuance 
 guaranteed for that year, every Catholic might be compelled 
 by his Protestant sovereign, and every Protestant by his 
 Catholic sovereign, either to change his religion or to quit 
 his country. The Protest of the Pope was, therefore, a 
 solemn declaration that the fact of his envoy taking part in 
 the Congress must not be regarded as an assent to its 
 articles, which had, as their inevitable consequence, the 
 compulsory secession of a number of Catholics from the 
 Church. 1 It is true that the Pope in his Bull places himself 
 in this exclusive stand-point, that every cession of Catholic 
 bishoprics and Church property to Protestant princes, and 
 every further extension of Protestantism, were things to 
 which he could not give his approval, and against which he 
 must endeavour to guard. This, under the circumstances of 
 the times, was a course which the Supreme Pastor of the 
 Church could not avoid taking. He stood there opposed to 
 a system which, at the same time with a denial of the 
 Church and its authority (and in consequence of that denial), 
 had exalted into a principle of religious doctrine the 
 arbitrary power of the Prince in ecclesiastical affairs, and 
 the boundless dominion of the Prince over the consciences of 
 mankind. With such a system a substantial peace was, in 
 reality, not possible ; it was nothing more than an armistice. 
 Every advance of such a system, into countries hitherto 
 Catholic, must be regarded as a calamity to be prevented at 
 any cost. The terrible territorial system must first be 
 moderated, and, in some measure, its destructive conse- 
 quences obviated by custom, by public opinion, and by 
 experience, before there could be expected a friendly, 
 neighbourly feeling between Catholics and Protestants. In 
 Rome, as in Germany, it was known right well that in 
 purely Lutheran countries, like Sweden and Denmark, the 
 punishment of death had been affixed to the exercise of the 
 Catholic religion, and had, only a few years previously, been 
 
 1 Instr. P. O., 5, 30 : " Cum statibus immediatis cum jure territorii et 
 superioritatis eti&mjus reformandi exercitium religionis competat."
 
 60 AUTHORITY OF PRINCES OVER RELIGIOUS OPINION. 
 
 carried into execution, by Gustavus Adolphus, on several 
 young persons. 1 It was known also that, in the symbolical 
 books of the German Protestants, it was said to princes and 
 kings : " You are the lords and rulers over religion and the 
 Church in your countries, and you have to regard in this 
 matter no other limits than the Bible, as interpreted by your- 
 selves, or by your chosen theologians." It was, finally, also 
 known that the authority of princes over religion was 
 declared by Protestant theologians and jurists to be a real 
 and essential constituent part of the sovereign power ; and, 
 therefore, that every prince must regard persons adhering to 
 a religion different from his own, as in a state of permanent 
 revolt against his lawful authority as half-subjects, who 
 perversely refused to acknowledge and yield obedience to 
 the nobler and more perfect part of his governmental 
 authority. 2 This position of affairs must be taken into 
 consideration when reference is made to a treaty by which 
 so many Catholics, and so many territories and possessions 
 formerly Catholic, were ceded to Protestant powers, and 
 with scanty or very feeble security for freedom of con- 
 science. At that time the Chief Pastor of the Church could, 
 in reality, do nothing else than enter his Protest against 
 partitions and concessions, the consequence of which must be 
 a considerable number of souls being lost to the Church. 
 Had the Pope taken up his former position that which 
 through the circumstances of the Middle Ages, and since the 
 great emigration of the Northern nations had been occupied 
 by him his rejection of this Treaty would have been equi- 
 
 1 BAAZ, " Inventor. Eccl. Suegoth." Lincop. 1G42, p. 739. 
 
 * The jus circa sacra, and the jurisdictio Ecclesiastica constituted, it 
 was said, the most costly and precious jewel of territorial superiority. 
 See SUAUROTH, " Sammlung d. Concl. Corp. Evang.," ii. 39. The 
 statesman and historian, Lord Clarendon, designates the Church 
 supremacy of the Kings of England " the better moiety of their 
 sovereignty." " Edinburgh Review," vol. xix., p. 435. In point of 
 fact, u this better moiety" of the sovereignty has, since the Revolution of 
 1688, become partly a dead letter, and has partly passed away from the 
 Crown to the Prime Minister for the time being, and a Parliamentary 
 majority.
 
 THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF INTOLERANCE. 61 
 
 valent to a demand that war should break out anew, and that 
 the whole work of the Peace negotiation should be gone over 
 again from the very beginning. It was now far otherwise. 
 The Papacy, since the Reformation, no longer stood at the 
 head of the European commonwealth was no longer the 
 general acknowledged mediator of peace : the protector and 
 interpreter of international law. The Papal rejection of 
 the articles of Peace had, therefore, only this effect it was 
 to be regarded as a disapproval and a censure, taken from 
 the ecclesiastical point of view. No prince has ever called 
 into question the validity of the Peace of Westphalia by an 
 appeal to the judgment of Rome, and theologians have 
 always taught that a Papal Dispensation from its obligation 
 would not be admissible. 1 
 
 It is certain that in Catholic countries compulsion was 
 exercised to eject Protestantism, which had found its way 
 into them, and to restore the unanimity of the Church ; and 
 Catholic princes willingly appealed to a right invented at 
 the Reformation by the Protestants, in order thus to over- 
 come it in their own territories, with a weapon offered to 
 them by their adversaries, and which was declared by them 
 to be legitimate. In order, however, that a just judgment 
 should be formed upon this point, the following matters 
 are to be taken into consideration : 
 
 First, On the Catholic side they had to do with a theory 
 and a practice whose founders and adherents had declared, 
 at the celebrated Protestation of Spire, in the year 1529, 
 that they would not tolerate the Catholic religion by the 
 side of the new one ; and they, in fact, had everywhere 
 begun to destroy all traces of the old religion, and they 
 likewise had devised a system which, by committing the 
 ecclesiastical power to temporal princes, had degraded every 
 religion, even that of Luther and Calvin, into a mere 
 question of power, or the will and pleasure of the sovereign. 
 Where the Catholic prince recognised above him and his 
 
 1 LAYMAN, " Theol. Moral," lib. ii., tr. 3, c. 12. " Si Catholici 
 cum acatholicis publicum foedus ineunt, non potest per auctoritatem 
 Pontificiam solvi aut relaxari."
 
 62 EPISCOPAL AUTHORITY OF SOVEREIGNS. 
 
 people the firm and always equable authority of the Church, 
 and desired to be ^>nly a member, a faithful and obedient 
 member, of that great organism, the world-Church there was 
 (on the other side) the Protestant prince ; and this prince, 
 according to the supposition of his being invested with a su- 
 preme religious judgeship in religious affairs, both for himself 
 and his subordinates, knew of no authority higher than his own. 
 So had they constructed in England an Episcopal church, 
 out of an unnatural combination of Catholic and Protestant 
 elements and this had so happened because the king had so 
 willed it. Then there were Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, 
 which became and remained Lutheran, because their kings 
 regarded that doctrine as the most convenient, and also as 
 the most favourable to the extension of their power. In 
 Holland there reigned a pure Calvinism, because it was pro- 
 fessed by the more numerous and powerful party, who, 
 as soon as they felt themselves strong enough, violated the 
 agreement they had made with the Catholics of the 
 country, 1 and annihilated their religious freedom. In the 
 German principalities no one could know whether the 
 country the next year would be Lutheran, or Calvinist, or 
 half-Calvinistic, according to the pattern that had been 
 introduced into Brandenburg. It depended upon the person 
 of the monarch and his varying views, or on the death of 
 one and the succession of another of a different opinion. 
 
 Secondly, The theory of the supreme episcopal authority 
 of the Sovereign, and his obligation to allow no other reli- 
 gion than his own, was distinctly a part of the Protestant 
 system, and had become an article of faith. When a prince, 
 hitherto Lutheran, suppressed Lutheranism in his territory, 
 and forced Calvinism upon it, the Lutheran theologians na- 
 
 1 Namely, the Union-Treaty of Utrecht, in the year 1579, and by 
 which the still preponderating Catholic provinces and cities joined the 
 League. Four years afterwards William of Orange issued a new edict, 
 which, without the slightest pretext, broke the promise that had been 
 given to the Catholics, and permitted only the exercise of the Calvinist 
 religion. Compare on this point STOUPE, " La Religion des Hollandais," 
 1672, p. 12 ; and " Oeuvres," D'Axx. ARNAULD, xiv. 509.
 
 THE CHURCH IN RELATION TO HERETICS. 63 
 
 turally said, "Your Calvinist conscience is in error;" but at 
 the same time they were obliged to admit that, since the 
 prince considered the Calvinist doctrine as the Biblical one, 
 he was certainly entitled nay, bound to "reform" his coun- 
 try in that direction. The Catholic Church found itself in 
 quite a different position. Here, the two Powers were com- 
 pletely separated ; the prince and the authorities had not 
 to be the rulers and bishops of the Church, but merely its 
 protectors. The Church had already passed through various 
 stages with respect to its position as regarded persons dif- 
 fering from it in faith. Under the Christian Emperors it had 
 been, taking it on the whole, the ruling or most favoured 
 corporation in the Roman Empire ; but the conduct of the 
 Emperors towards those outside of the pale of the Church, 
 towards heathens, Jews, heretics, and schismatics, was very 
 unequal. Amongst the great variety of sects it was observed 
 that, whilst some had an extremely immoral character, others 
 were distinguished by the severity of their manners, so that 
 general rules could not be applicable to both. On the whole, 
 amongst the bishops of that time the prevailing view was, 
 that a departure from the faith of the Church, if no other 
 offence were conjoined with it, could not be severely punished 
 by the State. " The mildness of the Church," declares Pope 
 Leo the Great, " contents itself with the sacerdotal judg- 
 ment, and desires no blood-stained vengeance." Therefore 
 was the action of two Spanish bishops, who appeared before 
 the Imperial tribunal as accusers of the Priscillianists, visited 
 with the severest reprehension by the most illustrious men of 
 the Church by an Ambrose and a Martin. For a long pe- 
 riod of time during the Middle Ages there was no separation 
 from the Church on the ground of varying doctrines. In 
 the eleventh century first began that gloomy, morally de- 
 structive sect, with Gnostic doctrines, and which had come 
 hither from the East, and in secret extended itself. Against 
 the adherents of that sect the ruling authorities acted with 
 great severity, and not one obdurate member of it was 
 permitted to live. Gradually it became the rule that a fall- 
 ing off from the faith, and the diffusion of un-ecclesiastical
 
 64 THE NEW DOCTRINE AND THE OLD CHURCH. 
 
 doctrines, should be regarded as a crime worthy of death. 
 The idea that by the side of the Church, by which the whole 
 political and social life of the time was penetrated and sup- 
 ported, there should also be other religious communities with 
 a doctrine of their own, and that such might exist in the 
 State, was a conception of a condition of circumstances such as 
 no one at that time regarded as a possibility, and to which no 
 one had ever given expression. Where sects did exist they 
 retreated into the deepest obscurity, and the decrees of Popes 
 and Councils, with respect to heresies, were naturally based 
 upon the views generally prevailing at the time. But the 
 regulations and commands therein contained do not fall within 
 the domain of faith of received and unchangeable doctrine; 
 they appertain to discipline, which is changeable and capable 
 of modification by peculiar and transitory circumstances. 
 
 The insurrection of Protestantism against the Church 
 assumed, in a very short space of time, the character of a 
 conflict of life and death. Already in the writings of Luther, 
 in the years 1520-1521, there was opened between the new 
 doctrine and the old Church an abyss that could never more 
 be bridged over. The rejection of all ecclesiastical tradition 
 and of every Church authority the setting up of a dogma 
 concerning the relations of God to man, of which the 
 originator confessed that it had remained unknown to 
 the whole Church from the time of the Apostles to him- 
 self. Such were the principles now undisguisedly brought 
 forward and maintained. The demand was no longer merely 
 this : " that the Church should reform itself thoroughly, in 
 its head and in its limbs," but that " it should be dissolved, 
 and that the judgment of self-destruction should be executed 
 by itself." Its Primacy and Episcopacy were to be abolished; 
 the organism which had kept nations together was to be rent 
 asunder, and in the place of its worship, prayer, and Sacrifice, 
 there were to be preachers appointed, and the Church must 
 break with the entire past, in doctrine, in sacraments, and 
 institutions. Upon a common understanding, upon a mere 
 half-candid reunion, could only the person think who neither
 
 INTOLERANCE OF THE REFORMERS. 65 
 
 comprehended the nature of the Protestant doctrine nor the 
 bearing of the Reformation movement. 
 
 For a long time there was no question as to mutual tolera- 
 tion, or an attempt at a friendly communion together. Such 
 a thought was utterly foreign to that entire age. On the 
 Protestant side the theory of absolute ecclesiastical power 
 being vested in the temporal sovereign, rendered a system of 
 toleration an impossibility. Historically, nothing is more 
 untrue than the assertion that " the Reformation was a move- 
 ment for freedom of conscience." The fact is that it was 
 precisely the very opposite. Both Lutherans and Calvinists, 
 as well as all men at all times, desired freedom- of conscience; 
 but then, to grant it to others when they were themselves the 
 stronger party, was a thought that did not even occur to 
 them. The Reformers all regarded the complete suppression 
 and extirpation of the Catholic Church as a matter of course. 
 From the very beginning they called upon princes and the 
 political authorities to abolish by main force the worship of 
 the Ancient Church. In England, Ireland, Scotland, Den- 
 mark, and Sweden, they went so far as to affix the punish- 
 ment of death to the practice of the Catholic religion. To- 
 wards other sects, that arose about the same period, they 
 proceeded with no less severity. That the Anabaptists should 
 atone for their doctrine with their lives, was required even by 
 him who was renowned as the mildest of the Reformers, Me- 
 lancthon. 1 The same man desired that corporal punishment 
 should be inflicted on the Catholics, because it was the duty 
 of the temporal power to proclaim and defend the Divine 
 Law! 2 Calvin also besought of the Duke of Somerset, as 
 the Regent-Protector of England, that he should destroy 
 with the sword all namely, the Catholics who opposed the 
 new Protestant Constitution of the Church. 3 Kings, states- 
 
 1 See " Corpus Ref." Ed. Bretschneider, ii. 18, 711, 713. 
 
 " Corp. Ref.," ix. 77. 
 
 * " Epistolse Genev.," 1579, p. 40. It is remarkable that he also brought 
 forward, as a ground why the punishment of death should be inflicted, 
 that an attempt against the monarchy, appointed by God, was 
 involved in the refusal to submit to its ecclesiastical authority. His 
 
 F
 
 66 DEFENSIVE WAR OF THE CATHOLIC PRINCES. 
 
 men, theologians, and philosophers were all agreed that 
 neither the Catholics, nor any one of the sects who differed 
 from the dominant Church, were entitled to claim toleration. 
 To have two or several religions in a country, they said, was 
 dangerous, and enfeebled the Government I 1 Even the Lord 
 Chancellor, Bacon, considered that the extreme limit of to- 
 leration to which a Government could venture to go would 
 be attained when it should content itself with a mere ex- 
 ternal conformity to the established religion, and should make 
 no attempt to penetrate into men's consciences and secret 
 convictions. 2 
 
 Thus, the Catholic princes, clergy, and people knew with 
 perfect certainty that they themselves would be oppressed so 
 soon as the party of the new religion felt itself strong enough 
 to work out its will against them. They carried on a war of 
 self-defence, when they endeavoured by all means to prevent 
 the entrance of Protestantism into their territory, or to expel 
 it if it had already penetrated. All the Reformers and the 
 theologians of the New Church expressed in their writings 
 not the slightest doubt upon the principle " that the Ca- 
 tholic religion must be exterminated wherever men had the 
 power to do so." In Germany, in the Scandinavian coun- 
 tries, in England, in Switzerland in short, everywhere that 
 the Protestant religion predominated its practice was soon 
 found in correspondence with its theory. And as Reformers 
 at the same time held firmly to the doctrine that princes and 
 the civil authorities were the possessors of supreme religious 
 authority, it was resolved, by the Coryphasi of the reformed 
 faith, that they should refuse to princes, who did not conform 
 
 friend Beza even urged that anti-Trinitarians should also be put to death, 
 and this, too, even though they recanted ! u Crenii Animadversiones," 
 xi. 90. 
 
 1 As, for example, Lord Burghley, minister of Queen Elizabeth. His 
 fixed principle was that the State could never be secure in which two 
 religions were tolerated, for there was no stronger feeling of animosity 
 than that on account of religion See " Life of Lord Burghley," in 
 PECK'S "Desiderata Curiosa," p. 33. 
 
 2 " Certain Observations made upon a Libel, 1592," WORKS ; 
 London, 1846, i. 382.
 
 THE MAXIM OF THE REFORMERS. 67 
 
 to Calvinistic principles, the right to govern, and declare 
 their deposition as permissible and necessary. It is well 
 known how far Knox and others went in this way, and what 
 share such men had in the dethronement of Charles I. of 
 England. In Sweden, Sigismund was despoiled of his crown 
 because he was a Catholic. 
 
 Bayle supposes that the Reformers and their followers must 
 have felt themselves in a very embarrassing position, because 
 they had always, when opposed to the old Church, insisted 
 upon " freedom of conscience," and declared that the com- 
 pulsion exercised towards them was criminal; whilst they 
 themselves, nevertheless, exhorted the authorities to suppress 
 every other doctrine and religious community. Such a cir- 
 cumstance, however, took place so universally, and it was so 
 much in accordance with the spirit of the times, that it was 
 not felt to be self-contradictory. 1 The French Protestants, 
 although they formed but a poor minority, and only found 
 protection from the Edict of Nantes, yet refused, in the 
 places of security that had been granted to them, to allow 
 any Catholic, or the practice of the Catholic religion, to be 
 where they were. The same scene was enacted in all parts 
 of Protestantised Europe. The prevailing maxim was : 
 " Freedom for ourselves, and oppression for every other 
 party ! " 
 
 The first who were in earnest about religious freedom, and 
 who really placed the two religions on an equality, were the 
 Catholic Englishmen who, towards the middle of the 
 seventeenth century, founded the colony of Maryland, under 
 the leadership of Lord Baltimore. That little State, under 
 a Catholic administration for a few years, was in the enjoy- 
 ment of perfect tranquillity and the most complete freedom. 
 But barely two decades had been completed, when the more 
 numerous Protestants, protected by the government of 
 the mother country, overthrew the existing regulations, 
 
 1 We need only see how the well-known Marnix de Saint -Aldegonde 
 defends himself in his " Reponse Apologetique," 1598, against the 
 reproach made to him in the piece entitled "Antidote ou Contrepoison 
 contre les Conseils Sanguinaires, de M. S. A." 
 
 F2
 
 68 THE PRINCIPLE OF TOLERATION. 
 
 brought in the Church of England as the established religion, 
 and passed severe penal laws against the practice of the 
 Catholic faith.i 
 
 For a long time, the Netherlands had the reputation of 
 being the only country in Europe where freedom of faith, 
 although very limited, existed. Here Calvinism was the 
 State Church, but a very considerable part of the population 
 remained Catholic ; and there were, besides, Arrninians, 
 Lutherans, Mennonites, and other sects from foreign 
 countries. These the States -General allowed to live in 
 peace, so that many settled down in Holland on account of 
 this freedom. The Catholics alone lay under severe oppres- 
 sions. 2 Since the middle of the seventeenth century, various 
 isolated Protestant voices had been raised in favour of the 
 concession of religious freedom. The first of these was the 
 Dutchman, Koornheert, a predecessor of the Arrninians; 
 but he stood quite alone in his views concerning toleration. 
 After the middle, and towards the close of the seventeenth 
 century, some defenders of the principle of toleration came 
 forward : Milton, Richard Baxter, Bayle, Locke. But 
 Locke alone discussed the question thoroughly and candidly, 
 without falling into glaring contradictions, or taking refuge 
 
 1 The facts are given in detail in MACMAHON'S " Historical View of the 
 Government of Maryland," Baltimore, 1831, pp. 198-250 ; and in 
 BANCROFT'S "History of the United States." Boston, 1834. It is 
 interesting to have the opinion of a living Protestant theologian, Thomas 
 Coit, of Newrochelle, on this point. He says (in his work, " Puritanism, 
 or a Churchman's Defence ;" New York, 1855) " In Maryland, as the 
 Roman Catholics claim, the rights of conscience were first fully acknow- 
 ledged in this country. This is a fact I never knew disputed by good 
 authority, and though a Protestant with all my heart, I accord them the 
 full praise of it with the frankest sincerity," &c. 
 
 2 This is noticed by Sir William Temple, in 1670, in his " Observations 
 upon the United Provinces." WORKS ; London, 1720, i. 58. The 
 preacher Brun, in his treatise (" La Veritable Religion des Hollandois ;" 
 Amsterd. 1675, p. 171) adduces, as a proof of the commendable piety of 
 the Netherlands Government, that they had not only taken from the 
 Catholics their churches, schools, and institutions, as well as excluding 
 them from any office, but also continually interfered with and disturbed 
 them in their religious worship ! &c., &c.
 
 PERSECUTION IN ENGLAND. 69 
 
 in prevarication. The others required, in accordance with 
 the precedent given by the Netherlands, that all Protestant 
 parties and sects should reciprocally afford to each other 
 liberty ; but the Catholic Church, as their common antago- 
 nist, was still to be oppressed and persecuted. As grounds 
 for thus dealing with Catholics, they stated, first, that the 
 Catholics alone acknowledged an Ecclesiastical head in a 
 foreign country ; and next, that the Catholics would, if their 
 side ever became again the stronger, oppress the Protestants. 1 
 Subsequent experience has, indeed, proved that this Protes- 
 tant possibility has long since been worked out by them into 
 an actual reality ; because, for two hundred years after the 
 rise of Protestantism, no religious freedom was granted to 
 Catholics, in any country or district where Protestants had 
 gained the upper hand. In some towns and villages of 
 Germany alone, there was a prescriptive parity in pursuance 
 of the provisions of the Peace of Westphalia. 
 
 How deeply-seated was the principle of religious persecution 
 in the very blood of the professors of the new doctrine, is 
 shown in a striking manner by the conduct of the Anglo- 
 Saxon race. In England, after the Restoration, executions 
 were no longer numerous, and these fell only upon Catholic 
 clergymen ; but the prisons there did the work of the execu- 
 tioner for they were so unhealthy, that human beings died 
 in them by thousands. The Quaker, William Penn, reckoned 
 that, in a short space of time, about 5000, who had been 
 incarcerated on account of their religion, had perished in 
 the English jails. 2 This was also the fate of numerous 
 Protestant Dissenters, as well as of Catholics and especially 
 so of the new sects of Baptists and Quakers. 
 
 Puritans and Presbyterians were, by turns, oppressors and 
 oppressed; but they were also theoretically convinced that it 
 was a matter of conscience to tolerate no other religion than 
 
 1 BAYLE, " Oeuvres," ii. 412. 
 
 * MACKINTOSH, "History of the English Revolution," pp. 158-160. Ac- 
 cording to the calculation of this historical investigator, there were in 
 England, from 1660 to 1685, about 25,000 persons imprisoned on account 
 of their religion, and 15,000 families utterly ruined.
 
 70 LAWS AGAINST HERESY IN AMERICA AND SWEDEN. 
 
 their own, the moment that they should possess the means of 
 exercising compulsion. So soon as the very men who had 
 escaped from persecution in the mother country founded 
 new States on the soil of North America, they devised a body 
 of laws unequalled for their severity and intolerance. 1 
 Catholic priests were put to death, if they were but seen in 
 the country ; Quakers were hanged ; the mildest punish- 
 ments of the new Code, for them and other heterodox 
 persons, were branding, banishment, and piercing through 
 the tongue with a red-hot iron. In that land which, since 
 the Declaration of Independence, in the year 1776, has 
 carried out to its widest extent a separation between the 
 Church and the State, there was, in the seventeenth century, 
 a theocracy established that so mingled together religion and 
 civil life as to destroy all freedom ; and, for the like of 
 which, a second example is not to be found in history. The 
 state of things in Lutheran Sweden, came the nearest to 
 that of the Calvinists in America. There it was a law of 
 the State, that whoever remained a year under the ban of 
 the Church should be expelled from the kingdom ; that a 
 person under excommunication should be excluded from all 
 social intercourse ; and further, it was ordained that whoso- 
 ever, in theological matters, should use even an objectionable 
 mode of speech, and would not recant it, should be dispos- 
 sessed, and transported out of the country. 2 As a matter of 
 course, in such a state of affairs, and with such a restrictive 
 system of laws, a theological literature, and scientific culture 
 of the sacerdotal order in Sweden, must come to naught. 
 
 / O 
 
 Mackintosh has strikingly remarked what an incalculable 
 amount of despotic power Protestantism placed in the 
 hands of princes, for, by committing to them the chief 
 authority over religion, it armed them with powers whose 
 
 1 The so-styled " Blue Laws" of New England. Dr. Spalding, Bishop 
 of Louisville, in North America, has given an elaborate analysis of them 
 in his " Miscellanea : comprising Reviews, Lectures, and Essays." Louis- 
 ville, 1855, pp. 355-380. 
 
 * u Kirchengesetz und Ordnung Karls XI." Stockholm, 1687, pp. 
 7-33.
 
 DESPOTIC POWER OF PKOTESTANT PRINCES. 71 
 
 exercise was not restrained either by law or custom, of 
 regulated by experience, and whose limits were undefined. 1 
 This notion, however, became so intertwined with Protestant 
 views, that theologians, when they were urging persons to 
 conformity with the Church of the country, and writing 
 against Separatists, made loyalty towards the sovereign, and 
 veneration for the law and authorities, their most weighty 
 arguments. It is thus Archbishop Tillotson expatiates on 
 this theme : " That whosoever cannot, like the Apostles, 
 show a directly Divine mission, is committing an offence 
 against authority and the law, by proclaiming any other 
 doctrine than that approved of by them." 2 
 
 Even in a Catholic country, in France, the theory that the 
 religion of the king should be also that of all good subjects, 
 had, in the seventeenth century, met with general accept- 
 ance. To it especially is to be attributed the revocation of 
 the Edict of Nantes, by Louis XIV., and the attempt to 
 change Protestants into Catholics, by all means, gentle and 
 coercive, allowable and unallowable. It is a fact that the 
 Intendants and Magistrates were accustomed to bring 
 forward, as a decisive argument to Protestants, that it was 
 "the command of the King;" and the reproach which 
 Bayle makes to the Catholic clergy is, that they suffered this 
 to be done, and did not loudly protest against it, although 
 such a proceeding was contrary to the Catholic religion. 
 The reproach was not unjust; 3 and the French clergy had, 
 one hundred years afterwards, to wipe away, in streams of 
 
 1 " History of the Revolution." Ed. Paris, i. 230. " The execution 
 of the prerogative, of which neither law nor experience had defined the 
 limits." 
 
 2 See his treatise or discourse, " The Protestant Religion Vindicated 
 from Novelty." WORKS, London, 1751, ii. 247. In later times has 
 DAUBEKY ("Appendix to the Guide to the Church," ii. 434) put in a 
 very prominent light a separation from the National Church as a crime 
 of disobedience against the highest authority in the State. Every one 
 acquainted with the state of affairs in England is aware that the same 
 motive has still a considerable influence with certain classes of the 
 population. 
 
 3 " Oeuvres," ii. 348.
 
 72 THE EVIL AND ITS REMEDY. 
 
 their best blood, this fault of their predecessors. The same 
 Bayle remarks that "the Royal Edicts which suppressed 
 Protestantism were referred to in books and pastoral 
 writings, as if they had been ' Sacraments.' ' n A precedent 
 Protestant author, Brueys, endeavours, in a work of his, upon 
 the obedience which Christians owe to the temporal power, 
 to show that the Protestants were bound in conscience to 
 obey the Royal Edicts which forbade their assembling for 
 Divine worship ! Instead of an Ecclesiastical repudiation 
 of his work, it obtained praise and commendation ! 2 
 
 From the excess of the evil out of the paroxysm of the 
 malady there arose gradually the recovery. It required a 
 lonjr time. Several circumstances concurred together to 
 
 o o 
 
 bring ultimately about a more endurable state of things. 
 There was, in the first place, the internal languor of the 
 Protestant State Church namely, of the most powerful of 
 them all, the English, which was severely damaged by the 
 consequences of its own victory the Revolution of 1688. 
 With the eighteenth century had appeared such a wide and 
 deeply-penetrating decay of religion, and such a temper of 
 
 1 " Oeuvres," ii. 33. 
 
 a In a note appended to the Introduction in this book, the author remarks, 
 with reference to the persecution of the French Protestants by Louis 
 XIV., that in writing the above paragraph he would have wished to have 
 called attention to the fact that " Pope Innocent was greatly displeased 
 at the oppression of the Protestants in France, and took steps to have 
 them treated with more lenity." The author, however, adds, he could 
 not at the moment discover the authorities upon which this statement 
 rested ; but whilst his work was passing through the press he had dis- 
 covered, and therefore cites them. They are MAZURES, " Histoire de la 
 Revolution de 1688," Paris, 1825, ii. 126 ; and MACAULAY'S well- 
 known work (Tauchnitz Edit., ii. 250). The author adds : " It is 
 notorious that the relations between the Pope (Innocent) and the King 
 (Louis XIV.) were not merely unsatisfactory, but actually hostile, and 
 the Pope was therefore under the necessity of seeking to attain his object 
 not by a direct appeal to the French King, but through another channel. 
 He therefore commissioned his Nuncio, D'Adda, in London, to pray of 
 King James II. of England that he might intercede with Louis XIV. in 
 favour of the persecuted Protestants. James declined complying with 
 this request, although he himself did a good deal for an alleviation of 
 their sufferings."
 
 CLESARO-PAPISM. 7.3 
 
 indifferentism had become dominant, that in the upper classes 
 there was not so much of that kind of zeal which is necessary 
 for the persecution of people for a different opinion. Indif- 
 ferentism had gone so far, that strangers, like Montesquieu, 
 received in England the impression that there existed no 
 religion any more ; and serious men, like Gibson and Butler, 
 expressed their anxiety lest the whole nation should fall into 
 demoralization and infidelity. 1 The sects of dissenters were 
 left to act as they pleased, because their doings were regarded 
 as mere folly, or harmless fanaticism ; and as to the Catholics 
 in England, they had shrivelled up into a small, quiescent, 
 scarcely perceptible group ; and persons were ashamed to 
 put in motion the heavy hammer of the Penal Laws for the 
 purpose of crushing a feeble and scarcely visible antagonist. 
 The state of affairs in Ireland was, however, far different. 
 There the interests of the Protestant party still required that 
 the majority of the nation should be kept in a state of 
 Helotism. But in England, to the feeling of indifferentism, 
 which allowed things to go on as they might, was added 
 that disposition in favour of right and freedom peculiar to 
 the Anglo-Saxon race ; and which served to arouse still more 
 and more an inclination towards religious toleration 
 
 Germany, during the seventeenth, and at the beginning of 
 the eighteenth, adhered constantly to the track of the six- 
 teenth century. The yoke of the ecclesiastical princes' 
 dominion "the Caesaro- Papism," as people called it 
 weighed with undiminished and suffocating force upon the 
 Protestant Church system. Almost every well-disposed man 
 complained of it ; and, forgetful that it was the fathers and 
 reformers of the New Church who had put this bandage 
 upon their child in its cradle, at its birth, they said, with 
 Valentin Andrea, " that Satan had been the inventor of 
 Ca3saro-Papism." 2 Executions, too, on account of religion, 
 still continued. 3 The reaction against Pietism led to new 
 
 1 " Quarterly Review," vol. cii. p. 463. 
 
 2 ANTON BOHME'S u Schriften," ii. 986. 
 
 3 In Sweden, Banier of Stargard was executed, because he did not 
 think as a true Lutheran concerning the doctrine of " Justification." At
 
 74 RATIONALISM IN GERMANY. 
 
 and endless religious oppressions and vexations. No one was 
 allowed to meet with others for religious purposes. 1 There 
 was soon added to this the hostility of the authorities 
 against the disciples of Zinzendorf. It was forbidden, under 
 pain of banishment, to circulate the books of the Moravians. 2 
 In the Prussian States Lutherans were taken to task, and 
 the Government prohibited religious practices that were 
 distasteful to the Calvinists. People were so accustomed to 
 religious despotism, and to the interference of the authorities 
 in private life, under religious pretexts, that persons of the 
 world, in their writings, urged the authorities to bring before 
 the tribunals and severely punish expressions used in 
 social intercourse which did not sound as being quite ortho- 
 dox! 3 
 
 In the meantime by the middle of the last century 
 Germany had become thoroughly weary of the theology of 
 the sixteenth century. The dogmatic system of the Con- 
 cordian-Book and the Heidelberg Catechism, with their 
 internal contradictions and their social-political consequences, 
 lay like a mountain upon the German mind. The tsvo chief 
 supports of the old Protestant system the authority of the 
 University Professors and the Church Government of Princes 
 were worn out and decayed. The Professors became 
 Rationalists ; and, on the throne of the principal Protestant 
 State, there sat a Supreme Bishop of the Church of his 
 country, who, as he said, " never lived under the one roof 
 
 Kbnigsberg, John Adelgreiff was, in 1636, beheaded and burned. At 
 Lubech, Gunther was beheaded on account of his Socinian views in 
 1687, on the recommendation of the Jurist faculty of Kiel, and of the 
 theological faculty of Wittenberg. ARNOLDS, " Kirchenhist.," ii. 643. 
 
 1 John James Moser reports in his Biography, p. 191, that in Auspach- 
 isch, for a few persons singing a hymn together in their own homes they 
 were thrust into the tower ! "Whole volumes are filled with Penal edicts 
 against Pietists and Conventicles. 
 
 2 MECSELS, "Hist. Lit. Magazin," 1790, ii. 26. 
 
 * This is required, for example, by Bernard von Rb'hr, in his introduc- 
 tion to " Staats-klugheit," (Leipsic, 1718, p. 292.) with respect to the 
 then of ten -repeated expression, " that a way to salvation was to be found 
 in all religions."
 
 REACTION IN GERMANY AND FRANCE. 75 
 
 with religion," and whose favourite occupation it was to mock 
 the clergy, who, in his eyes, were only a heap of blockheads, 
 sluggards, and profitless bread-consumers I 1 With wonderful 
 rapidity a flood of rationalism and infidelity, under the mask 
 of theology, poured over Germany ; and everywhere theo- 
 logians and preachers were the first to yield to it. Frederick 
 the Second's expression "That in his States everyone might 
 become blessed (work out his salvation) after his o\vn fashion" 
 portrayed the revolution that had taken place. By the 
 want of faith in the princes and theologians (a sentiment 
 which soon communicated itself to the upper classes in 
 Germany), persons showed themselves well content with the 
 temporal and police-like treatment of ecclesiastical affairs; 
 but it also indisposed them to the application of compulsory 
 measures, upon religious grounds. The liberty of taking 
 part in, or withdrawing from, a particular form of worship, 
 was generally desired and conceded. This led further ; it 
 appeared to be natural and reasonable that confessional 
 restrictions and the civil inequalities of various religions 
 should be done away with. Then, the separation hitherto 
 existing between Lutherans and Calvinists had also lost 
 much of its significance since the diffusion of the Rational- 
 istic mode of thinking. The old opposition between the 
 Catholic Church and that of the Protestants remained, 
 however, as strongly marked as before. Denmark, which, in 
 respect to religion, was accustomed to follow the German 
 current, did, however, in the years 1777 and 1779, issue 
 ordinances by which the regular (Catholic) clergy were 
 prohibited, upon pain of death, from entering the country. 2 
 In France, the violent and hateful proceedings against 
 
 / 1 O O 
 
 Protestants, and the consequences of these proceedings the 
 emigration of so many thousands, which had inflicted a deep 
 wound upon the prosperity of the country had also aroused 
 a strong and long- continued reaction. The emigrants, 
 amongst whom were many men of scientific attainments, 
 
 1 "Fur die protestantische Kirche und deren Geistlichkeit, ein 
 Journal," 1810, ii. 84. 
 
 2 EEUTER'S " Theolog. Repertorium," 702, vol. Ixx. p. 168.
 
 76 PREVALENCE OF MORE LIBERAL IDEAS. 
 
 got hold of a great part of the foreign press, and filled all 
 Europe with their complaints. The " dragonnades " and the 
 persecuting tyranny of the French Government passed into a 
 proverb. People began in France to feel ashamed and 
 humbled before foreigners. The " halo " of the monarchy, 
 which had made every measure of Louis XIV. appear in a 
 favourable light to Frenchmen, had been extinguished by 
 the Regency, and the despicable government of Louis XV. 
 The story of Galas afforded an occasion for popular, warm, 
 and eloquently-written treatises concerning " the advantage 
 and rationality of religious freedom;" and then the deistical 
 and indifferentist mode of thought, which had got possession 
 of the upper classes, did the rest. Every turn in the views 
 and disposition of the French people is accustomed to exer- 
 cise a decisive influence upon the mode of thought and 
 condition of all Europe. At that time it was considered in 
 France, as elsewhere, that persecution and restraint only 
 made hypocrites ; that the fact of suffering for the faith, 
 and being able to show martyrs, exalted the self-complacency 
 and the confidence, as well as the authority, of a religious com- 
 munity. It was felt and said that a Church which called for 
 the arm of temporal power to sustain it, and that closed the 
 mouth of its antagonists by compulsion and punishments, 
 did, by so acting, make out a certificate of its own spiritual 
 impotency. In all Europe the idea became more and more 
 prevalent that Churches only needed spiritual weapons for 
 their protection ; and that it was the duty of the temporal 
 power to refrain from all constraint in matters of religion. 
 The old legislation, which rested on the opposite principle, 
 existed certainly for a long time indeed, it still exists, parti- 
 cularly in Sweden and Spain ; but the aversion to put its 
 enactments into execution, with all their exclusive severity, 
 has, for a long time, restrained the temporal power, and has 
 made an alteration in the still existing Penal Laws appear, 
 even to the Governments themselves, desirable. Catholic 
 Bishops also endeavoured now to show that the principle of 
 persecuting and oppressing persons of a different opinion had 
 never been a dogma of the Church ; and if Catholics in former
 
 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND PUBLIC OPINION. 77 
 
 times practised persecution, their so doing was not to be 
 regarded as a consequence of a Church dogma. 1 
 
 The Catholic Church could, in fact, always, without diffi- 
 culty and without scruple, enter into the new direction of 
 the times, and contribute to the sustainment of public 
 opinion, now becoming continually stronger and more 
 unanimous in disapproving of constraint being employed in 
 matters of religion. It had never put forward the assertion 
 " that sovereigns were to be rulers over the religion of their 
 people." Its whole doctrine of the princely power, and of the 
 relations between governments and their subjects, was limited 
 to the Apostolic demand of "obedience in things lawful." 
 It had always left the most ample room for the most 
 manifold political combinations. It had, remembering what 
 were its own boundaries, never undertaken to decide what 
 should be the amount or the form of political authority, and 
 how much should be left to the mass of the people, or 
 how much to the ruler and his organs it has never de- 
 termined what things should be reserved as matters for 
 the administrative, and what, on the contrary, should be left 
 to the decision of the people, nor what should be dependent 
 upon the consent of the Estates : all these were subjects 
 that did not concern the Church. Freedom of movement in 
 its own spiritual sphere is what it had always demanded. 
 Thus there could not only exist in its bosom states with the 
 most various institutions, as regarded their religious rela- 
 tions, but monarchs also could, without experiencing the 
 disapproval of the Church, make the strongest concessions to 
 persons of another belief in their dominions, as the French 
 King had already done by the Edict of Nantes, and that, too, 
 without any contradiction on the part of the French Episco- 
 pacy and the Papal See. On the part of the Church, it was 
 considered to be reasonable and right that King James II. 
 of England, although a Catholic, should bind himself to 
 maintain the freedom and the possessions of the Anglican 
 
 1 So speaks Bishop SPALDLSG in the " Introductory Address" to his 
 " Miscellanea," p. xxx.
 
 78 POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM. 
 
 Church, and to urge on Parliament a general freedom of 
 religion. He, indeed, did not keep his promise, and thereby 
 brought about his own downfall. It was then to be generally 
 expected that the Church, in its altered situation, and in the 
 revolution that had taken place in the views of nations, 
 should occupy a position where it might show, as it had 
 already done, with what tranquillity it could bear inde- 
 pendent and fully-developed religious communities to exist 
 by its side, whether with equal or with lesser rights. 
 
 At present there reigns in all Europe the most decided 
 dislike to make use of religion as a political instrument, and 
 just as generally and decidedly do men protest against com- 
 pulsion in religious affairs by the State or the police. As 
 often as, in any part of Europe fwith the exception of Russia, 
 which is herein regarded as privileged), any act of religious 
 restraint takes place, there arises a general sensation an 
 agitation and a demonstration in the opposite direction and 
 that, too, is almost always so well-managed, and so perse- 
 veringly carried out, that it finally gains its point. 
 
 And yet there is another side to this question. Let us 
 especially consider the position of a State, and a popular 
 Church still in the possession of the entire nation that 
 unity still exists in the country, and that this unity and 
 this religious peace can only be disturbed through the 
 diffusion of a new doctrine by intruders from abroad. If we 
 place ourselves in that which is the general Christian point 
 of view (and abstractedly from the differences prevailing 
 among Christians^, we may certainly say " that the religion 
 and morality of a people are, in every state, inseparably 
 connected with one another, and that an attack upon the 
 one inevitably involves an injury to the other. It i?, then, 
 the business of a government to provide for the public weal 
 for the maintenance of those principles and views by which 
 general morality is sustained, and to prevent all threatened 
 violations of it." 1 From this follows the duty also of pro- 
 tecting the religion of the country. It might here be 
 
 1 Compare the opinion of Bossuet with Mazure, " Histoire de la 
 Revolution de 1688." Paris, 1825, iii. 386.
 
 THE DUTY OF PROTECTING THE CHURCH. 79 
 
 objected that the Christian Church is strong enough, or 
 ought to be strong enough, to protect itself and overcome 
 attacks from heresy or infidelity ; but, as a matter of fact, it 
 is not strong enough to do so. It is not so, in the first place, 
 
 C5 O ' * 
 
 because the attack allies itself with the passions and 
 strongest inclinations of the natural man, and also finds a 
 fellow-combatant in the breast of every individual aban- 
 doned to his own impulses, and who is thus arrayed against 
 a religion felt to be burdensome, and requiring so many 
 difficult things for him to do. In the second place, religion 
 is not equal to the struggle, for this reason that is, when its 
 opponents are completely unrestrained, because Christianity 
 is one connected whole of doctrines, precepts, counsels, arid 
 historical facts, in which each is supported and responsible for 
 the other. There are, however, very few who are competent, 
 at one commanding view, to take into contemplation this 
 connexion, and still fewer, perhaps, who are able to keep 
 it clearly and constantly present before their mind. Its an- 
 tagonists direct their attacks always upon isolated points, taken 
 away from their connexion with the whole ; and so the 
 attack seems to be stronger and more plausible than the 
 defence. On this account the weight of the power of the 
 State must be thrown into the scale in favour of the assailed 
 religion. 
 
 Furthermore, no advocate for the freedom of attack on 
 existing religion has ever yet succeeded in determining exactly 
 the limits within which that freedom is to be permissible. 
 Logically has this freedom never yet been carried out in the 
 world not even in England, nor in North America. On the 
 other hand, it may indeed be replied that the defenders of 
 protection to be afforded by the State to religion, and for 
 compulsion for, without such, protection cannot be made 
 effective are, on their side, not in a position to point out 
 any rational limits, up to which the repression of new 
 doctrines and the defence of the State Church may proceed. 
 In times of religious excitement such a repression, if severely 
 and thoroughly carried into execution, becomes an awful 
 tyranny, which revolts all minds against it; and the reaction
 
 80 PRESENT STATE OF THE CHURCHES. 
 
 from which is far more destructive to the Church than a 
 state of defencelessness would have been. 
 
 This, then, at the end, is the only thing to be said : That, 
 since the great divisions of the sixteenth century, a condition 
 of circumstances has come to pass in the cultivated states of 
 Europe, and the intercourse and the intermingling of nations, 
 (with the facility of communication,) have so increased, and 
 the reciprocal influence of populations has become so incal- 
 culable, and public opinion exercises such an irresistible 
 power, that Governments, in their own interests, as well 
 as in that of the various churches, find themselves placed 
 under the necessity of refraining, so far as it is possible, 
 from any interference with religious entanglements, and 
 of preserving for the members of various religious creeds, 
 so long as they really can be called Christian, equal duties 
 and also equal civil rights. And then these Governments, 
 looking tranquilly on at the spiritual struggle of the 
 Churches, must still be careful to provide for the preserva- 
 tion of the public law, of civil order, and the perfect freedom 
 of all. For one hundred years past the whole course of 
 development in Europe has led to this and we may see in 
 it the hand of Divine Providence that Protestants and 
 Catholics have been approaching each other more and more 
 have been brought into closer, more frequent, and more 
 intimate civil relations with one another and have been 
 placed under the necessity of a common action and a 
 common understanding. The old confessional bulwarks 
 and walls of separation have fallen down more and more, and 
 become untenable. We can no longer withdraw from one 
 another we can no longer retire back to the old distance 
 and separation, however troublesome and painful the conse- 
 quences of the present state of things may be. And many 
 problems and puzzles which have sprung from this inter- 
 mingling, however insoluble they now appear to us, may yet 
 with time find a solution ; or, at least, it is to be hoped they 
 will. Our posterity will one day perceive that this inter- 
 twining and mingling has yet had preponderating beneficial 
 consequences ; that it
 
 A CHRISTIAN STATE. 81 
 
 " Like the toad, ugly and venomous, 
 Wears yet a precious jewel in its head. " 
 
 At the same time, however, the State can and must (if it 
 will not abandon its cause altogether and yield itself, as cap- 
 tured, to the destructive forces and tendencies of the age) pre- 
 serve and defend its character as a Christian State. It may not 
 put off and give up what is common to all Christian Churches, 
 because it must, in the existing equality of creeds, do so 
 with what is peculiar as to individual religious church com- 
 munities, and does not afford to their doctrines or institutions 
 a governmental guarantee. The Christian social elements and 
 principles are those by which marriage, the family, childhood, 
 the foundations of civil order, are fortified and consecrated ; 
 the social virtues of neighbourly love, industry, chastity, and 
 moderation have become Christian duties ; and with them is 
 bound up the relation between the civil power and its subjects. 
 These are all built upon one sanctified basis. This whole Chris- 
 tian social order, and its sureties in doctrine and in life, must be 
 maintained at all cost, by every State which desires to con- 
 tinue in existence. And every State, too, must be prepared 
 with a negation if there is required from it, as is now fre- 
 quently done, by an appeal to " the freedom of science," to 
 yield up such things to the assaults of " the scientific," and 
 of their destructive doctrines, whether couched under the 
 name of a " materialist theory of nature," or of a " critical, 
 analytical treatment of history." The State must be pre- 
 pared to refuse permission to do mischief it must act 
 precisely as if one were to say of a tree, that it might still 
 hope to bloom, if permission were once given to destroy its 
 roots through which hitherto it had imbibed sap, and strength, 
 and life.
 
 62 
 
 THE CHURCH AND CIVIL FREEDOM. 
 
 A FEW years ago, the " Privy Councillor of Justice," Pro- 
 fessor Stahl of Berlin, in some printed lectures of his, 1 made 
 a sharp attack upon the social and political character, as well 
 as influence of the Catholic Church. With respect to what 
 he says on the point of religious toleration, I shall not sub- 
 ject it to any further examination. The description which 
 I have already given of the historical development of this 
 question will, when compared with that of Herr Stahl, be 
 sufficient for forming a judgment upon it. Herr Stahl, 
 however, goes much further. According to his theory, Pro- 
 testantism gives, by its "justification from faith, a higher 
 degree of inward (moral) freedom to man, and carries him 
 forward thereby (" to a certain extent," he cautiously adds) 
 " also to a degree of external (political) freedom." According 
 to this, he assumes that the States which have become Pro- 
 testant have attained, by their change of religion, to greater 
 freedom than the Catholic. I cannot refrain from a brief 
 historical examination of this assertion. 
 
 Stahl points out the chief doctrine, from which he deduces 
 
 1 "Der Protestantismus als politisches Princip." Berlin, 1853. I 
 confess that I had not paid any particular attention to this work. I only 
 lately read it, when I wished to write upon the subject. I have perused 
 it with astonishment. I really had no idea that one in the position of the 
 author could possibly have indulged in such notions and treatment of 
 history.
 
 LUTHERAMSM AND POLITICAL FREEDOM. 83 
 
 such great political blessings, more precisely as the doctrine 
 of imputed righteousness; and he is quite correct when he, 
 in this "article of the standing and falling Church," as well 
 as the same in the Concordian-Formulas, and of the whole 
 old Protestant theology, recognises the dogma in which the 
 contrast between the Catholic Church and Protestantism, in 
 its old form, is most sharply marked out. I must, however, 
 remark, that he with this, his favourite doctrine, as the 
 mother of political freedom, stands somewhat isolated. All, 
 or almost all, learned theologians of his own faith in Germany, 
 as well as elsewhere, have renounced it. Exegetists acknow- 
 ledge that it is foreign to the New Testament, and that 
 Luther had only introduced it into one of the Epistles of St. 
 Paul by a false translation ; and dogmatic theologians have 
 repudiated the attempt to establish it on speculative or 
 biblical grounds. I, for myself, undertake to point out to 
 him for every single one who adopts it, fifteen who have 
 given it up as untenable. 1 
 
 Let us now see how it stands with the greater measure of 
 political freedom which the " imputation" doctrine is said to 
 have brought to the people. We will begin with the Scan- 
 dinavian States, as those in which Lutheranism has developed 
 itself most purely, without any foreign interference, and has 
 been able to unfold its social and political consequences 
 without any obstacle. 
 
 The Englishman, Lord Molesworth, who made himself 
 thoroughly acquainted with the Protestant North, remarks 
 in the year 1692, "In the Roman Catholic religion, with the 
 head of the Church in Rome, is a principle of resistance 
 
 1 Stahl refers to p. 98 of Baxter's ascetic -writings, which he far prefers 
 to the " Exercises of St. Ignatius." He appears not to know that this 
 certainly distinguished theologian made it the peculiar task of his whole 
 life to contend against the Protestant doctrine of " Justification," 
 and especially the "imputation" dogma, as an un-Biblical and soul- 
 destructive error ; and this, too, as well in his practical-ascetic as in his 
 dogmatic writings. For forty long years did Baxter oppose this doctrine 
 which Herr Stahl regards as the innermost mystery of the Christian 
 religion. Baxter pursued it in all its windings, and hunted it out of 
 every corner in which it sought refuge. 
 
 G 2
 
 84 THE SCANDINAVIAN STATES. 
 
 against unlimited civil power; but in the North, the Lutheran 
 Church is entirely subject and subservient to the civil power, 
 and the whole northern population of Protestant countries 
 have lost their freedom since they exchanged their religion 
 for a better." The cause for this he seeks in the absolute 
 and sole dependence of the clergy upon the monarch. " The 
 Lutheran clergy," he says, " protect their political power in 
 a chamber of their own at the Diet, although at the same 
 time they are dependent on the Crown, as their temporal 
 and spiritual head." 1 
 
 In Denmark the Lutheran doctrine obtained as complete 
 a victory as possibly could be desired. Its influence and 
 its strength are neither disturbed nor lamed by the existence 
 of sects, nor by any remnants of the old religion. Denmark 
 and Sweden are still purely Lutheran countries. The social 
 and political consequences of the victory over the Catholic 
 Church in Denmark are described by Barthold in a very 
 few words: 2 "A dog-like servitude weighs down again upon 
 the Danish peasant ; and the citizens, deprived of all repre- 
 sentative power, groan under oppressive burdens, and the 
 quartering of soldiers upon them. The North has become 
 Lutheran, but the King and the nobility share the dominion 
 between them, and even the children of preachers and 
 sacristans continue to be serfs" 
 
 The nobility at once made use of the Reformation to 
 appropriate to themselves not only the greatest part of the 
 Church property, but also that belonging to the free peasants. 
 At the same moment (in 1569) by the increased severity of 
 the Religious Article, the non-reception of which was punish- 
 able with death, they drove strangers out of the country. 3 
 From 1536 to 1660 the nobility had become rich and power- 
 
 1 "Account of Denmark," p. 236. 
 
 2 " Geschichte von Riigen und Pommern," iv. 2, 294. 
 
 8 This and the following facts are taken from ALLEN'S " History of 
 the Kingdom of Denmark," translated into German by Falck, 1846, 
 pp. 287, 296, 304, 309. The Copenhagen Society assigned to this book 
 a prize, as the best work of its kind published. See " Berliner Polit. 
 Wochenblatt," 1832, p. 224.
 
 OPPRESSION OF THE PEASANT CLASS. 85 
 
 ful by the oppression of the other orders, and the monopoly 
 of all state privileges in their own hands. To the wants of 
 the State they contributed nothing. The oppressive taxes 
 had to be borne by the poorer classes. " The impoverish- 
 ment and degradation of the peasant class, in consequence of 
 the strong and stern rule of the nobility, operated most 
 disadvantageously for the State." " The dwellers upon the 
 great estates of the Church were now obliged," says Allen, 
 " to exchange the mild rule of the clergy for the oppressive 
 yoke of the nobility. Forced labours were arbitrarily multi- 
 plied, and the peasantry were treated as thralls." 1 " Agri- 
 culture sank to a much lower degree than it had been in the 
 Middle Ages ; the population declined, and the country was 
 overspread with untenanted farms." Through new nobility 
 privileges, by the cruelty of the Game Laws, 7 introduced 
 directly after the Reformation, and by forced compacts, was 
 the servitude, the spoliation, and the degradation of the 
 once free peasant class completed. Not only were the 
 peasantry, but also the citizens and the clergy in short, the 
 whole nation was trampled under foot by a nobility comprising 
 from eight to nine hundred individuals. 3 Christian IV. 
 (1588-1648) made an attempt to procure some alleviation 
 of this oppression ; but his attempt was frustrated by the 
 resistance of the nobility, whose power proved to be greater 
 than that of the monarch. The slavery of the peasantry 
 continued. King and citizens were in reality the bondmen 
 of the nobles. 
 
 By the Revolution of 1660, the power of the nobility was 
 broken ; but then, on the other hand, King Frederick III. 
 and his successors were declared to be absolute monarchs. 
 The Royal Law of 1665 decreed that the King of Denmark 
 was bound to take no oath, and need impose on himself no 
 duties of any kind, but, with uncontrolled and boundless 
 power, do as he pleased. By this means was lost an interest 
 
 ' "ALLEN," pp. 310-11. 
 
 2 In 1537, by pulling out the eyes. Even the punishment of death 
 was inflicted for keeping a hunting dog. ALLEN, 313. 
 * ALLEN, p. 319.
 
 86 CONDITION OF THE DANISH PEOPLE. 
 
 in public affairs, and the public spirit and co-operation of the 
 people with the government was annihilated. 1 The peasantry 
 remained in the 'same slavery as before, and the nobility 
 retained a great part of their privileges. The wretchedness 
 of the peasantry was still further aggravated, after the year 
 1687, by new despotic laws; "so that one-fifth part of the 
 farms on the crown-lands lay waste, and things appeared to 
 be still worse on private estates." 2 In the year 1702, 
 Frederick IV. abolished slavery; but another yoke attach- 
 ment to the soil was soon put in its place ; so that the 
 position of the peasantry, by a regulation of 1764, was little, 
 or not at all, different from their former thraldom. The 
 result was, that the population of the country in the 
 eighteenth century diminished from year to year, innumer- 
 able peasant farms were abolished, and even whole villages 
 destroyed to make room for manors. 3 Schools were want- 
 ing. The education of the people still stood, in 1766, at the 
 very lowest grade. It was not until 1804 that personal 
 freedom was conferred on twenty thousand families, who had 
 been in a state of servitude. 4 
 
 The Provincial Estates, introduced by Frederick VI., did 
 not restrain the absolutism of the Danish monarch. An 
 observer, favourable to the Danes, Mr. Laing, a Scotchman, 
 remarked in the year 1839 that since the Danes are, 
 politically, quite passive, and had no voice in their own 
 affairs, they had found themselves, in spite of many good 
 regulations of the government, merely in the same state in 
 which they had been in 1660, and had remained two 
 hundred years behind the Scotch, Dutch, and Belgians, with 
 whom, according to their population and position, they best 
 could be compared. 8 
 
 1 ALLEN, p. 336. 2 ALLEN, pp. 389, 431. 
 
 1 ALLEN, p. 438. Out of 600 landed proprietors in " Holland" before 
 the year 1660, there were no more than 100 remaining in 1766. 
 
 4 How much remained to be done for " the Danish peasantry," is shown 
 by a frightful description of their situation in WEGENER'S u Chronik 
 Friedrichs VI.," in the u Gegenwart." Leipz., 1853, vol. viii. p. 473. 
 
 5 " Tour in Sweden." London, 1839, p. 12.
 
 LUTHERANISM IN SWEDEN. 87 
 
 In March, 1 848, " after a hundred years of legalised and 
 systematic despotism," Denmark had its revolution ; and 
 the government of Frederick VII. was brought, by frequent 
 changes of ministry, into relations with a Diet, in which (in 
 most striking contrast to the former state of things) the 
 peasant-order preponderated. To this must be added a press, 
 which in boundless licentiousness equalled that of the 
 French, in 1793. 1 A new institution a national convoca- 
 tion (a Reichsrath), two-thirds of which were elected by 
 the people, was created ; and now the fate of the greatly 
 enfeebled monarchy will very speedily be decided. 
 
 In Sweden, Gustavus Vasa had introduced the Lutheran 
 religion, and by robbing an immoderately wealthy Churcli, 
 had founded a strong monarchy and kingdom. The people 
 were, in fact, cheated out of their religion ; for Gustavus 
 had always denied that he had introduced any new doctrine ; 
 and fifty years afterwards, notwithstanding the changes that 
 had been made, a great part of the people were not at all 
 aware that they were not Catholics ! 2 By degrees, however, 
 Sweden became a thoroughly Lutheran country. 
 
 Three results now followed. The first we will permit to 
 be described by the classical historian of Sweden Geijer. 
 After the great religious wars, he says, the share of the 
 Commons, in Ecclesiastical affairs, was suspended, and in 
 the same degree that of the princely power was confirmed. 
 Thus the Church lost more and more its connection with the 
 people, and soon became merely a monarchical or aristo- 
 cratical external form a clerical addition to the military and 
 civil officers of the State. 3 
 
 The second result which followed the subjugation and 
 spoliation of the Church by the monarch was, a new public 
 law. Gustavus declared that the commonage lands of the 
 villages and hamlets, and even also the rivers, weirs, and 
 mining districts finally, even all uncultivated lands, were 
 
 1 "Allgemeine Zeitung," 1859, p. 5932. 
 
 2 GEIJER'S " Geschichte Schwedens," ii. 218. 
 
 1 u Ueber die innern gesellschaftlichen Verhaltnisse unsere Zeit mit 
 besonderer Riicksicht auf Schweden." Stockholm, 1845, p. 47.
 
 88 RESULTS OF THE REFORMATION. 
 
 the property of the Crown. Therewith was, as Geijer says, 
 an arbitrary power given into the hands of the King, which 
 was extremely perilous to the rights of private property 
 belonging to individuals. 1 Gustavus unhesitatingly per- 
 severed in his spoliations ; and, since he looked upon himself 
 as the universal heir to Church property, he took also the 
 farms wherever he pleased. 2 He could not, however, keep 
 the whole inheritance of the Church to himself : the nobility, 
 whose support he much needed, had to be adopted as co-heirs ; 
 and, in the end, obtained an equal, or still larger share of 
 profit than the monarchy, from the change in religion. 
 
 As a third result of the Reformation, came that dislocation 
 of the national relations of the Estates, that discord into civil 
 order which has given to the history of Sweden for three 
 hundred years its changeful character, and has occasioned 
 a series of revolutions, such as never occurred in any 
 European state until 1789; and which has also elicited 
 revengeful feelings, party spirit, intrigues, a violent disposi- 
 tion, corruption, and caprice, as prominent national character- 
 istics. 3 Three of their kings have the Swedes (namely 
 the nobles) murdered Erick IV., Charles XII. and Gus- 
 tavus III ; two of them have been deposed, Sigismund and 
 Gustavus IV; and finally, they have driven out their native, 
 hereditary dynasty, and presented or sold their crown to a 
 foreign officer, one of Napoleon's generals. 
 
 Here, too, as well as in Denmark, there has arisen out of 
 the Reformation an oppressive and pettifogging domination 
 on the part of the nobility ; and it was only because " the 
 laws and customs of Sweden in its early rude state had been 
 so excellent," as Arndt says, " that Sweden was saved from 
 the fate of Russia and Poland. 4 There was wanting the 
 
 O? 
 
 dignified, independent position, and the regulating influence 
 of the Church. The Lutheran clergy were always too 
 dependent on the possessors of power." Arndt further 
 remarks, " that the priests " (for the clergy there are called 
 priests) "have always been accused of never having originated 
 
 1 GEIJER, ii. 101. * GEIJER, ii. 110. See AKXDT, pp. 29, 31. 
 Schwedische Geschichten." Leipsic, 1839, p. 30. 
 
 4 1C
 
 DOMINATION OF THE NOBILITY. 89 
 
 an important movement ; and, also, that they, more than any 
 other of the Estates, have been the most subservient to those 
 possessed of power. 1 The Reformation had given over the 
 clergy completely into the hands of the king and the 
 nobility. Every nobleman residing in a parish had the right 
 of choosing the pastor, whom he paid whatever he chose to 
 give. 2 
 
 The four Estates were represented at the Diet ; but the 
 nobility, who possessed almost all the public offices of the 
 kingdom, were the only real Estate of the monarchy, and 
 dared not be outvoted by the other Estates. As to the 
 peasantry being under the control of the nobility they 
 were only indirectly subjects of the kingdom. 3 As the 
 nobility had, already, on the change of religion, and at the 
 division of the Church plunder, gained immensely in posses- 
 sions, privileges, power, and influence, so was their gain still 
 further increased, when the government was compelled to 
 alienate its domains, and could only alienate them to nobles. 4 
 
 There were, indeed, after the death of Gustavus, attempts 
 occasionally made on the part of the clergy to withdraw 
 themselves from the domination of the nobility. They de- 
 sired that the admissibility to office should be made possible 
 for the sons of preachers ; but the nobility were too strong 
 for them, and the hopes that were held out to Bishops, 
 Superintendents, and Doctors of Theology, of being them- 
 selves ennobled, sufficed to separate the higher from the lower 
 clergy. 5 That a married clergy cannot attain to a resolute 
 corporate position, or cannot maintain it, lies in the nature of 
 things. Under the yoke of a nobility-mastership the pea- 
 sant class had been impoverished and degraded, and the 
 people had become feeble, wretched, and oppressed. 6 To 
 free themselves from this yoke, they endeavoured in Sweden, 
 as well as in Denmark, to make the King's power unlimited. 
 Thus, in the year 1680, the Estates declared, " That the King 
 was bound to no special form of government"; and in the 
 
 1 ARXDT, p. 47. 2 GEIJER, iii. 400. * GEIJER, iii. 18. 
 
 4 GEIJER, " Ueber die innern gesellsch, Verhaltnisse," p. 65. 
 * GEIJER, " Verhaltnisse," p. 110. ARNDT, p. 80.
 
 90 SWEDISH FREEDOM. 
 
 year 1682, "the Estates held it as absolutely unreasonable 
 that the King should be compelled, by statutes or ordinances, 
 first to hear the Estates ;" and from this time was adopted the 
 maxim, "That the King's will is law" and everything, as 
 Geijer says, was now interpreted to the advantage of an 
 Autocracy. The Estates were no longer called the Estates 
 of the Kingdom, but of his Royal Majesty ; and in the year 
 1693 the monarchy was declared to be fully absolute. " The 
 King," it was said, " could, without any responsibility, go- 
 vern according to his own will. 1 
 
 This led to the pernicious reign of Charles XII., who had, 
 in answer to the Diet, told them "he would send one of his 
 boots to preside over them." His reign plunged the country 
 into the greatest misery, and brought it to the very brink of 
 destruction. 
 
 After his murder kingly absolute power was condemned, 
 and what is called " Swedish freedom," that is to say, the 
 mastership of the nobility, was re-established. All power 
 and official administration, all great privileges and superior 
 rights, fell again into the hands of the nobility. In the acts 
 of the Diet, from 1720 till 1772, "aristocratic ignorance and 
 arrogance were " (according to Arndt's remark) " expressed 
 in the most shameless terms against what were called the 
 lower Estates." The monarchy was a mere misty shadow 
 despicable and impotent. At the same time, two factions of 
 the nobility contended fiercely for dominion. These were the 
 " hats " and the " caps" or the French and Eussian parties. 
 At length Gustavus III. brought about the bloodless revolu- 
 tion of 1772 : the Council was dissolved, and the Kingr aorain 
 
 7 O c5 
 
 ruled as lord. But he was not long a match for the nobility. 
 The officers of his own army betrayed him, and he fell at last, 
 in 1792, the victim of a conspiracy of the nobility. 2 
 
 "Until now," says Geijer, in the year 1845, "no change 
 in the representation has ever taken place in Sweden, unless 
 in and by a revolution ; and of revolutions, after our own 
 fashion, we have had too many." 3 Since the assassination of 
 
 1 GEIJER, pp. 113, 115. * ARDNT, p. 92. 
 
 * " Ueber die innern gesellsch. Verhaltnisse," p. 128.
 
 POSITION OF AFFAIRS IN GERMANY. 91 
 
 Gustavus, Sweden has become the hotbed of intrigue and 
 corruption. Finland was parted with to Russia lost by the 
 treacherous sale of the fortresses Gustavus IV. was de- 
 throned even his posterity were excluded, and a foreign 
 officer, unknown in Sweden, was preferred, to be the founder 
 of a new dynasty, to the descendants of Vasa. The acqui- 
 sition of Norway continuing independent was no compen- 
 sation for the loss of Finland. Sweden now stands powerless 
 before the mighty Northern Colossus, whose cannons can 
 almost reach its capital ; and it can but now abide whatever 
 Russia may be pleased to decide concerning its destiny. 
 
 Mr. Laing, the Scotchman, who has occupied himself much 
 with the political and moral condition of the Swedish people, 
 and both in the one respect and the other, assigns to Sweden 
 the lowest place amongst the nations of Europe, has, although 
 himself a decided Protestant, come to the conclusion that 
 the Reformation has injured more than it has benefited the 
 moral and social state of the Swedish nation ; and that the 
 Lutheran Church has shown itself to be completely powerless 
 in its influence on the people ; whilst the Catholic Church, on 
 the contrary, had been in its time, as he affirms, an effective 
 system of moral discipline. 1 
 
 In Germany it was a natural result of the Reformation 
 that the power of the prince and of the imperial cities (of 
 their magistrates namely) should be increased, and the free- 
 dom of the lower order of nobles, the rural classes, and the 
 peasantry diminished. 2 The German clergy had previously 
 been (unfortunately for themselves) the richest and most 
 powerful in the world, and the change was now so complete, 
 that their Protestant successors became, according to Menzel, 
 the mere serviceable tools of political power, and within a 
 very short time the most insignificant link in the chain with 
 which the new order of things had bound the nation. 3 
 
 A brief survey of the position of affairs in particular Ger- 
 man states will serve to show more clearly the great change 
 
 1 " Tour in Sweden," p. 125. 
 
 2 LEO'S li Universalgeschichte," iii. 208. 3d Edit. 
 * " Xeuere Geschichte der Deutschen," v. 5, 6.
 
 92 MECKLENBURG. 
 
 that the Reformation had effected in the political and social 
 condition of the nations. 
 
 In Mecklenburg the first effect was, that the order of pre- 
 lates disappeared from the Diet. Since the year 1552, only 
 two orders had appeared there the Ritterschaft, or Equestrian 
 Order; and the Landschaft, or Provincial Estates. 
 
 The nobles as well as the dukes had carried off their 
 share of the Church property ; and there now began a system 
 of subjugation and plunder of the peasantry, whose rights, 
 since the suppression of the Church, no one any longer re- 
 presented. The plan was to appropriate the labour of the 
 peasantry for the benefit of the nobles, and to drive them 
 from their farms by the process called " Legan," or laying. 
 At the Diet of Giistrow, in the year 1607, the peasants were 
 declared to be mere colonists, who were bound to give up pos- 
 session of their lands, even of those that they might have held 
 from time immemorial, at the desire of their landlords. In 
 the year 1621, the unlimited disposal of the farm lands was 
 secured to the landlords ; and subsequently, by the ordinances 
 of 1633, 1646, and 1654, the personal freedom of the pea- 
 santry was completely annihilated, and all persons of this 
 class declared to be serfs. 1 As the peasants frequently en- 
 deavoured to escape from this slavery by flight into other 
 countries, they were punished, when they were caught, by 
 flogging, and other severe penalties were inflicted upon them, 
 and occasionally even they were put to death. In the year 
 1660, indeed, the punishment of death was openly affixed to 
 the crime of leaving the principality. " Then," says Boll, 
 " was forged the slave-chain which our peasantry had to drag 
 within a few decades of the present time. Their lot was 
 only in so far better than that of negro slaves, that it was 
 forbidden to sell them singly, like so many head of cattle, by 
 public auction, to the highest bidder, but it happened never- 
 theless often enough that people traded underhand with their 
 serfs, precisely as they did with their horses and cows. 
 
 About the middle of the eighteenth century it is observed 
 
 1 BOLL'S " Geschichte Mecklenburgs." New Brandenburg, 1855 i. 
 p. 352 ; ii. 142-147-48.
 
 POMERANIA. 93 
 
 the peasantry of Mecklenburg were treated by the nobles 
 like the most abject slaves, 1 and they attempted, whenever 
 they could, to make their escape, even to Russia. To pre- 
 vent this, they were again threatened with condemnation to 
 forced labour in the prisons or fortresses ; and " there was," 
 according to the ordinance, "a complete depopulation of our 
 generally thinly-populated country, and the ruin of all the 
 landed estates was greatly to be feared." 2 In the year 1820 
 serfage was abolished. 
 
 In Pomerania, which, down to 1637, had its own Duke, 
 though it was afterwards united with the Margravate of 
 Brandenburg, Protestantism had won the victory so early as 
 1534. Duke Philip had well weighed the project that the 
 new doctrine would bring him " in the wealth of the clergy 
 the numerous prerogatives and the supreme headship of 
 the National Church." 3 The citizen?, say the historians 
 of Pomerania, having attained the spiritual goal (of the 
 Reformation), renounced mere earthly freedom ; and in 
 Stralsund and Stettin all representation of the Commons 
 ceased. The lower population of the towns became " pain- 
 fully sobered from its dream of civil freedom, and looked 
 with contented resignation to heaven." 4 The confiscated 
 Church property was squandered here, as in many other 
 places, in luxury, drink, and gormandizing. The fate of the 
 peasantry in Pomerania was what it had been in Mecklen- 
 burg. Since the Reformation the "laying" of the villages 
 had been carried on with great earnestness and success, and 
 sheep pastures and manors took their place. Sometimes the 
 nobles would lay waste the peasants' farms, inclose them in 
 their estates, and by that means make them free from taxa- 
 tion. 5 The oppression of the peasantry became so atrocious, 
 that even those who still held farms fled the country. 6 But 
 
 1 FRANKE'S " Altes und neues Mecklenburg," i. 102. 
 
 2 BOLL, ii. 569. 
 
 3 BARTH;OLD'S " Geschichte von Pommern," iv. 2, 259. 
 
 4 BARTHOLD, 297-299. 
 
 5 ARNDT, " Gesch. der Leibeigenshaft in Pommern und Riigen," 1803, 
 p. 143. ARNDT, 159, 211 ; BARTHOLD, 365.
 
 94 BRUNSWICK AXD HANOVER. 
 
 it was, according to Barthold, the principle of the Roman 
 law that first brought down the full curse of slavery upon 
 Poraerania. In the Peasant Ordinance of 1616, 1 they 
 were declared to be "serfs without any civil rights," and 
 preachers were compelled to proclaim fugitive peasants from 
 the pulpit. The peasants whose farms were seized by the 
 nobles were in general completely plundered ; and the Pome- 
 ranian jurist and noble, Balthazar, confessed, in the year 
 1779, whilst in Germany the original serfs had become almost 
 free, in Pomerania the ancient methods of establishing serf- 
 dom had increased. And down to the present century 
 complaints were made of the desolation of the country, and 
 the thinness of the population. 
 
 In the territories of Brunswick and Hanover it is very 
 evident how the new absolute ecclesiastical power of the 
 princes, simultaneously with the substitution of the Roman 
 law for the German, which took place subsequently to the 
 Reformation, undermined the ancient liberties of the nation, 
 and paved the way for the bureaucratic mode of government 
 and arbitrary power. The judges and magistrates, taken 
 from the rural districts, were gradually supplanted by lawyers, 
 salaried as princely counsellors ; and cases formerly de- 
 cided by precedent and the law of the country, were now 
 settled by Roman law. 2 The towns lost the independence 
 they had inherited (Brunswick alone retained it for some time 
 longer), "and the rulers, supported by learned disciples of the 
 Roman law, exercised an arbitrary authority before unknown." 
 The confiscated Church property sufficed, at least for some 
 time, for a luxurious and extravagant mode of life in the 
 palaces, and a great increase in the number of attendants. 
 In the courts of law, for the speedy verbal method of trans- 
 acting business, was substituted a tedious, long-winded 
 written process. 8 Down to the middle of the seventeenth 
 
 1 DAHXERT, " Urkunden-Sarnmlung," iii. 835. 
 
 * HAVEMANN, " Geschichte der Lande Braunschweig und Liineburg," 
 1855, ii. 479. u With all these complaints of the state of the country," 
 says SPITTLER (" Gesch. von Hannover," i. 347), "the Kouian law 
 obtained a complete victory." * HAVEMAXX, ii. 515.
 
 THE PRUSSIAN TERRITORIES. 95 
 
 century, the cities and the knightly order offered some 
 resistance to the measureless extravagance, oppressive taxes, 
 and demands of the Court ; but the old beneficent institution 
 of Administrative Councils chosen from various orders nobles, 
 prelates, and others, \vho had mediated between sovereigns 
 and their subjects, and whose decisions in cases of dispute 
 were binding also on the princes now fell to decay through 
 the absence of the spiritual members, consequent on the 
 Reformation, and became gradually supplanted by a 
 Princely College. 1 The habits of extravagance engendered 
 and encouraged by the robbery of the Church property 
 occasioned a complete disorder in the finances of the Princi- 
 palities ; the princes took to debasing the coinage, and other 
 immoral means. The nuisance and scandal of " money- 
 clipping," combined with the general luxury and passion for 
 gormandizing and drinking, completed the ruin of thousands. 2 
 In place of the decisions of the Administrative Councils 
 came ordinances of the governments (first, in the Principa- 
 lity of Calenberg, in 1651); and soon after this the last 
 traces of the ancient freedom and independence of the 
 Estates was annihilated. " The clergy," says Havemann, 
 " had been long (that is, since the Reformation) sunk into 
 dependence, and the nobles had entered into the service of 
 the Court. The cities were languishing for want of public 
 spirit ; and in the after-pains of the great German War, as 
 well as of corrupt internal government, the ' free ' princely 
 power of modern States was unfolding itself over the sad 
 remains of the ancient life and liberty of the Estates." 3 
 
 In the Brandenburg and Prussian territories the condition 
 of the Estates, even after the Reformation, remained for a 
 time strong and unbroken. Duke Albert of Prussia was a 
 
 O 
 
 man feeble in character, and had, in the consciousness 
 of his very doubtful title, been fearful in his dealings 
 with the Estates ; and the Elector Joachim was, by his own 
 extravagance and that of his paramour, rendered constantly 
 
 HAVEMANX, iii. 112. * SPITTLER, i. 380. 
 
 3 " Geschichte der Lande Braunschw. und Liineburg," iii. 172.
 
 96 CONDITION OF THE PEASANTS. 
 
 dependent on them for the payment of his debts. 1 His son, 
 John George, found himself (1571 to 1598) in the same 
 pecuniary dependence. The condition of the peasants had 
 become more and more miserable 9 since the Church had fallen ; 
 and the nobles and princes were the only powers in the country. 
 After the seventeenth century, the princely power, by the im- 
 poverishment of the nobles and cities, continually struggled 
 onwards to unrestrained dominion. Military executions, for- 
 merly quite unknown in Germany, became frequent, especially 
 for non-payment of imposts. The Estates were not summoned 
 to meet, and the prince imposed taxes by his own autho- 
 rity. Stenzil has not allowed it to pass unobserved, how, 
 in Prussia also, the princely power being above that of 
 the Church, led to the practice, that affairs of the higher 
 police and the administration, which were formerly discussed 
 and determined by the Estates, should be more constantly 
 decided by princes on their own authority, and settled in the 
 cabinet, 3 so that the Estates became continually more insig- 
 nificant, and the government in an increasing ratio more 
 despotic and bureaucratic. 
 
 After the reign of the Elector Frederick-William (1640- 
 1688), the absolute arbitrary power of the government was 
 developed more systematically. A General Diet was not 
 called after 1656 ; and the oppressive taxes imposed not only 
 without the consent, but against the protest of the Estates, 
 were extorted by the Elector with military violence so that 
 the peasants left their farms by troops, and turned robbers. 
 Peasants and nobles fled to Poland, twelve thousand farms 
 lay uncultivated, and the taxes of many thousands of acres 
 were greater than their produce. The Estates of the Duke- 
 dom of Prussia, who had imagined themselves still protected by 
 the treaties with Poland, asserted that all that was left them 
 of their ancient freedom was "the right of complaining of their 
 ruin ;" and they threatened to emigrate. In the Markgravate, 
 the Estates were degraded into a mere credit institution. 4 
 
 1 GALLUS, " Gesch. der Mark Brandenburg," iii. 94. 
 8 STENZEL, u Gesch. d. Preuss. Staats.," i. 347. 
 s " Gesch. des Preuss. Staats." i. 359. 
 4 STENZEL, ii. 422.
 
 THE LUTHERAN CLERGY IN PRUSSIA. 97 
 
 It was an unexampled tyranny, and deeds worse than those 
 of the French, when laying waste the Palatinate, were perpe- 
 trated by a prince whom persons afterwards agreed and in 
 his dominions, too to call " the Great ! " 
 
 Prussia was, according to Stenzel's expression, on the 
 way to a complete Asiatic despotism, which would stifle 
 everything noble and beautiful. To maintain soldiers, and 
 to gratify a passion for the chase (for which the Elector 
 kept three thousand people in his pay), 1 were the objects for 
 which the country was exhausted, and many thousands 
 brought to beggary, whilst, at the same time, the subjec- 
 tion and serfdom of the peasants was maintained in all its 
 severity. 
 
 Frederick I., the parade-loving first king of Prussia, con- 
 tinued the system of his father ; and the Estates, where they 
 still subsisted, had no other function than, willingly or un- 
 willingly, to vote taxes and guarantee loans. 2 Frederick 
 William I., however, (1713 1740) surpassed even his grand- 
 father ; and with his accession began in Prussia the reign of 
 a petty, capricious, and often cruel despot; 3 a harsh, narrow- 
 minded man, filled with the notion of his own unlimited 
 power, and eager only for money and soldiers, who beat his 
 judges with sticks, to compel them to alter their decisions 
 according to his wishes; who had men hanged "without 
 prolix law-suits," and who decreed, that if a deserter should 
 be harboured in any hamlet or place too poor for a pecuniary 
 fine, the chief inhabitants should be made "to drag carts" 
 for some months. 4 Under this king, the Lutheran clergy 
 had to drink to the very dregs the bitter cup of monarchical 
 Church supremacy. The king himself undertook reforms, in 
 ecclesiastical as well as worldly affairs, in an equally ignorant 
 and arbitrary spirit. He dictated to the Lutheran clergy, 
 as their spiritual head, what subjects they were to treat upon 
 in their pulpits, and what they were to be silent about ; as well 
 
 1 STEXZEL, ii. 456. * STEXZEL, iii. 196. 
 
 8 " n faut donner une victime au bourreau," said the nobles, speaking 
 of him. MORJENSTERN, " Ueber Fr. Wilh. den Ersten." Brunswick, 
 1793, p. 140. FORSTER'S " Friedrich Wilhelm I.," ii. 202. 
 
 H
 
 98 DESPOTISM OF FREDERICK II. 
 
 as what ceremonies were to be -observed at divine service, 
 and what to be omitted. Thus, for instance, in 1729, he 
 forbid the Lutherans to carry a crucifix or a cross before the 
 body, at funerals, as the custom was known to bear a vexatious 
 relic of Papistry." l 
 
 His son, Frederick II., was enabled, by his own genius, 
 and the utmost exertion of all the energies of his people, and 
 all the resources of the country, to raise Prussia into the 
 rank of a powerful state of European importance. His 
 government, also, was a pure despotism ; but it was, in the 
 French sense of the word, " an enlightened, philosophical 
 despotism," and the despot was a man of powerful mind a 
 born ruler of men who knew how to inspire his people with 
 a spirit not so much national as devoted to the Prussian 
 state. The most numerous portion of the population remained, 
 however, in the same oppressed, miserable condition as 
 before. The greater part of the rural inhabitants were so 
 entirely without personal freedom, that Buchholtz compares 
 their condition to that of a West Indian colony. 2 Frederick 
 decreed, not only that discharged soldiers should again 
 become subject to their former landlords, but even that their 
 wives, widows, and children should be submitted to the same 
 destiny. 3 Dietereci,the Prussian government statist, describ- 
 ing in 1848 the state of the country in 1806, exclaims, at the 
 conclusion of his portraiture, " How many restraints are there 
 on the freedom of the individual ! How many difficulties 
 are thrown in the way of a man wishing to exercise his 
 energies to improve his condition, and earn as much aa 
 possible ! How much personal dependence is there of one 
 on another. What arbitrary authority ! what violence on 
 the part of the privileged towards the unprivileged or 
 oppressed ! What heavy taxes and personal burdens are 
 laid on the lower classes ! 4 One kind of liberty, however, 
 
 1 STENZEL, iii. 474. See also p. 475, the description of the so-called 
 " Priest Review " in Berlin. 
 
 * " Gemalde des gesellch. Lebens im Konigr. Preussen," i. 19. 
 
 * Verordnung Vom., 7th April, 1777. 
 
 ; Ueber Preussische Zustande." Berlin, 1848, p. 13. 
 
 4 (I
 
 CHURCH AND STATE OPPRESSION IN SAXONY. 99 
 
 Frederick had left the people. Every one was allowed to 
 seek salvation in his own way ; and every one might, if he 
 pleased, after the example of the sovereign, announce himself 
 as a mocker of religion. 
 
 In the Electorate of Saxony, it is very evident how, after 
 the Reformation, the princely power over the whole Church 
 went hand-in-hand with the increase of taxation the oppres- 
 sion of the lower classes, the extinction of ancient liberties, 
 and the ever-growing vice of over-government. The struggle 
 between the Lutherans and Calvinists, which broke out 
 twice under Augustus and Christian I., led to a long series 
 of acts of violence, to depositions and banishments, to the 
 dungeon, the rack, and the scaffold. The government intruded 
 itself into every sphere of life, in order to root out more 
 effectually Calvinism, which had got into the land, and to insure 
 the strictest observance of Lutheranism, which was further 
 secured by a new book of Faith, and an oath to be taken upon 
 it. People became accustomed to violent modes of proceeding, 
 and to a severe and unmerciful treatment of those who were 
 subjects. The cities lost their former independence, the 
 Estates had to submit to the most oppressive laws of the 
 chase, 1 and even, in 1612, the introduction of a secret 
 police ; ' and they were obliged more and more to limit their 
 functions to the granting of taxes, and in undertaking the 
 payment of the Prince's debts. At the Diet of Torgau, in 
 1555, the Estates declared, "it vrt.s not possible for them to 
 pay the new excise on liquor their lands would become waste, 
 and they would be utterly ruined." But it was maintained, 
 nevertheless, and, in 1582, with the addition of a greatly 
 increased land-tax. 3 The results were such, that even one 
 of the Court preachers declared " that the people were so 
 destitute, that they had scarcely the means of keeping them- 
 selves alive;" and a contemporary reports "that in 1580 
 the people were so steeped in poverty and hunger, that they 
 
 1 All dogs, not belonging to persons whose occupation is the chace, were 
 to have a fore-foot cut off. BOTTICHER, ii. 67. 
 
 2 BOTTICHER, ii. 141. 
 
 3 GRETSCHEI,, tl Gesch. des .Sachs. Yolkes und Staates," ii. 70. 
 
 H2
 
 100 THE DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH. 
 
 had eaten the husks in brewhouses." 1 "It is not to be 
 denied," says Arnold, " that tyranny, injustice, and extortions 
 had risen to the highest point since the Reformation." 2 
 
 I refrain from entering into any further consideration of 
 the state of affairs in Germany in Hesse, Wiirtemberg, and 
 still smaller states. It is sufficient to quote StenzePs remark : 
 " Whilst the unlimited power of the princes advanced in 
 many other German countries, no less rapidly than in 
 Prussia, the produce of the subject's toil was, in that 
 country, lavished upon mistresses, favourites, courtiers, cham- 
 berlains, opera singers, dancers, and other objects of princely 
 caprice, and ministrants to princely pleasure, without any of 
 it being expended on the higher purposes of a government. 3 
 
 Let us now turn to those countries which accepted Protest- 
 antism in its Calvinistic form, amongst which the Nether- 
 lands and Scotland appear the most prominent. England, 
 with its Church like to none other, is to be considered by 
 itself. We will not speak of Switzerland, since there 
 Catholic and Protestant cantons subsist together, and no one 
 will maintain that civil liberty has flourished more in the 
 latter than in the former. 
 
 The Netherlands, that dismembered portion of Germany 
 which came forth from the struggle with Spain, in the form 
 of a Republic, but had barely maintained itself as such, 
 through the internal contests and factions of two hundred 
 years, and had vacillated between the "republican" constitu- 
 tion desired and represented by the city aristocracy, and the 
 " monarchical," represented by the Stadtholder-General and 
 the House of Orange. Had Calvinism become generally preva- 
 lent in the country, the power of that house would have been 
 developed, and confirmed as a stable religious or political 
 despotism. "The Dutch Reformed Church," says Niebuhr, 
 " has always, wherever it was free, become coarsely tyran- 
 nical, and has never, either for the spirit it manifested, or 
 the good dispositions of its teachers, deserved any great 
 esteem. The Calvinistic religion has everywhere, in England, 
 
 1 " Jenisii Annal. Annaeberg,'' p. 45. * " Kirchenhistorie," i. 792. 
 
 * " Geschichte des Preuss. Staates," ii. 4,
 
 POLITICO-ECCLESIASTICAL STRUGGLES. 101 
 
 in Holland, as in Geneva, set up its blood-stained scaffold as 
 well as the Inquisition, without its possessing a single one of 
 the merits of the Catholic. 1 
 
 The uncontrolled rule of Calvinism, and with it that of the 
 House of Orange, was prevented, partly by the formation of 
 new sects, partly by the continued adherence to Catholicity 
 of a considerable portion of the population, which was, 
 indeed, robbed of every civil and ecclesiastical right ; but 
 being, by that very means, withdrawn from the influence of 
 party spirit, threw its weight as far as it had any into the 
 scale of the Orange party and the Stadtholdership, and 
 strengthened the opposition to the domination of the Calvin- 
 istic preacher-party. The new Arminian doctrine, which 
 opposed the Calvinistic, brought about the first politico- 
 ecclesiastical struggle. With the execution of Olden-Bar- 
 neveldt, the imprisonment of the Arminians, and the holding 
 of the Dordrecht Synod, the United Calvinist and Orange 
 party obtained a complete victory ; but the party of the 
 States, the chiefs of which were disposed to Arminianism, 
 or at all events friendly to the Arminians, rose again 
 after the death of Maurice. And then, when Holland declared 
 the Provincial Estates the sovereigns of the country, 
 William II. took up arms ; and it seemed to him that he 
 would be able to succeed in subjecting the republic to monar- 
 chical dominion; but his bold plan was frustrated, in 1650, 
 by death. The States party now obtained a transitory 
 preponderance, and attempted, by its " Perpetual Edict," to 
 get rid of the Orange party and their Stadtholdership. 
 The contest led to a bloody conflict. Young William III., 
 of Orange, was brought forward by the Calvinistic preachers, 
 and the populace under their guidance ; and the murder of 
 the brothers De Witt, which William had sanctioned and 
 turned to account, confirmed his authority. 2 When, how- 
 ever, he became King of England, and governed the Nether- 
 lands from thence, there arose in Zeeland and elsewhere an 
 energetic resistance. 
 
 1 " Nachgelassene Schriften." Hamburg, 1842, p. 288. 
 * VAX KAMFEN, u Geschichte d. Niederlande," ii. 322.
 
 102 THE KEFORMATION IN SCOTLAND. 
 
 Their great, and, on the whole, their successful wars, their 
 naval supremacy, their foreign conquests all those things 
 turned the energy and the attention of the nation to external 
 affairs, and domestic dissensions were thereby checked. But 
 with the eighteenth century decay set in. The selfishness of 
 the provinces asserted itself against the country at large, and 
 that of the cities against the provinces. Eagerness for money, 
 a narrow, shopkeeping greed, and party spirit, remained to the 
 end of the century the chief motive powers of the people. 
 There were no longer any men of weighty character; there 
 was only a crowd of little tyrants, and at the same time, as 
 Niebuhr observes, " not only the ruin of the States but the 
 decline of the nation was hastened by the madness of party 
 spirit." Towards the end of the century even foreign aid 
 was called in, and the Netherlanders saw without shame 
 Prussians, French and English in the heart of their country. 
 The Prussians in 1787 conquered Amsterdam, and procured 
 for " the Orangemen " the triumph they had desired. The 
 "patriots" fled to France, and in 1795, without striking 
 a blow, took possession of the whole country. From this 
 time forth, the French revolutionary doings with clubs, 
 Jacobinism, and all their appurtenances were mimicked 
 by a people who had now lost all character of their own. 
 The Netherlands became the Batavian Republic, after that 
 a French kingdom, next a French province, and finally 
 but by the aid of foreign powers again an independent 
 kingdom. 
 
 The freedom enjoyed in the Netherlands was essentially 
 determined by the circumstance that Calvinism had lost its 
 great authority ; and we see in Scotland, where Calvinism in 
 its most genuine form had been introduced by Knox, a simi- 
 lar result. Up to the end of the sixteenth century the civil 
 condition of the country was very unsettled. It had long 
 been the prey of feudal violence and private feuds, which 
 James I., towards the end of -his reign in 1624, boasted of 
 having suppressed. Then came the period of the struggle 
 against the " episcopal constitution " and " the Liturgy," 
 which Charles I. wished to force upon the Scots. VV r ilh the
 
 CALVINISTIC SPIRITUAL TYRANNY. 103 
 
 victory obtained by Scotch Calvinism, was that state of Pro- 
 testant power and supremacy restored, which the Reformation 
 in Scotland, according to the intentions of its founder, had 
 established, since the Reformer Knox declared that the " or- 
 dering and reformation of religion specially appertains to the 
 civil magistrate," 1 and the punishment of death was on two 
 different occasions affixed to the celebration of mass. And 
 now began such a system of spiritual tyranny, and such 
 merciless meddling in private and family life, as has never 
 been seen anywhere else, except in North America. 
 
 The Presbyteries extended their power so far, and wielded 
 the terrible weapon of excommunication, which amounted 
 almost to complete expulsion and banishment from society, 
 with such effect, that no one could feel himself secure, and 
 that almost every action of life might be brought before the 
 Presbyterian forum. 8 As a matter of course, every attempt 
 in a spiritual direction to break through the narrow limits 
 of Calvinistic views was crushed in the germ. 
 
 It has often been maintained that the Calvinistic Church 
 Constitution was, before all others, popular and favourable to 
 freedom, because it afforded so much room to the lay element 
 in the Presbyteries, and gave it so much influence even in 
 higher matters. Experience has shown, however, that no 
 other Church form ever led to so potent and intolerable a 
 tyranny, or irritated men everywhere to such strong opposi- 
 tion ; for which reason, wherever it came, it sowed bitterness 
 and discord, and was unable to maintain itself long. The 
 institution of the Presbytery, as a tribunal of morals, has never 
 been effectively introduced except in small towns and villages, 
 where everyone knows the domestic circumstances of every 
 other, and stands connected with many others by ties of kindred, 
 and everyone is influenced by motives of friendship or hos- 
 
 1 " To the civil magistrate specially appertains the ordering and 
 reformation of religion." " Westminster Review," vol. liv., p. 453. 
 
 2 A striking picture of this state of things has been lately given by 
 ROBERT CHAMBERS, in his " Domestic Annals of Scotland, from the 
 Reformation to the Revolution." Edinburgh, 1858.
 
 104 THE PRESBYTERY " LAY ELDERS." 
 
 tility. When individuals are chosen in such cases as " lay 
 elders " to sit in judgment on their fellow-townsmen, then 
 three evils are unavoidably incurred. In the first place, these 
 men are exposed to the strongest temptation to abuse such a 
 completely discretionary and vaguely denned power to pri- 
 vate purposes of personal advantage, or for the satisfaction 
 of personal dislike or vengeance. In the second place, a 
 system of espionage is established in every such community, 
 of meddling intrusion into the secrets of private life. De- 
 nunciations, tale-bearing, malice, and hatred are all veiled 
 under the appearance of religious zeal. In the third place, 
 persons invested with such power become the objects of ge- 
 neral displeasure, suspicion, and hatred. Their externally 
 religious life, which had determined their election, appears 
 now as hypocrisy, as a calculated means of advancing them- 
 selves. People will consent to allow a certain amount of moral 
 and religious authority to a man who has received the seal of 
 a special vocation, and occupies a position apart from the 
 business of every-day life ; but they will not consent to sub- 
 ject themselves in religious affairs to one who is entirely their 
 equal, and who like themselves is engaged in worldly business 
 and the care of their families. That in the age when these 
 religions and churches were constructed, there should have 
 been devised an institution like the Presbytery, with lay 
 elders and tribunals of morals, is one of the many instances 
 of short-sightedness, and want of practical sagacity and 
 knowledge of human nature, that were then exhibited by the 
 Reformers. 
 
 This state of things had not, however, a lengthened dura- 
 tion ; for, from 1660 to 1688, the Calvinist Church of Scot- 
 land was compelled, by the renewed efforts of the English 
 Government, tointroduce the Anglican form of worship; and to 
 put forth its utmost energies for the preservation of its own 
 existence. Calvinism was, indeed, again victorious with the 
 Revolution of 1688 ; but an Act of Parliament of 1712, by 
 which the assistance of the temporal arm was refused to 
 Presbyterian tribunals, made the re-establishment of the 
 former tyranny impossible, and at the same time the
 
 THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. ' 105 
 
 Calvinists were compelled to tolerate the establishment 
 of an Episcopal Church by the side of their own in Scot- 
 land. 
 
 England had in its Catholic days, and with the powerful 
 assistance of the Church, laid the foundations of its political 
 freectom, and carried the edifice far towards completion. It 
 was the Church that the nation had to thank for the Magna 
 Charta of 1215 ; for the gradual amalgamation and equaliza- 
 tion of the conqueror and the conquered, of the Norman and 
 Anglo-Saxon races, and also for the abolition of " villenage." 
 The first sparks of the religious conflagration that had 
 broken out in Germany had just kindled on the British 
 island, when Henry VIII. conceived the plan of opening the 
 way for himself to unlimited monarchy, by the complete 
 subjugation of the Church. How he succeeded in this is 
 well known. He and the succeeding princes of the House 
 of Tudor, or those who ruled in their name, could manage 
 the National Church as seemed good to them and they made 
 abundant use of their power. It was not till the reign of 
 Edward VI. that complete Protestantism, as it had developed 
 itself on the Continent, was introduced into England. Eli- 
 zabeth restored the work of her brother, or rather of his 
 guardians and advisers (after it had been interrupted by 
 Mary), but with some important modifications. The Pro- 
 testant doctrine was so foreign to the nation, that no English- 
 man in the sixteenth century originated a single idea on the 
 subject, nor added anything to the doctrine as it was brought 
 from the Continent. Nothing more was done than that the 
 ready-made doctrine, as it had been stamped in Geneva and 
 Zurich, was imposed on the people by those above them. 
 By force, and with the assistance of the arms of foreign mer- 
 cenaries, were the people compelled to renounce the Catholic 
 religion, and submit to the creed of Bullinger and Calvin. 
 Even such a laudatory historian of the English Reformation 
 as Bishop Burnet, confesses that all the efforts of the Go- 
 vernment to overcome the dislike of the people to Protest- 
 antism had been in vain, and that a troop of German mer- 
 cenaries had to be brought over from Calais, in 1549, to con-
 
 106 THE NEW STATE CHURCH. 
 
 quer their resistance. 1 " With eleven-twelfths of the people," 
 said at that time Paget to the Duke of Somerset, the Pro- 
 tector, " the new religion has found no entrance." 2 
 
 The resistance of the Catholic people was indeed over- 
 come, under Edward VI. as well as under Elizabeth, but it 
 was found still more difficult, or rather impossible, to establish 
 the unity of the Protestant Church, or prevent separations, 
 on the basis of the Reformation. 
 
 The new State Church, with its peculiar character and hete- 
 rogeneous elements, was of no party, and belonged to no one 
 of the systems then present ; but owed its existence, on the one 
 hand, to the exertions to afford to the still preponderating 
 Catholics, by the retention of some externals the priestly 
 vestments and certain customs an appearance of what was 
 traditional and Catholic; and on the other hand, to the per- 
 sonal inclinations of the Queen, who, being a Protestant, 
 more from policy than from any preference for the doctrine, 
 desired to retain as many elements of the old religion as 
 possible, at least in the liturgy and the administration of the 
 sacraments. The men who stood at the head of the new 
 Church, however, Parker, Grindal, Jewell, Nowell, and 
 others, were all decided Calvinists, as well as Puritans, 
 though they were at the same time very obedient, palace 
 theologians. In the nation they had no genuine support ; 
 the portion of the people disposed to Catholicity, which was 
 now constantly decreasing, saw in the new Court and State 
 Church a less evil than the yoke of hated Calvinism; whilst 
 zealous Protestants were all at heart puritanically disposed 
 that is, they reasoned logically that the exterior of a Church 
 should express its inner life, and that a Calvinistic doctrine 
 required a Calvinistic constitution and a Calvinistic form of 
 
 1 " History of the English Reformation." London, 1681, fol., iii. 
 190-196. " In Cornwall an insurrection broke out in 1547 against the 
 Protector, who wished to make England Protestant. The people 
 sought to be allowed to obey the decisions of the General Councils 
 of the Church." " Quarterly Review," 1857, vol. cii. p. 319. In 1569 
 there followed in the North a great rising against the yoke of Pro- 
 testantism. It was only crushed by wholesale executions. 
 
 2 STKYPE'S " Ecclesiastical Memorials," ii. Appendix H. H.
 
 A ROYAL PRIESTHOOD. 107 
 
 divine worship. The State Church had therefore for fifty 
 years no theological literature of its own, but subsisted 
 entirely on the productions of the Schools of Zurich, Stras- 
 burg, and Geneva. It was not till 1594, when Richard 
 Hooker came forward with his celebrated book on the con- 
 stitution of the Church, that any attempt was made to afford 
 it a dogmatic foundation ; and here, in a necessary contradis- 
 tinction to Calvinism, he endeavoured to make the breach with 
 the old Church as trifling as possible, and so found himself 
 irresistibly impelled into a path leading back to Catholicity. 
 
 Another extremely important point of dispute now came 
 into discussion. The Court reformers of the Tudors, Cranmer 
 at their head, had not kept to the theory of other Protestants 
 (Lutherans as well as Calvinists) that the civil authorities 
 had also the right of deciding on matters of religion, of 
 ordering Church affairs, and, if need were, of reforming the 
 Church. They had gone further, and, according to them, 
 the King was the representative of God upon earth, in the 
 sense that, as High Priest, he was the chief teacher of Church 
 doctrine, and the source of every power relating to 
 Church service. 1 The archbishops Cranmer and Parker 
 maintained that princes could make as good priests 
 as bishops, and that a person once nominated a priest 
 by the king stood in need of no further ordination. 
 They were accustomed, indeed, to except from the func- 
 tions of their royal priesthood the performance of divine 
 service and the administration of the sacraments. It was 
 said the King or the Queen made no claim to these func- 
 tions ; but it is evident, as a living theologian of the Anglican 
 Church has correctly remarked, that this was the only ex- 
 ception the Court reformers wished to make, and that they 
 claimed for the monarch every other ecclesiastical power. 2 
 In accordance with these principles was the reformation of 
 
 1 " The vicar of God, the expositor of Catholic verity, the channel of 
 sacramental graces" thus does Macaulay quite correctly express this 
 theory in his " History of England." Tauchnitz Ed., i. 54. 
 
 2 PRETYMAN, " The Church of England and Erastianism and the 
 Reformation." London, 1854, p. 34.
 
 108 THE ROYAL SUPREMACY. 
 
 the English Church carried through ; the bishops consented 
 to receive from the Crown every kind of spiritual power, and 
 allowed those powers to be limited or extended at the plea- 
 sure of the Crown ; and as such powers were supposed to 
 expire with the death of the bestower, they had to be re- 
 newed at every new accession to the throne. 1 
 
 Elizabeth would not indeed appear, as her father and 
 brother had done, as possessor of the high priestly dignity ; 
 but she and the Parliament together confirmed the principle 
 of the boundless power of the monarchy of England over 
 the collective Church, and that all jurisdiction concerning the 
 doctrine, discipline, or reformation of the Church should be 
 vested in the Crown for ever. 2 When James I. was on the 
 point of ascending the English throne, and was informed for 
 the first time of the full extent of the inheritance left him 
 by his predecessors, and of the greatness of his royal prero- 
 gative, exclaimed, "I do what I please, then. I make the 
 Law and the Gospel !" 3 
 
 The new Protestant Church became in this way, for a 
 hundred and fifty years, the slavish servant of the monarchy, 
 the persistent enemy of public liberty. 4 The character of the 
 English people seems to have undergone a complete meta- 
 morphosis. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, two 
 foreign historians, Froissart and Comines, had described 
 them as the freest and proudest nation in Europe, the one 
 that would least endure oppression. And what had now 
 this nation become? Its Parliament subjected its holiest 
 
 1 David Lewis has, in his " Notes on the nature and extent of the 
 Royal Supremacy in the Anglican Church," given from original sources 
 abundant proofs of this fact. London, 1847. See p. 29 especially. 
 
 * " Yet it was not in fact the Queen or her successors, but the Parlia- 
 ment, which formally claimed for itself infallibility, by adding to the Act 
 concerning the Royal Supremacy a clause to the effect, that no act or 
 decision of the present Parliament on religious matters shall ever be 
 altered or regarded as erroneous." See the passage in u Lewis," p. 37. 
 
 8 Literally, in his Scotch dialect, "Do I mak the judges? Do I mak 
 the Bishops? Then God's Wauns! I mak what likes me law and 
 Gospel." u Hist. Essays," by JOJIN FORSTKR. London, 1858, i. 227. 
 
 4 MACAULAY'S " Essays." Paris, 1843, p. 73.
 
 SUBJECTION OF THE CHURCH. 109 
 
 interests, the most solemn rights of conscience, to the arbi- 
 trary authority of a woman ; its Church lay humbly at the 
 feet of the monarchy, preaching the absolute power of the 
 Crown, and unconditional passive obedience to the will of 
 kings. If it is remembered, too, that the Government had 
 at the time no standing army in the country, the matter will 
 appear still more striking; but the condition of affairs and 
 the state of parties well explain all. The Government, by 
 supporting itself on two, or in fact on three parties, could 
 with their help overpower, first, the adherents of the old 
 religion, and then one of the factions which had lent their 
 help for that purpose. The State Church had of course in 
 its favour all those who had carried off a portion of the 
 spoils of the convents, and of the ancient Church namely, 
 the court nobility, and a large proportion of the rural gentry; 
 and as long as the object was to destroy the Catholic Church, 
 and to oppress its adherents, it had all the Protestants for 
 its friends and helpers. United, they would have been 
 strong enough to effect a complete Reformation, according to 
 the Swiss view, and erect a Calvinistic Church establish- 
 ment; but by means of the bait of Church dignities and 
 benefices, the Court succeeded in dividing them. The 
 majority of the theologians accepted, along with the Cal- 
 vinistic dogma, the liturgical and sacramental constituents 
 that had been retained from the old Church, partly in the 
 hope that if once this dogma should take root in the minds 
 of the people, these papistical remains would fall away of 
 themselves, or could be easily stript off. The genuine Cal- 
 vinists found too late that they had given their assistance to 
 the erection of an absolute and oppressive Church and State 
 power, and that the rope they had helped to put round the 
 necks of the Catholics was now pressing on their own throats; 
 and then resistance was broken, under Elizabeth, by the 
 dungeon, the rack, and the scaffold. In the Lower House 
 sat only Protestants, since the Catholics had been excluded : 
 but amongst these were not a few zealous Puritans, and yet 
 laws were passed which affixed the most oppressive and cruel 
 punishments to the slightest deviation from Elizabeth's
 
 110 THE ORDINANCES OF QUEEN ELIZABETH. 
 
 Church even the mere absence from Divine service. It 
 was, indeed, a great advantage to the Government that 
 the Calvinists were united among themselves, for whilst 
 Cartwright and his followers were developing the Presby- 
 terian system, the more thorough-going Brovvnists became 
 the harbingers of the subsequent Congregationalists. On 
 the whole, the state of things was such that, according to 
 Macaulay's expression, had it lasted, the Reformation would 
 have been the greatest curse, in a political point of view, 
 that had ever fallen upon England. 1 The English people, 
 says another historian, had sunk to the lowest degree of 
 civil and political degradation to which it is possible to press 
 down the moral and physical energy of the Anglo-Saxon 
 race. 2 
 
 The Queen had established her court of Inquisition, 3 which 
 decided upon heresy and orthodoxy, and imposed pecuniary 
 fines, the dungeon, and the rack, at its pleasure. From this, 
 her favourite tribunal, she decreed suspensions or removals 
 over the third part of the whole clergy, on account of non- 
 conformity. She made it an offence for several persons to 
 meet together to read the Holy Scriptures. " No one shall 
 be allowed," she said, in a letter addressed to the Archbishop 
 of Canterbury, " to depart, in the smallest degree, to the 
 right or the left of the line drawn by my ordinances." 4 Her 
 statesmen andlawyers maintained, and the House of Commons 
 readily admitted, that she might exalt herself above all 
 laws ; could restrain all rights and liberties ; that, by means 
 of her Dispensing Power, she could set aside every Act of 
 Parliament ; and that her prerogative had no limits. 5 Ac- 
 cording to these doctrines she reigned; but tyrannical as 
 were many of her proceedings, she was, and remained, in a 
 high degree, a popular sovereign. Her subjects did homage 
 to her intellectual superiority ; they knew that under her 
 England was powerful and respected in Europe ; that it stood 
 
 1 " Essays," p. 153. 
 
 * MACGREGOR, u History of the British Empire." Londou, 1852, i., 
 p. cclxx. Court of High Commission. 
 
 4 MACGREGOR, i., eccl. xxi. * Dr. EWES, p. 649.
 
 CATHOLIC LEANING OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 1 1 1 
 
 at the head of Protestant states and Protestant interests 
 throughout the world ; and they bore from her what a feebler 
 or more narrow-minded monarch would not have dared to 
 attempt. 
 
 One circumstance of the highest importance prevented the 
 English people from sinking into the condition of the Pro- 
 testant continent. The country had retained in constant use 
 its old Germanic laws. The Roman law could never gain an 
 entrance into England ; no class of Roman jurists, no officials 
 trained in the views of Roman jurisprudence, could ever be 
 formed there. England received no Consistorium, after the 
 German pattern ; it never became a bureaucratically-governed 
 country ; and it kept clear of the continental bureaucracy, 
 with its ever-increasing numbers of government officers and 
 places. Notwithstanding the exceptional courts created in 
 consequence of the Reformation, England had, on the whole, 
 maintained the German independence of its courts of law 
 against the power of the Crown. 
 
 Under the first Stuarts James I. and Charles I. the 
 seeds scattered in two opposite directions ripened to their 
 harvest. In the State Church, though it took part in the 
 Dordrecht Synod, the aversion to Calvinism was constantly 
 on the increase ; and in the same degree arose the wish and 
 the effort to return towards the ancient Church. The anti- 
 Calvinistic doctrine, the ecclesiastical-political regulations, 
 the theory of an Episcopacy of divine institution, and of 
 the Apostolic succession all this gave to the Anglican 
 Church a more Catholic colouring. The Church of England 
 was no longer to pass for one of the various Protestant, 
 communities, but for an improved and purified branch of 
 the Catholic Church ; and on this account the wrath of the 
 Calvinists against all this Arminianism and Papistry in the 
 State Church burned the more fiercely. 
 
 The royal supremacy over the Church, now no longer 
 maintained by a powerful, respected, and dreaded woman, 
 but by a petty, pedantic^ and generally despised king, like 
 James I., who was always talking of his divine right and 
 his unlimited prerogative's, sank very low in public opinion. 
 
 \
 
 112 STRUGGLES OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH. 
 
 It was also felt that the Church was destined to serve as the 
 protecting bulwark to the absolute power of the monarchs, 
 and to act as its pliant, tool. Charles the First actually 
 declared that he regarded the Episcopacy as a stronger 
 support of the monarchical power than even the army ; l and 
 thus did the political struggle against royalty become like- 
 wise a struggle against the State Church. The Puritans of 
 Elizabeth's time were now, for the most part, Presbyterians ; 
 and they sought, in the overthrow of the Episcopal order, 
 the establishment of the Calvinistic doctrine, united with 
 stricter Church discipline ; the extermination of the Armin- 
 ianism and Papistry that had made their way into the 
 Church ; the abolition of a liturgy, which had been the source 
 of these evils ; and, finally, they desired to make the Church 
 independent of the Crown. Their influence in the Lower 
 House was strengthened by the " doctrinal Puritans " that 
 is to say, the Calvinistically-disposed members of the State 
 Church. 2 The Independents wished for no further eccle- 
 siastical organisation, but the independence of the several 
 congregations ; and though they were subsequently the most 
 dangerous enemies of the Presbyterians, yet they at first 
 made common cause with them against their common enemies 
 monarchy striving for absolute power, and its subservient 
 implement, the State Church. 
 
 The vicissitudes of the great politico-ecclesiastical struggle 
 are well known. Straflford, Archbishop Laud, King Charles, 
 the three representatives of ecclesiastico-political absolutism, 
 died on the scaffold. The Church fell with the monarchy ; 
 but the hopes of the Presbyterians, that they would be able 
 to overpower all other churches and parties, as in Scotland, 
 and bow the whole English nation under the yoke of genuine 
 Calvinism, were frustrated. Their brief triumph was followed 
 by defeat, under Cromwell's dictatorship ; the Independents 
 rose again, and with them the sects of Baptists and Quakers ; 
 and all sects (with the exception, perhaps, of the Quakers) 
 
 1 MACAULAY'S " Essays," p. 86. 
 
 * See SANDFORD'S " Studies and Illustrations of the great Rebellion." 
 London, 1858, p. 77.
 
 IMPOSITION OF THE TEST OATH. 113 
 
 desired to rule, and to persecute, and oppress the rest. Of 
 the State Church it could hardly be said that it had been 
 crushed into a sect, for it had ceased to exist. 
 
 With the Restoration, however, it revived ; it rose into full 
 glory as a National and Parliamentary Church, with a royal 
 head-bishop, and once more it was able to plant its foot on 
 the neck of its enemies. So violent was the re-action against 
 the intolerable oppression Calvinism, in its various forms, 
 had then recently exercised, that King Charles II. was com- 
 pelled to retract his promise of religious toleration. The 
 removal of 2000 preachers, the Conventicle Act, the laws 
 that annihilated the hopes of the anti-Episcopalians, followed 
 rapidly, blow after blow. The Parliament seemed desirous 
 of finally settling ecclesiastical affairs, and of securing the 
 Episcopal Church, not only in the possession of its ancient 
 rights and privileges, but the exclusive possession of the 
 nation. In 1673, the Test Oath a solemn declaration upon 
 oath of belonging to the Anglican Church, and an acknow- 
 ledgment of the Royal Supremacy was imposed on all civil 
 and military officers. This measure, however, was directed 
 especially against the Catholics. Since the heir to the 
 throne, the Duke of York, had become a Catholic, fears 
 certainly not unfounded were entertained, that the future 
 king would use his supremacy over the Church to bring it 
 back, step by step, to Catholicity. Such apprehensions 
 prevailed among all statesmen and zealous Protestants, and 
 formed, with them, the strongest motive of political action. 
 The Catholics, as a party, could not then cause the slightest 
 anxiety. They were lost in the mass of the population, and 
 it was only on account of the names of some distinguished 
 families that the little group retained any significance at all. 
 They would be perfectly content to have, in peace and 
 quietness, toleration, and the permission to worship God in 
 the chapels attached to their own homes. It was not on 
 them that James II. founded his hopes, but upon the reli- 
 gious distractions of England ; on the unconditional de- 
 votion of the State Church to its royal head-bishop; and 
 the fidelity with which, as he imagined, they would act up 
 
 I
 
 114 THE DOCTRINE OF PASSIVE OBEDIENCE. 
 
 to their favourite doctrine of " passive obedience," and show 
 an example to all others; and, finally, he trusted to the 
 Catholic elements and tendencies in the Church itself. The 
 most important theologians had, then, for fifty years, been 
 combating most of the chief doctrines of the Reformation 
 the very foundations of Protestantism with acuteness 
 ' and learning, and had declared the old Church doctrine to be, 
 in many and important points, the only tenable one. The 
 great Protestant doctrine of " Justification " had been so 
 thoroughly demolished by Bafll, Hammond, Thorndyke, and 
 others, in the Church, and by Baxter outside of the Church 
 its contradictions and destructive consequences were shown 
 to be so glaring, that, in spite of its assertion in the 39 
 Articles, it had never been able to maintain itself in the 
 Episcopal Church, and no one scientifically-cultivated theo- 
 logian continued to defend it. 1 
 
 The amalgamation of the political king's power with that 
 of the State Church had generated the doctrine of passive 
 obedience; and the Anglican bishops and theologians had 
 maintained that, according to Christian principles, the people 
 and the Parliament were bound, even in the most extreme cases 
 of defence of life, or of the ruin of the social order, not to 
 resist the will of the sovereign, but to obey unconditionally ; 
 and, in case the thing commanded were a sin, to remain 
 entirely passive. They appear to have been considering the 
 origin of their religion and Church, which was really the will 
 of a king, by whom it had been forced on a reluctant people. 
 This duty of passive obedience was, it was said, the doctrine 
 of all Protestant Churches, but especially of the English, in 
 contradistinction to that of the Catholic, which maintained 
 that in certain cases there was a right of resistance, and 
 even (according to the principles of the middle ages) of 
 deposition of princes in extraordinary circumstances. 2 This 
 
 1 The so-called Evangelicals at the end of the preceding century, 
 Toplady, Venn, Newton, James Hervey, and others, cannot be reckoned 
 among learned theologians. 
 
 2 In fact, even under the reign of Philip II., the doctrine put forward 
 by a Spanish preacher in Madrid, that kings had an absolute power over 
 the persons and property of their subjects, had been condemned by
 
 AVERSION TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 115 
 
 doctrine of passive obedience was not merely taught in books 
 and pamphlets, 1 but it sounded from all pulpits, and was de- 
 clared to be a doctrine necessary to salvation. 2 It was practi- 
 cally applied to all the measures of Charles IT. and James II., 
 and both rnonarchs were thus encouraged and assured in their 
 efforts for absolute power by the Church, whose Head they 
 were. Defoe bitterly reproached the bishops and Church 
 clergy for having flattered James II. with assurances of his 
 unlimited power, and thus led him on to the brink of ruin, 
 and then overthrown him. When William III. landed, the 
 whole Anglican clergy, in mockery of its own teachings, went 
 over to the usurper, and only 400 Nonjurors had so much of 
 conscience as to refuse the new oath. 3 
 
 James II. had been mistaken in his calculation ; for the 
 attachment to Protestantism was then deeply rooted in the 
 feelings of the great majority of the people. All parties, 
 Calvinists as well as Anglicans, were united in their fear of, 
 and aversion to, the Catholic religion, or what was repre- 
 sented to them as inseparably connected with it political 
 and ecclesiastical despotism, persecution, Smithfield fires, 
 subjection under a foreign Italian prince, or, as the zealots 
 said, " the Romish Antichrist," and a drain of English gold to- 
 wards Rome ! All these terrific phantoms hovered before 
 the English fancy, in connection with the words " Catholic 
 Church." That it was precisely the Catholic period in 
 England which had been that of increasing civil freedom, 
 
 the Inquisition. The preacher was compelled to revoke his assertion 
 from the very pulpit where he had made it, and declare that " kings had 
 over their subjects no other power than such as was afforded by Divine 
 and human law ; and by no means any power proceeding only from their 
 own free and absolute will." This is reported by ANTOXIO PEREZ in his 
 Relations. u Universite Cath.," xxii. 76. 
 
 1 A rich fund of material concerning this matter, so important to 
 England, is contained in the work of an unknown person (Abr. Seller). 
 " History of Passive Obedience since the Reformation." Amsterdam 
 (London), 1689. 
 
 2 " Edinburgh Review," vol. lv., pp. 32-34. See there the answer of 
 James II. to Burnet's Remonstrances. 
 
 WILSON'S " Life of Defoe," i. 160. 
 
 12
 
 116 PROTESTANT SUCCESSION SECURED. 
 
 and that of the Reformation the time of slavery, absolutism, 
 and the loss of individual rights, perhaps not one in a 
 thousand of the English knew, and that one took good care 
 to say nothing concerning it. It is doing no injustice to 
 James II. to say that, as a true Stuart, and as an admirer 
 of Louis XIV., he did aim at absolute power, and would have 
 used the Church of England, when restored to Catholicity, 
 as a serviceable implement to this end. 
 
 The short reign of James, and the preceding years of fear as 
 to what he might attempt, served to give a powerful impulse to 
 Protestantism, and occasioned an approximation, though cer- 
 tainly only a transitory one, amongst all Protestant sects and 
 parties. Even the toleration offered by James was rejected 
 by them, with the exception of the Quakers. He had offered 
 it, persons supposed, merely for the sake of procuring a more 
 tolerable position in the country for his hated fellow-believers. 
 With the fall of James II. and the Stuart dynasty, and the 
 elevation of William III., the Protestant succession was 
 secured, and the movement which had begun with the 
 Reformation completed as to its main features. The most 
 important acquisition of recent times was the Habeas Corpus 
 Act, the guarantee of personal freedom against arbitrary 
 power, which passed in 1679, under Charles II., and where- 
 with the rights secured by the ancient Magna Charta were 
 thus then confirmed and secured against the ambiguous inter- 
 pretations of Crown lawyers. 1 The " birth-rights," or funda- 
 mental rights, of the English nation, as it was expressed when 
 William ascended the throne in 1689, contained, with the 
 exception of the limitation of the succession to the Crown, 
 only the ancient rights and franchises. Two powers, how- 
 ever, or rather one power regarded in two different points of 
 view, were for ever destroyed these were an arbitrary 
 monarchy, and the royal supremacy over the State Church. 
 William himself was not able, even by the threat of an abdi- 
 cation, to overcome the opposition of the Parliament ; and 
 since his death, and the accession of the Hanoverian dynasty, 
 no King of England has ever been able to govern in his own 
 
 1 HALLAM'S " Constitutional History." London, 1832, iii. 17.
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL SUPREMACY OF THE CROWN. 117 
 
 person. 1 The kings of this dynasty continued to be strangers, 
 unloved by the nation. And whilst the monarchy withdrew 
 from the eyes of the nation into the background, and lost 
 more and more of its dignity, the power and authority of 
 Parliaments were considerably on the increase ; and during 
 nearly sixty years the administration of the Whig party, the 
 political centre of gravity, was moved entirely into the Lower 
 House. 
 
 With this enfeeblement of the monarchical element in 
 England, the ecclesiastical supremacy of the Crown could not 
 but gradually receive a different interpretation, and produce 
 different results. Queen Anne had, in 1707, declared her 
 supremacy to be a fundamental element of the constitution 
 of the Church of England; 2 and George I., who, shortly 
 before, had been a Lutheran, issued, as early as 1714, certain 
 ordinances concerning things connected with the liturgy, that 
 went very much into detail. 3 But the political advantage 
 and importance of the supremacy now fell to the Prime 
 Minister for the time being, and ecclesiastical patronage was 
 used in the interests of the Whig party, and as a means of 
 gaining over the more powerful families, and obtaining their 
 influence in the elections and in Parliament ; but the Church, 
 
 1 It may be objected that George III., from his accession to the dissolu- 
 tion of the Cabinet under Lord North (1761-1782), exercised great influ- 
 ence on the course of Government and the decision of political questions, 
 and that by means of a party formed outside the Cabinet, and in opposition 
 to it. But that was an abnormal, unnatural state, which awakened great 
 discontent in the nation, as BURKE has shown in his " Thoughts on the 
 Causes of the Present Discontent." (Works, London, 1834, i. 127, &c.) 
 " The power of the Crown," he says, " ' almost dead and rotten as pre- 
 rogative,' has grown up anew, with much more strength and far less 
 odium, under the name of influence." He then goes on to describe this 
 plan as a system of favouritism, the invention of a double Cabinet, &c. 
 It was exercised through the corruption of a great number of the 
 members of the Lower House, to which purpose a portion of the Civil 
 List was applied. The matter proves, in the most striking manner, that 
 henceforward there was to be no such thing as a legitimate exercise of 
 personal power on the part of the king. 
 
 2 See WILKINS'S u Concilia Britannise," iv. 685. 
 1 DAVID LEWIS, p. 41.
 
 118 ERASTIAMSM. 
 
 in which Jacobite and Tory tendencies prevailed, was robbed 
 even of what had remained to it of the power of free move- 
 ment, and for this purpose the royal supremacy did excellent 
 service. The Convocations were no longer allowed to meet ; 
 and the Church was more and more temporalized, and 
 degraded into an institution for the advantage of the sons and 
 cousins of influential families. 
 
 As soon as the Constitution of the Estates of England 
 entered into its new Stadium of Parliamentary government, 
 that which was formerly called in England Erastianism, 
 namely, the control and depression of the Church, and 
 " turning it to account" by the laity, became a regular prac- 
 tice, as if belonging to the natural order of things. The 
 Government has had since then greater power over the 
 Church, and in the Church, than in the State, both in 
 theory and in practice. 1 Tf ever a statesman employed this 
 supremacy for the good of the Church, it was a mere lucky 
 accident. 
 
 Since the Nonconformists, or Dissenters, were friends of 
 the Hanoverian dynasty, and of the Whig party, the govern- 
 ment, which was glad of their support, set aside the restraint 
 under which they had lain in Anne's reign, though this 
 certainly was only effected by an Indemnity Act yearly re- 
 newed ; still it granted them access to public affairs, whilst 
 the State Church was not only unable to make any aggres- 
 sion on the Dissenters, but was incapable of protecting itself 
 against heterodoxy and infidelity in its own bosom. The 
 penal laws remained in force against the Catholics alone. 
 
 Thus there was presented in England the remarkable 
 phenomenon of one State (since Scotland had become by 
 the Union a province of the British Empire), with two 
 entirely different and mutually hostile State Churches a 
 Calvinistic Presbyterian in the North, and an Episcopal 
 Church in the South ; and further, the English Church, 
 deprived of all power of free action, lay bound and helplessly 
 dependent on the State ; whilst all the sects and religious 
 societies that had arisen, or were to arise out of it, whatever 
 1 PRETYMAX, " The Church of England and Erastianism," p. 215.
 
 EESULT OF ECCLESIASTICAL STRUGGLES. 119 
 
 their doctrines or institutions might be, could govern them- 
 selves in perfect autonomy and freedom. An Englishman 
 thinks this quite in the regular order of things ! 
 
 The supremacy is, according to Hallam, who expresses the 
 prevalent view on the subject, the dog's collar which the 
 State puts on the Church that it has endowed, in return for 
 food and shelter. 1 
 
 If we now ask what has been gained in almost one hundred 
 years of an embittered struggle between parties and Churches? 
 what can be shown as the actual result ? it appears to 
 amount, in the first place, to this : that religious freedom, or 
 rather the liberty of not belonging to the State Church, but 
 of forming an independent community, has been won after 
 a contest of about a hundred and seventy years, and after 
 thousands of Englishmen have lost their lives ; and this, too, 
 has been won in direct contradiction to the original principles 
 of Protestantism. 
 
 Secondly, the civil liberties that the English possessed 
 in Catholic times, had been essentially enervated, and in 
 some cases destroyed, by the Keformation and the spirit of 
 State-Churchship. They had primarily to be reconquered, 
 and then confirmed and extended, in the sanguinary war 
 which the partisans of the sects, in alliance with the political 
 champions of freedom, carried on against the monarchy and 
 the dependent State Church. In so far as all these sects 
 proceeded from the principle of the Reformation, and all 
 called themselves Protestant, it may be said that Protestant- 
 ism in England, after having been, in its first form, the most 
 dangerous enemy and destroyer of civil freedom, did, in all 
 subsequent forms, or through the consequences of Church 
 dismemberment involved in it, contribute to the re-establish- 
 ment and extension of political liberty. Every one of these 
 Protestant communities oppressed every other when it could, 
 or was prepared and resolved to do so ; every one wished to 
 lay on the nation the yoke of its own views and institutions. 
 The Presbyterians, Prynne and Edwards, as soon as their 
 
 1 " Constitutional History of England," iii. 444. " The supremacy of 
 the Legislature is like the collar of the watch-dog," &c., &c.
 
 120 DEMOCRATIC TENDENCIES. 
 
 sect had obtained a momentary pre-eminence, endeavoured 
 to prove that the authorities were entitled and bound to 
 wield the sword against all erroneous doctrines that is to say, 
 against all that were not Calvinistic. 1 Ultimately, all 
 religious parties came forth from the long contest weakened 
 and shaken. The Presbyterians disappeared in England, 
 and were replaced by other sects. The State Church had 
 become so powerless; there was such an uncertainty in all its 
 doctrines, and such a dissolution of all ecclesiastical bonds had 
 taken place within it, that even bishops declared the English 
 clergy to be the worst in all Europe ; and in the eighteenth 
 century England was distinguished above all other nations 
 for its general contempt of the Church, and a wide-spread 
 infidelity, even among the female sex. 
 
 The fall of James II., and the summoning of a new 
 dynasty, did not, in fact, bring any accession to English 
 popular liberty, for such had been, as to all essential par- 
 ticulars, already won ; but it brought with it two changes, 
 pregnant with important consequences, viz : the degradation 
 of the monarchy into a mere powerless phantom, and the 
 system of parliamentary government by majorities of the 
 lower house, whose views and aims had to be modified by 
 the limitation or extension of the suffrage. Upon the value 
 of these two acquisitions the future must decide. 
 
 Since the passing of the Reform Bill, England has been 
 treading a downward path ; and, upon the question whether 
 it can be arrested in its decline whether it is in a position 
 to recoil from the increasingly democratic tendencies of the 
 House of Commons and of the constitution will depend the 
 future prospects of this kingdom, and, to a certain extent, 
 of the world also. 
 
 On the whole, it appears, as a fitting inference from the do- 
 mestic history of each country, that wherever the Reformation 
 produced one united State Church, it acted prejudicially on 
 civil liberty ; that such States retrograded on the political 
 path in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and that it is 
 
 1 See the expressions of Burnet, Lady Mary Wortley, and others, in 
 the "Quarterly Review," vol. ccli., p. 462.
 
 THE CHURCH AND CIVIL LIBERTY. 121 
 
 only where Protestantism did not attain to absolute supre- 
 macy, in the form of a State Church, but where a considerable 
 portion of the population remained Catholic, while another 
 formed various religious communities, that there arose, from 
 the collisions and limitations thereby occasioned, a greater 
 measure both of civil and political freedom.
 
 122 
 
 THE CHUKCHES WITHOUT THE PAPACY 
 A PANORAMIC SURVEY. 
 
 IF we wish to understand all that must stand or fall with 
 the Papal See, and how inextricably interwoven it is with 
 the innermost being of the Church, we must cast a glance 
 upon those religious bodies which have separated themselves 
 from Rome, or have arranged their constitution so as to 
 have no place for a Primate. 1 here, then, enter so much 
 the more willingly on a survey of the Churches, since it is 
 my object to make clear the condition of the present time, 
 with respect to ecclesiastical affairs ; and I also do so because 
 such a survey is indispensable for a comprehension of the 
 question concerning the States of the Church. 
 
 THE CHURCH OF THE PATRIARCHATE OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 
 
 We will begin with the oldest of the dismembered Churches, 
 the Oriental, or " Orthodox Anatolian Church," which 
 recognises the Patriarch of Constantinople as its head. It 
 embraced, formerly, all the countries of the Greek Empire, 
 but has been for some time past continually crumbling away, 
 by ecclesiastical resistance to, and separation from it of 
 particular portions. The separations have been based on 
 the antagonism of various nationalities, and on the decay of 
 the Turkish Empire, which, in the day of its power, upheld,
 
 THE ORTHODOX ANATOLIAN CHURCH. 123 
 
 for the sake of its own interest, the authority of the 
 Patriarch. The Plellenic Church, that of the kingdom of 
 Greece, has declared itself independent ; the Metropolitan 
 of Carlowitz, in Austria, with his eleven bishops, has done 
 the same, and his Church is now an independent Patriarchate. 
 The Churches of Cyprus, of Montenegro, and of Mount 
 Sinai, have declared their independence. In the Danubian 
 Principalities a similar attempt has been made to form an 
 independent Romaic Church. Almost all the organs of the 
 press there demand a solemn declaration of the independence 
 of the " Moldavo-Wallachian Church," and the formation of 
 a Moldavo-Wallachian Synod. A separation of the Bul- 
 garians has taken place, but they have joined the Catholics. 
 That the Ionian Islands have not gained the Hellenic 
 Church, but still acknowledge the Patriarch as their eccle- 
 siastical head, is probably to be ascribed to English influence 
 or compulsion. 1 
 
 The Patriarch, whose sway still extends over about nine 
 millions of persons, has in some respects more than a Papal 
 power. He can appoint or remove, on his own irresponsible 
 authority, all archbishops, bishops, and priests, and, with ex- 
 ception of four prelates belonging to the standing synod, can 
 relegate them all to their dioceses. He possesses at the same 
 time an extensive civil jurisdiction, the right of punishment, 
 and an unlimited power of taxation. His whole administra- 
 tion has now been for hundreds of years connected with an 
 unexampled system of extortion, corruption, and simony. 
 Every Patriarch attains by these means to his dignity. Ac- 
 cording to long-established precedent, the patriarch is usually 
 changed every two or three years ; he is, namely (the custom 
 originates in Turkish despotism and Greek corruption), de- 
 posed by the synod, for bad administration, or he is com- 
 pelled to resign. 
 
 The cases in which a Patriarch dies in possession of his dignity 
 are extremely rare, for those who make a profit by bargains for 
 the patriarchate take care that they shall be transacted as often 
 
 1 In Roumelia and the Herzegovina, separations from the Patriarchate 
 are expected. " Xeue Evang. Kirch.-Zeitung von Messner," 1860, p. 400.
 
 124 THE PATRIARCHATE OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 
 
 as possible. 1 When the Patriarch has purchased the dignity 
 of his deposed predecessor for hard cash, he gets his money 
 back again by the sale of archbishoprics and bishoprics, and the 
 purchasers of these, in their turn, make amends by extortions on 
 the inferior clergy and the people. The most important part in 
 these intrigues and bargainings about the patriarchate is played 
 by a temporal official, the Logothetes, who at the same time, as 
 an ecclesiastical dignitary for the patriarch, stands by the side 
 of the executive and mediates between him and the Porte. 
 Only a year ago the Patriarch Kyrillos was deposed on 
 account of simony and waste of the patriarchal finances, and, 
 after a regular election contest, Joachim, Bishop of Cyzikus, 
 was chosen in his place. The clergy attached to Greek na- 
 tionality have been hitherto the instruments by whose means 
 the Turks have ruled over not only the Greek, but also the 
 Sclavonian population of the empire, and in so doing exercise 
 a despotic power that the Sclavonians are more and more 
 revolting against. The eight dignitaries of the Synod (they 
 bear the name of metropolitan, but six of their number are 
 mere villages), are the ruling powers, in subordination to the 
 patriarch, but when united against him are more powerful 
 than he can be. The temporal power that has been com- 
 mitted or left to the Greek-Church-princes is a source of 
 innumerable outrages, and the means of enriching immode- 
 rately their families, as well as those upon whom they feel 
 themselves to be dependent. 
 
 The great Sclavonian party, relying on " the Hatti-Hu- 
 mayun" of the Turkish monarch, and in alliance with a 
 portion of the Greek laity, is endeavouring to break through 
 these ecclesiastical and political fetters. The Greek oli- 
 garchy, however namely, the seven first prelates of the 
 Synod, in union with the national Hellenic party, which dreads 
 the Sclavonic preponderance is ever contending against 
 them, and a struggle for life or death is carried on, in which 
 national hostility, strengthened by indignation at a state of 
 
 1 EICHMANN, " Die Reformed des Osmanischen Reiches." Berlin, 1858, 
 p. 27-28. PITZIPIOS, u L'Eglise Orientale," Rome, 1825, ii. 82. 
 GELZER'S " Monatsbliitter," vii. 224.
 
 CORRUPTION AND IGNORANCE OF THE CLERGY. 125 
 
 things so intolerably corrupt, leaves apparently no room for 
 reconciliation. Thus the patriarchate of Constantinople has 
 already entered on the stage of approaching dissolution. 
 The three other patriarchates, which, according to the Anato- 
 lian schismatic theory, exercise, in conjunction with that of 
 Constantinople, the supreme authority in matters of faith, are 
 scarcely more than titular dignitaries, for the patriarchate of 
 Alexandria has but 5,000, that of Antioch 50,000, and of 
 Jerusalem 25,000 souls. The Patriarch of Jerusalem has 
 his regular summer residence on the Prince's Island, near the 
 capital ; and the two others reside, with his permission and 
 that of the Synod, in the capital itself. 
 
 The Greek Patriarchate is in the most shameful and pe- 
 rishing condition to which an ancient and venerable Church 
 has ever yet been reduced ; but that does not prevent the 
 youngest prophet of Slavism, which is to be called to the 
 dominion of the world, from founding on that See the most 
 splendid hopes. " When the Turkish dominion is destroyed," 
 says Pogodin, " the Patriarchate of Constantinople will arise 
 again in all its glory, and the Church of the East will again, 
 attain its world-wide importance. Then" (according to Po- 
 godin) " will the worn-out West be rejuvenated, namely, by 
 the Slave and his Church, for all the future belongs to the 
 Sclavonic race." 1 
 
 This Church certainly lies under the most pressing neces- 
 sity of reforming itself and of becoming re-vivified ; for 
 simony in its widest sense, veniality, corruption of the clergy 
 both high and low, the employment of all imaginable means, 
 both religious and superstitious, for the extortion of gifts 
 all these features of the Byzantine Church system have been 
 authenticated by all observers. To this must be added the 
 gross ignorance of the clergy, the majority of whom in many 
 districts cannot write, and sometimes not even read. Las- 
 karato, the author of a work that appeared in 1856, on the 
 state of Cephalonia, declares, in his letters to the archbishop 
 of that place, that it might happen to any one to dismiss a 
 servant one day for misconduct, and meet him on the mor- 
 
 1 u Politische Briefs aus Russland." Leipsic, 1860, p. 17.
 
 126 DEVOTION TO THE CIVIL POWER. 
 
 row as a priest ; people that you have known as petty 
 chandlers, day labourers, or boatmen, you may see in a few 
 days appear on the altar or in the pulpit. 1 
 
 Devotion to the civil power is so completely the lot of all 
 special churches that have been rent away from the one uni- 
 versal World-Church, that the Greeks will even acknowledge 
 
 ' O 
 
 their Turkish ruler as a supreme judge in ecclesiastical ques- 
 tions. As incredible as this appears, it has been stated in the 
 most decided terms, and in the most official form, in quite 
 recent times. Pius IX., in his evangelical letter to the pre- 
 lates of the East, in the year 1848, reminded them of their 
 want of religious unity ; and thereupon the Patriarch an- 
 swered, in his own name and that of his Synod, u In disputed 
 or difficult questions, the three Patriarchs discuss the matter 
 with the Patriarch of Constantinople, because that city is 
 the seat of empire, and because he is the president of the 
 Synod. If they cannot agree the affair is, according to 
 ancient precedent and usage, referred for decision to the head 
 of the (Turkish) Government." 2 The Greek who makes 
 known this communication, mentions also a case in which a 
 decision was really given. The Armenian clergy had a dis- 
 pute with the Greek priests concerning the custom of mixing 
 water with the sacramental wine ; and the dispute was finally 
 brought before the Turkish Reis-Effendi, who accordingly 
 gave his decision. " Wine is an impure drink, condemned 
 by the Koran ; pure water only, therefore, should be made 
 use of." 
 
 And yet it is undeniable that a splendid prospect lies 
 before the Church of the Turkish Empire, if it should be 
 able to raise itself only in some measure from its present 
 degraded condition, and to comprehend the greatness of its 
 mission. For the days of the Turkish dominion are num- 
 bered. Not only can the Empire not continue in its present 
 
 1 Td fivarrjpia TTJG Kf^aXovi'crf, 1856. This work entailed on its author 
 the punishment of excommunication. 
 
 z AioyytXXtrai 7-6 7rpay/m Kai tig TI\V Aioinrjaiv Kara TO. 
 PlTZIPIOS, 1. C. 1., 140.
 
 DEGRADATION OF THE TURK. 127 
 
 form, but the power of Mohammedanism in Europe must 
 also fall. The Turks will be compelled to emigrate and 
 to return to Asia, or they will die out and in fact they are 
 actually dying out at the present moment. The Christians 
 are already four times more numerous than the Turks, and 
 the latter already begin to fear that if the Hatti-Humayun 
 were truly and honestly carried out, they (the Turks) would 
 within five years' time be driven across the Bosphorus. They 
 themselves are absolutely unimprovable and stationary : the 
 hatred of every kind of reform is as much an article of faith 
 with them as the hatred of all non-Mahommedans. Their 
 polygamy, their frequent divorces, the seclusion and unna- 
 tural mode of life of their women, the criminal methods 
 employed to prevent the increase of families, the want of an 
 aristocracy, as well as of a genuine middle class their entire 
 social position, as a slothful, parasitical race, living on the 
 impoverishment and plunder of the Christian population all 
 these things make the elevation of the Turkish race an im- 
 possibility. 
 
 They themselves are filled with the idea that their time is 
 coming to an end. They are continually declining in num- 
 bers, in morals, in courage, and in hope. 1 Their slothfulness 
 nourishes their fatalism ; and, again, their fatalism serves as a 
 pretext to their slothfulness, and disinclination to every kind 
 of exertion. The Christian stands towards the Turk in the 
 
 1 " All is dying around the Christian populations," says RAOUL DE 
 MALHERHE (" L'Orient.," 1718-1845. "Histoire, Politique, Religion, 
 Moeurs." Paris, 1846, ii. 157.), " All is perishing, under that hard law of 
 fatalism all is becoming extinguished in polygamy, vice, and debauchery ; 
 beyond these the East has no other prospect than depopulation and the 
 desert." See also the communications of so excellent an observer as 
 NASSAU W. SENIOR, in his "Journal kept in Turkey and Greece." 
 London, 1859, pp. 28, 32, 147, 212. The British Consul, Mr. Finn, 
 lately said, " The Mohammedan population of Syria is dying out, and I 
 cannot even say that it is dying slowly." " Allg. Zeitung," 1861, p. 
 1144; llth March. "Even Asia Minor, which, in 350 years, the 
 Turks have changed from a rich and prosperous country into a desert, 
 shows the same phenomenon. A Pacha himself reports that, in his 
 Pachalik, the deaths exceeded the births by six per cent." SENIOR, 
 p. 183.
 
 128 DECAY OF MOHAMMEDANISM. 
 
 same relation as if a living man were bound to a corpse ; but 
 the Christians are evidently increasing in numbers, in pros- 
 perity, in intelligence, and in courage. The Turks them- 
 selves say that it will soon be necessary to fill all offices with 
 Christians ; and then some day the ministers will say to the 
 Sultan that he must become a Christian, and so it will 
 happen. 1 The future belongs, then, to Christianity, and not 
 to Islam ; and the same thing is true of a great part of Asia, 
 for the Persian Empire also is in a state of hopeless internal 
 distraction, and the population is very thin and constantly 
 decreasing. At the beginning of the present century it was 
 estimated at twelve millions, it is now said not to exceed 
 eight. Almost all Persian cities, with the exception of 
 Tabris, Teheran, and Schiras, are in ruins, 2 and must fall 
 more and more under the Russian dominion. Moham- 
 medanism also, though it has in recent times made some pro- 
 gress among the Malays of Borneo and the negroes of 
 Soudan and Madagascar, 3 has, on the whole, entered into the 
 stage of decay, and must fall back whenever the superior 
 energy of the Christian nations advances against it. Apart 
 from the question of truth, Islam bears within itself the 
 germ of dissolution, since it is a religion of fixed definite 
 precepts, embracing every department of life, and in their 
 nature destructive of all progress. As the production of an 
 individual nation, and of a decidedly low degree of culture, 
 it could not, when transferred to other nationalities, be other- 
 wise than injurious and inadequate, and must ultimately fall 
 before the internal contradictions it occasions, and the neces- 
 sities of life ; whilst Christianity, as a religion of ideas, and 
 of an institution adapted to the whole world, and limited 
 neither by time nor locality, is capable of doing justice to 
 every really human requirement of promoting and encourag- 
 ing the onward progress of the human race. 4 
 
 1 " Diary in Turkish and Greek Waters," by the EARL OF CARLISLE. 
 London, 1864, p. 78. 
 * " Allg. Zeitung," 1st March, 1857, p. 956. 
 
 3 " Edinburgh Review," vol. c. (1854), p. 412. 
 
 4 This contrast of the two religions has lately been noticed by a very
 
 CONSTITUTION OF THE GREEK CHURCH. 129 
 
 THE HELLENIC CHURCH. 
 
 The Church of the Kingdom of Greece has dissolved its 
 connection with the Patriarch and Synod of Constantinople. 
 On the motion of thirty-five bishops assembled in Nauplia, 
 the Regency, in the year 1833, declared the " Orthodox 
 Oriental Church of Hellas" independent of every foreign 
 authority. The government of the Church is to be vested 
 in a Synod, consisting of five ecclesiastical members, to be 
 appointed by the king, and two laymen, of whom one is to 
 be the Attorney-General (Staats Procurator). A Concordat 
 had been previously agreed upon (the Tbwos), by which 
 greater freedom had been granted to the Church with respect 
 to the constitution of the Synods. The Government, how- 
 ever, altered this arrangement, and arrogated to itself the 
 right of appointing the members, in accordance with the pre- 
 cedent given by Russia. In fact, the whole new Constitution 
 was an imitation of the Russian ; whilst the remarkable pro- 
 vision, that the members of the Synods should only be 
 appointed by the State authorities for a year at a time, went 
 far beyond the Russian model. But the Patriarch of Byzan- 
 tium nevertheless, in the year 1850, acknowledged this 
 peculiar kind of Church constitution, merely with the reserva- 
 tion of certain acts of homage. 
 
 The clergy of the newly constituted Church are taken 
 from the lowest classes of the people, and are so parsimoni- 
 ously paid that they are obliged to carry on some mechanical 
 trade or rural occupation in addition to their priestly func- 
 tions. They are mostly men utterly uneducated, and have 
 no influence whatever amongst the cultivated classes, 
 amongst whom a species of Voltairianism has made great 
 progress. 1 In the powerful, and, in fact, wonderful intel- 
 
 acute observer, the COUNT D'ESCAYRAC DE LAUTURE, in " Le Desert 
 et le Soudan." Paris, 1853, p. 185. The remarks made by him were 
 the result of his close attention to the condition of the Mohammedan 
 population. The author is the person who, a short time since, was taken 
 prisoner by the Chinese, and frightfully mutilated. 
 
 1 W. SENIOR, " Journal kept in Turkey and Greece." London, 1859, 
 
 K
 
 130 THE RUSSIAN CHURCH. 
 
 lectual movement that has taken place of late years among 
 the Greeks, the clergy have not participated. An attachment 
 to the National Church, a preference for the peculiarities of 
 the Anatolian doctrine and rites are found, to some extent, 
 among the Greeks, but such attachment is more political 
 than religious. The ecclesiastical peculiarities were regarded 
 as the bulwarks of Greek nationality, as things connected 
 with the great superiority of the Hellenes over other nations. 
 For this Church of Hellas, also, there is a hopeful prospect ; 
 because, in proportion as the kingdom extends of which, in 
 the rapid decay of the Turkish Empire, there is every likeli- 
 hood the Church also will be enlarged at the cost of the 
 Patriarchal See of Constantinople. The inhabitants of the 
 Ionian Islands would doubtless join the Church of Hellas on 
 the first opportunity ; and Thessaly also, where the Greek 
 race is preponderant, desires greatly a union with the kingdom 
 of Greece ; and the subjects of King Otto look to this event 
 with eagerness ; l and no sooner should the incorporation take 
 place than the province would certainly separate itself from 
 the Patriarchate of Stamboul, and enter the Synodical Church. 
 The politico-ecclesiastical hopes of the Hellenes of the king- 
 dom, however, are well known to extend much further even 
 to Little Asia. 
 
 THE RUSSIAN CHURCH. 
 
 The Church of the great European-Asiatic Empire, if we 
 
 p. 330. GELZER'S " Monatsblatter," vii. 251. The author of the Essays 
 called " The Cross and the Crescent," in the latter publication mentions 
 (vii. 226) that he visited a great number of bishops and metropolitans in 
 the islands of the Archipelago, in Asia Minor, and in Syria, and some- 
 times enjoyed their hospitality ; and that in conversation with them he 
 frequently alluded to the religious apathy of the people, whose worship 
 appeared to him as if they were rather troublesome ceremonies of polite- 
 ness, in which the heart had no share. The answer he got was, " What 
 can we do ? How can we thiuk of devoting ourselves to quiet study and 
 the instruction of others, when we have our own wives and children to 
 provide for, and are scarcely able to procure the means of existence ?" 
 1 SENIOR, p. 35.
 
 THE PATRIARCH. 131 
 
 include the sects of which the State does not recognize the 
 existence, numbers more than fifty millions of persons, and 
 is also a daughter of the Byzantine ; and though, towards the 
 end of the sixteenth century, it declared itself separate from 
 the Patriarchate, it has retained, with perfect fidelity, the 
 Church system, with its doctrines and ritual, as it was 
 received from Byzantium. According to theory, it recognizes 
 in matters of faith the four Anatolian Patriarchs as a supreme 
 authority ; and if the decision of a point of doctrine is in 
 question, it is laid before them, that is to say, in fact before 
 the Patriarch of Constantinople, with his Synod for the three 
 others no longer represent any great ecclesiastical body, but 
 are merely titular, and must be regarded as members of the 
 higher Byzantine clergy. The Catholic Church passes for 
 heretical, on account of the doctrine of the procession of the 
 Holy Ghost ; and even in Russia for heretical and for schis- 
 matic, on account of the claims of the Papal See. But with 
 respect to the third point of difference, the intermediate state 
 after death, it would be easy to come to an understanding. 
 It is only put forward when there is a desire to multiply the 
 pretexts for separation, and to widen the chasm. 
 
 The Russian Church has been, since the separation from 
 the Patriarchate of Constantinople (1587), a completely iso- 
 lated National Church, without any connection with the rest 
 of the Christian world. At its head stood the Patriarch, 
 resident at Kiev, who was the Metropolitan for all Russia, 
 and, in power, almost the equal of the Czar for the Church 
 was still independent, and represented the rights of the 
 people, in opposition to the imperial power, and that of the 
 Boyars so that the remonstrances of the Patriarchs were 
 almost equivalent to a veto. Peter I., who was early initi- 
 ated, by his Genevese tutor, into Protestant views, and who 
 was determined to get the mighty influence of the Church 
 into his own hands, abolished the Patriarchal dignity, because 
 " the people would otherwise think more of the Chief Pastor 
 than of the Chief Ruler," and appointed (1721) a "Holy 
 Synod," appointed by himself a permanent Council, in the 
 eyes of the Bishops, and an Upper Consistory, in the Pro- 
 
 K2
 
 132 IMPERIAL STATE CHURCHSHIP. 
 
 testant sense, in the eyes of the Czar. When the clergy 
 petitioned for the re-appointment of a Patriarch, Peter 
 replied, angrily striking his breast " Here is your Patri- 
 arch." 1 This overthrow of the ancient ecclesiastical consti- 
 tution was acknowledged by the Patriarch Jeremiah of 
 Constantinople. "The Synod appointed by the Czar Peter," 
 he declared, " is, and is to be called, our brother in Christ." 
 Jt has the power to transact and to decree, like the four 
 sacred Apostolic Patriarchal Sees.' 
 
 These Synods, with their permanent Procurator, taken 
 from the laity (and occasionally from the army), form a kind of 
 State Council and Ecclesiastical Tribunal, an administrative 
 machine for the Church, which is placed by the State on a 
 level with other administrative authorities. Being in itself 
 a body without a soul, it receives the principle of life from 
 the Czar, through the Procurator, without whose signature 
 none of its proceedings are valid, and none of its words have 
 any power. It cannot even itself appoint its secretary and 
 subordinate officials ; but they are all nominated and displaced 
 by the Czar. It subsists only by the will of the Emperor, 
 and merely to fulfil his commands. 
 
 On the whole Russian religious system, therefore, is im- 
 pressed the stamp of Imperial State Churchship. The entire 
 property of the Church was attached by Catherine II. to the 
 estates of the Crown, in order, as it was said, to relieve the 
 clergy from the burden of their administration. 3 The Church 
 bears this supremacy as a yoke that has been laid upon it; but 
 it bears the burden willingly it undeniably serves the State as 
 a political instrument, and assists in confirming the absolute 
 power of the Czar. The slightest movement towards inde- 
 pendence in the Bishops, leads to threats of imprisonment 
 and exile ; and although the three Metropolitans of Peters- 
 burg, Kiev, and Moscow, are permanent members of the 
 governing Synod, the latter, when he on one occasion pre- 
 
 1 HERMANN'S u Geschichte des Russ. Staats," iv. 350. 
 
 * MURAWIJEW'S u Geschichte der Russischen Kirche." Carlsruhe, 
 1857, p. 252. 
 
 DOLGOEOUKOW'S " La Verite sur la. Russie." Paris, I860, p. 344.
 
 ARCHIEPISCOPAL POWER OF THE CZAR. 133 
 
 sumed to differ in opinion from the Emperor Nicholas, was 
 immediately dismissed to his diocese, by which he was 
 prevented from taking any further part in the proceedings 
 of the Synod. 1 
 
 Notwithstanding this, the Protestant idea, that the sove- 
 reign, as such, must be the chief Bishop or head of the 
 National Church, is really foreign to the Russians, and to 
 the Sclavonic nation in general. A religious Russian 
 would not admit, even now, that the Czar was the head of 
 his Church, or that it belonged to his office to decide 
 on questions concerning faith and doctrine, divine service, 
 and the Sacraments. In fact, no Czar has ever taken on 
 himself to do, what, in Protestant countries, is regarded as 
 among the ordinary, and, what may be called, the normal 
 proceedings of the government to make enactments con- 
 cerning faith and divine service, or impose any changes on 
 the Church. 
 
 What, however, the Russian Czar, with all his power, 
 declines to do, with respect to his own Church, that he 
 arrogates to himself, according to the Protestant system, 
 with respect to the Lutheran Church of the Baltic provinces. 2 
 This archiepiscopal power, too, has even been exercised in a 
 somewhat hostile spirit, not only by the extension of the laws 
 concerning mixed marriages to the Protestant provinces, 
 according to which all the children of such marriages belong 
 to the Russian Church, 3 but also by prohibiting Protestant 
 clergymen from baptizing heathens, Jews, and Moham- 
 medans. Authority in dogmatic or liturgical questions has 
 never been ascribed to the Emperor in his own Church, but 
 he has assumed it over that of the Protestants, for the Edict 
 
 1 DOLGOROUKOW, p. 343. 
 
 * By a Rescript of the year 1817. HENGSTENBERG'S " Kirchen- 
 Zeitung," vol. xxxi., pp. 569-567. 
 
 3 Concerning the consequences that have already resulted, see " Russ- 
 land und die Gegenwart." Leipsig, 1851, i. 163 ; and HENGSTENBERG, 
 " K.-Zeitung," i., p. 575. Both witnesses maintain that, by this law, the 
 Protestant Church of those countries must gradually pass into the 
 Russian-Greek Church.
 
 134 THE RUSSIAN CLERGY. 
 
 of 1817 commands the General Consistory to refer all such 
 matters to the Czar. 
 
 There is, therefore, no question of an Imperial Papacy or 
 Caliphate in Russia ; but, nevertheless, in the " Order of 
 Succession," which the Emperor Paul read aloud in the 
 Cathedral at Moscow, and then laid on the altar, the Emperor 
 is styled the " Head of the Church." In the Book of Laws 
 he is called merely the " Divinely annointed Protector" of 
 the Church of God ; and at his coronation he is treated as 
 the " first-born son " of the Church. Prince Dolgoroukow 
 remarks that the Emperor Nicholas never regarded himself 
 as head of the Church, though he certainly acted as if he 
 was ; ! and, as a matter of fact, the Church of Russia is more 
 completely in the power of the monarch than any other 
 religious community in the Christian world. 
 
 It is wanting, to a degree, of which there is scarcely 
 another example in Christian history, in every capacity of 
 free action. There are no Councils, no conferences of the 
 clergy, no co-operation of the clergy and their parishioners, 
 no centre of ecclesiastical knowledge and culture, no exchange 
 of views through literary organs, or an ecclesiastical literature. 
 No such things exist in Russia, nor may they exist ; and 
 thence it follows that there is in the Church no such thing 
 
 D 
 
 as public opinion or public feeling ; and it cannot be said 
 that the Russian clergy have before them any purpose clearly 
 defined or recognised, or even instinctively felt, or that it has 
 any indwelling organic life. The Bishop and his clergy are 
 separated by a broad and impassable chasm. The Bishop is 
 mostly an aged monk, who, after a life passed in his cell, in total 
 ignorance of temporal affairs and administrative business, 
 sees himself suddenly elevated by the Imperial will to an 
 Episcopal throne, the choice being made with special refer- 
 ence to personal qualifications a lofty stature, a majestic 
 beard, a generally imposing appearance. He has two main 
 duties : first, devotion to the Emperor, and unconditional 
 obedience to his will ; and, secondly, a watchful attention to 
 the pomp of liturgical ceremonies. The serious business, 
 1 " La Verite sur la Russie.' 1 Paris, 1860, p. 341.
 
 THE SECULAR CLERGY. 135 
 
 and the cares of Catholic Bishops, are unknown to him ; for 
 these the Bishop leaves, partly to the Imperial Synod (since 
 the Emperor has withdrawn from the Episcopacy the greater 
 part of its spiritual power and jurisdiction), and partly to 
 the Consistories, which are notorious for their venality and 
 simony. Among the Bishops themselves there is no hierar- 
 chical organization, no internal connection, and no reciprocal 
 action. All these the Czars have annihilated ; and thus the 
 Russian Church is found in glaring contradiction to a 
 fundamental law acknowledged by itself namely, the 3>!d 
 Apostolic Canon, by which "every national Church is to 
 recognise one bishop as its first and its head." The secular 
 clergy, who are mostly the sons of clergymen for the clergy 
 here form an hereditary class have usually, even before the 
 time of their ordination that is, from their early youth to 
 maintain in a church that the Czars have robbed of its 
 property, a constant struggle against poverty and destitu- 
 tion. They are mostly married to priests' daughters, and 
 the fathers of a numerous progeny, and they have to till 
 their fields with their own hands : they are in general, as 
 may be supposed, extremely ignorant indeed, are merely 
 taught to read and to sing, and but too often addicted to the 
 national vice of drunkenness. They are entirely defenceless 
 against the bishops, who sometimes treat them like slaves ; 
 they cringe before them with trembling humility; and as it is 
 impossible for them to live with their families on the income 
 allowed them by the Church, they are compelled to descend 
 to the most supple pliancy of demeanour, both towards those 
 above them (their Bishops and patrons), as well as towards 
 the people below them. 1 
 
 The Russian Church is a dumb one : there is no singing 
 by the congregation, and there is no sermon only occasion- 
 ally, and especially on Imperial fete-days, does the Pope or 
 Bishop say a few words, to impress on the people the duty 
 and great merit of unconditional obedience towards the 
 Czar, and to point out that they cannot better show their 
 
 1 See the description given by an eye-witness in the " Correspondant," 
 vol. xxii. (1826), p. 316.
 
 136 THE MONASTIC ORDERS. 
 
 love to God than by a faithful subjection to the Imperial will. 1 
 Amid such a want of all instruction and of spiritual renova- 
 tion (for there are neither prayer-books nor ascetic writings 
 in the hands of the people), the individual remains com- 
 pletely confined within the circle of his own thoughts, and 
 there are no remedies against the overwhelming mass of 
 superstition which cannot fail to be engendered by a purely 
 ceremonial religion in the absence of doctrine and of the 
 living Word. 
 
 Spiritual culture, and even a smattering of theological 
 knowledge, can only be found in the monasteries, and with a 
 few monks. Very unfavourable opinions are, nevertheless, 
 given of the monastic orders: " They are," says Dolgoroukoxv, 
 " idle and demoralized, and, with the exception of the 
 Bureaucracy, the most mischievous class of men in Russia. 
 At the same time, the secular priest stands so much lower in 
 the social scale, and in public opinion, that he can, if he 
 pleases, again become a layman, or be, by degradation, restored 
 to the laity, and may then even be placed in the ranks as a 
 soldier." 2 
 
 The Russian is, however, unconditionally devoted to his 
 Church ; it is for him the firm citadel of his nationality, in 
 which, and through which, he feels himself invincible ; and 
 the Slavonian Liturgy, which so completely expresses the 
 manners and the tendencies of the people, gives to the clergy 
 
 1 Intelligent Russians now acknowledge that it is a perverse practice, 
 in their Church, to make marriage compulsory on the clergy, and to 
 admit no man to ordination who is li ving in celibacy. See upon the sub- 
 ject DOLGOKOUKOW. p. 350. The difficulty is not to be got rid of, as the 
 Prince thinks, by leaving them free on this point for a married clergy, 
 and one living in voluntary celibacy, could not well subsist together. 
 The former would sink too low in public opinion by the contrast : the 
 confidence and, as a natural consequence, the contributions of the people 
 would be bestowed upon the latter. In the appointments to livings, 
 the parishes would certainly petition for a wifeless pastor, that is, if 
 they were allowed to express their wishes. There have been, very lately, 
 complaints from Galicia, of the injurious consequences that have followed 
 from the compulsory early marriages of the Greek clergy there. See 
 u Kleine Beytrage zii grossen Fragen in Oesterreich." Leipsig, 1860, p. 81. 
 
 2 LOUZON LE Due, p. 224, et seq.
 
 EXTENSION OF THE RUSSIAN CHURCH. 137 
 
 a great power over their minds. The Russian is far from 
 feeling that moral indignation at the low moral state of his 
 " Popes," which to the Germanic and Romanic nations made 
 the corruption of their clergy ultimately intolerable. 1 
 
 The Russians believe in themselves, and in a great futurity 
 for themselves, and this confidence especially applies to their 
 Church. The extension of their empire and of their Church 
 are jointly regarded as great national objects ; and as their 
 Church stands alone in the world, the government can 
 always stamp every war as a religious one as, indeed, 
 Nicholas, in the recent great war, actually did. All who are not 
 Russians are, in accordance with the opinion officially incul- 
 cated on the people, either heterodox or infidels. According 
 to this view, an Appeal of the Holy Directing Synod of 
 Petersburg summoned the people, in 1855, to devote their 
 lives and fortunes to the cause of their country and their 
 holy religion. And the proclamation of the year 1848 
 closed with the words, "Hear, ye heathens, and humble 
 yourselves, for God is with us !" 
 
 Russia is, for the people, the "Holt/ Land" Moscow, the 
 "Holy City" the monarch, the "Holy Czar" God is the 
 " Russian God." In the prayers of the Church supplication 
 is made for the extension of the dominion of the Czar and of 
 the orthodox Church on earth, and many a Russian hopes to 
 see the day when the Greek cross will be planted on St. 
 Peter's at Rome. The Government only acts in accordance 
 with the spirit of the nation when it meditates preparing 
 the other nations of the same confession, Greeks and South 
 Slavonians, for the reception at some period into the 
 Russian Imperial and ecclesiastical body. Before all things, 
 
 1 The Russian author of the work called " Vom anderen lifer" (Ham- 
 burg, 1850), p. 167, says, indeed, of the Russian peasant, " He despises 
 the clergy as slothful, covetous fellows, who live at his cost, and in all 
 street ballads and popular ribaldry, the priest, the deacon, and their 
 wives, are always brought in as examples of the absurd and the despic- 
 able." Even if that should be the case, yet that the clergy occasionally 
 exercise great power over the country people would not be contra- 
 dictory to the fact, but would rather afford a psychological explanation 
 of it.
 
 138 IDEAL OF SLAVONIAN EMPIRE. 
 
 however, the Russians look longingly towards Constantinople 
 the Emperor-city (Zargrad), as they call it. They be- 
 lieve that God has given them a right to possess that city 
 the mother of their Church and that they are to have 
 the church of Saint Sophia. It is their mission to restore 
 this great church of Anatolian Christianity, after its desecra- 
 tion into a mosque, once more to its original destination. 
 
 One great Slavonian Empire, extending from Archangel 
 to the Adriatic, and, by means of this empire, a dominion 
 over the world, which, as the pious say, is to serve for the 
 diffusion and the glorification of the orthodox Church this 
 is the ideal that, more or less consciously, hovers before 
 every Russian. As early as 1619, in an original document 
 of the Holy Synod at Moscow, the Czar is solemnly assured 
 of the dominion of the world, and it is promised that there 
 shall be continual prayer offered up that " he may be the 
 only sovereign over the whole earth ! " ! It is well known 
 how this expectation, and the devotion to the great Pro- 
 tector of their Church, has been awakened and cherished 
 among the Slavonian populations belonging to the separated 
 Anatolian Church. For this purpose are church-books, with 
 "obligate" prayers for the orthodox Czar, furnished gra- 
 tuitously from Russia, tp both priests and parishes, and with 
 the same object pecuniary assistance is secretly afforded to 
 the clergy. The most insignificant priest in Albania, Corfu, 
 Zante, and Cephalonia receives a little yearly income from 
 the ecclesiastical treasury at Nischnei-Novgorod. 2 Even 
 amongst the Slavonians of Austria, the Wallachians in 
 Hungary and Transylvania, the Russian influence is actively 
 maintained. 3 
 
 To plant this Emperor-worship in the minds of the young, 
 
 1 KOPITAR, in the " Wiener Jahrb. d. Lit.," vol. xxviii. p. 247. 
 
 * ' Allg.-Zeitung," 29th Febr., 1860, p. 983. 
 
 1 DE GERONDO, "La Transylvanie," Paris, 1845, recounts this 
 fact : " An Hungarian officer pointed to a troop of Wallachian soldiers 
 that he commanded, and said, ' Ces homines m'aiment, ils m'obeissent 
 aveuglement, mais le Pope s'est laisse gagner par les moines Russes ; 
 qu'un seul cosaque paraisse a la frontiere, et ils me passeront sur le corps 
 pour aller oil le pretre les conduira.' "
 
 IMPERIAL SUPREMACY IN THE CHURCH. 139 
 
 and to cherish and strengthen it in those of the old, is, 
 according to their views of the government and the Synod, 
 the main business of the Russian clergy. The power of the 
 Emperor, according to their catechism, comes immediately 
 from God ; the veneration due to him must be expressed by 
 the most complete submission in words, bearing, and actions; 
 the obedience must in every respect be unlimited and 
 passive. 1 
 
 The police-like character, the mechanical constraint of a 
 church system degraded into a mere machine of government, 
 strikes the observer everywhere in Russia. Even for con- 
 fessions and absolutions a fee is fixed by Imperial ordon- 
 nance. Every Russian is bound to confess and communicate 
 once a-year, and get a certificate made out for him to that 
 effect. Without this confession and communion certificate 
 he can neither take an oath nor bear witness. It is required 
 for everything, and is, therefore, frequently bought, so that 
 a regular trade is carried on in these documents. It is gene- 
 
 o ~ 
 
 rally maintained that priests are instructed to report to the 
 governmental authorities anything that may appear of 
 political significance from the confessional, and that in 
 general they have no scruple in obeying this instruction. 
 The Civil Code, "the Swod," prescribes that people are not to 
 change their places in church, and so forth. The Emperor 
 reserves to himself the decision concerning divorces, 2 and the 
 canonization of saints takes place by Imperial ukase. 
 
 The greater part of the Russian clergy do not, neverthe- 
 less, feel the imperial supremacy as a burden and a deformity 
 in the Church. They have grown up in this view, and know 
 no other the Bible and the history of the Church are sealed 
 books to them ; and they feel like the Russian populace, who 
 take a pride in the fact that the Czar is the sole lord and 
 ruler in the empire, and who find their nationality involved 
 in it. " If we were to unite ourselves to Rome," said a 
 Russian priest to a Frenchman a short time ago, " our 
 Emperor would no longer be the sole ruler in his States. He 
 
 1 " Protest. Kirchen-Zeitung," 1854, p. 354. 
 
 2 ' Allg.-Zeitung," 1858, 12th Deer., p. 5607.
 
 140 SECTS AND SEPARATIST COMMUNITIES. 
 
 would have to be accountable to a foreign sovereign, and 
 that would be humiliating. We cannot understand how you 
 Frenchmen, who usually possess a pretty good share of 
 national pride, should allow your bishops to receive the con- 
 firmation of their appointments from Rome I" 1 
 
 Churches are, like individuals, punished by that wherein 
 they have sinned. How carefully did this Church cherish 
 the bad heritage it had received from the spiritually im- 
 poverished Byzantium, a mechanical ritualism ; and how care- 
 fully did it exclude itself from every breath of spiritual 
 religion and of deeper feeling ! How it has allowed its 
 clergy to sink into a mass of rude, mindless machines ; how 
 it has left its people, -without the spiritual nourishment of the 
 tidings of salvation, to languish and perish in the dreary 
 monotony of a barren ceremonial and empty religious 
 etiquette ! Amidst endless crossings and prostrations, and 
 genuflexions, the body is kept so hard at work, and so con- 
 stantly occupied in the Church, that the mind has not a 
 moment for thought. 2 Only in Russia could sects arise, 
 founded on a difference as to whether the sign of the Cross 
 was to be made with two fingers or three, or whether a fast 
 was to be kept on Wednesday or Friday, if either of these 
 days should happen to be a holiday. Russia is the true 
 home of a sect which would consider its salvation endangered 
 
 O 
 
 by a revision of the faulty text of the liturgical books, or by 
 a variation of images from the ancient pattern. 
 
 The temporalization of the Church by the supremacy of 
 the Czar has, on the whole, had a great part in the forma- 
 tion of the numerous sects and Separatist communities, which 
 form in Russia an evil not to be remedied by ecclesiastical 
 means, and appear to threaten danger to the State, since 
 they only need skilful leaders to give them a politically re- 
 volutionary direction. On the other hand, however, the 
 existence of these sects has been put forward as a reason why 
 
 1 " Correspondant," May, 1861, p. 189. 
 
 * See LtiouzoN LE Due's " La Russie Contemporaine." Paris, 1854, 
 p. 228.
 
 RUSSIAN SECTS. 141 
 
 the supreme power of the Emperor over the entire ecclesi- 
 astical territory must be maintained unaltered. 1 
 
 The RaskolnikeS) or Apostates, as they are called by the 
 State Church, or the Staroverzes (old Believers, as they call 
 themselves) are very widely spread among the lower orders. 
 They represent old Russia, as it was before Peter L, and 
 ostensibly protest against the alterations made in the Church 
 books by the Patriarch Nikon, but really also against the 
 dominion of the Czar over the Church. This sect is extend- 
 ing every year more and more ; and, according to a recent 
 statement, it has increased, since 1840, from nine millions 2 
 to thirteen millions. Throughout Siberia, the Ural moun- 
 tains, among the Cossack tribes, and in Northern Russia, the 
 population belongs chiefly to the Staroverzes. The Govern- 
 ment will not consent to tolerate them ; but they know how to 
 manage with the Government officers; 3 whilst the bishops and 
 Popes of the State Church, who are sent by the Synod to 
 Siberia, are regarded very much in the same light as the 
 Protestant clergymen of Ireland in purely Catholic districts. 4 
 Through a bishop of their own Church, who, since 1845, has 
 taken up his residence in a Galician village, they have been 
 arranged into six large dioceses, and have obtained bishops 
 and ordained priests of their own. Besides these Separatists, 
 a considerable number of heretical sects have issued from the 
 fruitful womb of the State Church. One of the youngest of 
 these sects is that of the Molokaner, who profess to be strictly 
 Biblical in their faith ; but it is according to an arbitrary and 
 mystical interpretation of the Bible. They have already 
 spread throughout Russia, and number a million of disciples. 5 
 
 To this increasing estrangement of the lower classes may 
 be now added the complete indifference of the educated and 
 higher orders. 6 " There is perhaps no country in the world," 
 
 1 See the Russian Memorial in "The Rambler," Nov., 1857, p. 313-55. 
 
 2 GOLOWINE, " Autocratie Russe," Leip., 1860. 
 
 DOLGOROUKOW shows (p. 366) what a lucrative branch of income 
 the Staroverzes form for the venal police. 
 
 4 MESSNER'S "K Ev. Kirchen-Zeitung," 1860, p. 367. 
 
 "N. Preuss.-Zeitung," 21st Dec., 1859. 
 
 " La Russie sera-t-elle Catholique ? " p. 66.
 
 142 ADMINISTRATION OF BAPTISM. 
 
 says Gagarin, " that counts so many Voltairians as Russia." 
 The Russian Church maintains that in its creed and 
 administration of the Sacraments, it is completely in har- 
 mony with the Church of Constantinople ; but this, in reality, 
 is not the case on the contrary, a very striking difference 
 has lately appeared. Both Churches namely, the Russian 
 and the Greek are accustomed to administer baptism by 
 three complete immersions ; whilst the Catholic Church and 
 the Protestants (Baptists exceptetl) content themselves with 
 pouring water on the head of a person to be baptized ; or, as 
 in England and elsewhere, with a mere sprinkling of water. 
 The form of baptism, by pouring on the head, was declared 
 by the Greek Church, in a Synod assembled at Constantinople 
 in the year 1484, and with consent of the four Patriarchs, to 
 be effectual ; and the same thing was done for Russia by a 
 mixed Synod of Greek and Russian bishops in the year 
 1667; but in the year 1756, the Greeks, in a Constitution 
 signed by three Patriarchs, overthrew the former decisions, 1 
 and resolved that, for the future, all proselytes from any one 
 of the Western Churches should be immersed. 
 
 This custom has since continued in all the churches belong- 
 ing to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and is now de- 
 clared by the Hellenic Church to be indispensable. The 
 Russian Church, however, with its comprehensive projects 
 for obtaining Catholic and Lutheran converts, rightfully 
 considered that the necessity for a new baptism might prove 
 a stumbling-block to such proselytes, and would, therefore, 
 not accept this new decision ; so that, in the eyes of the 
 Greeks, not only the Russian Empresses, but many of the 
 priests, and a considerable number of laymen, are not baptized 
 at all. From 150,000 to 180,000 of the latter, for example, 
 of Lutherans of the Baltic provinces, who have become 
 " orthodox," and the thousands of converts received every 
 year, and for all of whom the anointing with the Chrism 
 has been thought sufficient. 2 Such a profound difference 
 
 1 As a pretext, the incorrect assertion was made, that the Latins bap- 
 tized by mere sprinkling pairio-/ioc. 
 
 * The Patriarch of that time, Cyrillus of Constantinople, approved,
 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 143 
 
 would certainly, under other circumstances, have led to a 
 complete dissolution of ecclesiastical association ; but in the 
 Turkish East, as well as in Hellas, there are the most press- 
 ing reasons for keeping up a good understanding with the 
 Czar and the Czar's Church ; and it has therefore been 
 resolved, with very cautious "prudence," to pass over in 
 silence the crime of which, according to Anatolian prin- 
 ciples, the Russian Church has been guilty, by admitting 
 whole troops of unbaptized persons to all Christian rights 
 and means of salvation, and by having also allowed the 
 whole Church to be ruled by (Catherine II.) an unbaptized 
 Empress. 
 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND AND THE DISSENTERS. 
 
 The Church of England cannot properly be called a National 
 Church, since at least the half in fact, a much larger number 
 of the population, do not belong to the Anglican Church. 
 The Catholics of England (without reckoning Scotland and 
 Ireland) amount to a million and a half; the Dissenters of 
 various denominations are much more numerous ; and there 
 is a mass of the poor population, factory workers and others, 
 who are, for the most part, attached to no Church at all, 
 and about whom the Anglican Church does not trouble 
 itself and partly for this reason, that in its stiff and narrow 
 organization, and all want of pastoral elasticity, it feels itself 
 powerless against the masses ; whilst they, on their side, 
 never think of reckoning themselves members of the Church, 
 or asking from it any assistance. 
 
 The Anglican, however, is still the State Church ; it is 
 the only one politically-privileged ; its Bishops sit in Parlia- 
 ment, though only in the Upper House whilst in the Lower 
 House, which is the real centre of power and government, 
 
 and made public, in the year 1756, the book of EUSTRATIUS ARGENTES, 
 2r?j\trfi;en'e rov 'PajmdjuoS, which is intended to show that the whole of 
 Western Christendom is unbaptized. See also the detailed discussion of 
 this subject by WILLIAM PALMER, in his " Dissertations on subjects 
 relating to the Orthodox, or Eastern Catholic Communion." London, 
 1853, p. 163-203.
 
 144 THE CLEKGY. 
 
 the Church is only casually represented by some few mem- 
 bers, especially regarded as friends of the Church. It 
 is most closely connected with the civil power ; the King or 
 Queen is its head in the fullest sense, and the State provides 
 before all things for the Church and its wants. The intel- 
 lectual classes belong almost exclusively to the State Church, 
 and it scarcely ever happens that a man of eminence pro- 
 fesses himself a member of any Dissenting body. 1 In Eng- 
 land the upper ranks of society are in so far religious, that 
 scarcely one of them would acknowledge himself an unbe- 
 liever, and the majority attend Divine service on a Sunday. 
 It is, then, the rich and distinguished who go to Church, the 
 poor and low who remain away. The clergy of the Episcopal 
 Church themselves proceed from the higher classes, and are 
 by relationship or marriage intimately connected with them ; 
 it is only very seldom that clergymen of the Church havesprung 
 from the lower orders ; and whoever does not belong by birth 
 and connection to the privileged classes, generally finds the 
 door of ecclesiastical preferment closed against him. The 
 patronage is mostly in the hands of the nobility and gentry, 
 who regard the Church as a means of provision for their 
 younger suns, sons-in-law, and cousins. Its patronage partly 
 belongs to the Crown, the bishops, and the universities, who 
 also usually provide for their own. Besides the rich beneficed 
 clergy, however, there is a subordinate poor class of clergy- 
 men (an auxiliary clergy), the curates, who perform service 
 for the more numerous classes of sinecurists and pluralists, 
 and very commonly do this for very slender emoluments. 
 The son of a family of the lower order might perhaps attain 
 to the position of a curate, but there is no Christian country 
 where the poor and humble are so much excluded from the 
 higher schools and educational establishments and thereby 
 of c,ourse from the Church and the service of the State as 
 in England. 
 
 Nowhere else is the chasm between the rich and the poor 
 so great nowhere else so little intercourse between these 
 classes, so little community of thought and feeling, as in 
 
 1 The celebrated chemist, Faraday, seems a rare exception.
 
 THE CHURCH OF THE ARISTOCRACY. 145 
 
 England. The aristocratically born and educated clergy of 
 the State Church belong to the higher orders they under- 
 stand them, and are understood by them they think and 
 feel with them and from the people they are separated by a 
 chasm that their pastoral zeal is seldom able to bridge over. 1 
 The Anglican Church clergyman does not preach he reads 
 a speech or an essay ; he reads the lengthy Sunday liturgy, 
 and he visits the boys' school; but the people are not specially 
 fond of these lectures in the churches; and, with the prevail- 
 ing system of hired seats and pews, they cannot even find 
 room inside the churches. Of the confessional, which, in the 
 Catholic, the Greek, and the Russian churches, brings the 
 priest into immediate communication with the individual, 
 there is of course no question. The liturgy directs indeed 
 that the sick man, if he feels confession necessary for the 
 easing of his conscience, may resort to it ; but no practical 
 use is ever made of this permission, since persons who have 
 never confessed in their whole lives do not think of it when 
 on a sick bed. The English clergyman is therefore a lec- 
 turer, and in general nothing more; whilst to the lower classes 
 his manners and his modes of expression are strange, unin- 
 telligible, and repulsive. 
 
 There is no Church that is so completely and thoroughly 
 as the Anglican the product and expression of the wants 
 and wishes, the modes of thought and cast of character, not 
 of a certain nationality, but of a fragment of a nation, namely, 
 the rich, fashionable, and cultivated classes. It is the religion 
 of deportment, of gentility, of clerical reserve. Religion and 
 the Church are then required to be, above all things, not 
 troublesome, not intrusive, not presuming, not importunate. 
 What specially recommends it is its freedom from pretension 
 that it claims no high authority, is no inconvenient disturber 
 of the conscience, but keeps within the limits of general 
 morality ; and whilst retaining some Christian doctrines, sel- 
 dom wounds the hearts of the hearers by an application of 
 
 1 LYITON BCLWER has made some excellent remarks on this "cause 
 of weakness in the Established Church" in his "England and the 
 English." Paris, 1833, p. 210. 
 
 L
 
 146 PECULIAR CHARACTER OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH. 
 
 the,m. As to what it once possessed of positive ecclesiastical 
 tenets, it has gradually allowed them to become obsolete. It is 
 content with taking up just so much space in life as com- 
 merce, the enjoyment of riches, and the habitude of a class, 
 desirous before all things of " comfort," may have left to it. 
 Of the numerous pious practices by which formerly the lives of 
 Englishmen, during their whole course, were attached to the 
 Christian faith, there are few that this Church has not broken, 
 or allowed to be broken; and the few that remain are those 
 which possess the smallest restraining power. The Con- 
 fession of sins, Fasting, everything that falls within the limits 
 of the ascetic, the average Englishman reckons as " super- 
 stition," an idea that is for him a very comprehensive one. His 
 Church, and it is that for which he specially admires it, requires 
 of him nothing "superstitious." Its insulated character, also, 
 its separation from every other Christian community, suits 
 the national taste, and is a popular feature of the Anglican 
 Church. The Englishman, especially of the higher ranks, 
 finds it quite in the proper order of things that he should 
 have a Church exclusively to himself, in which no other 
 nation has any share ; a Church, too, which, while it has all 
 the accommodating spirit, the reserve, and the exclusiveness 
 of Continental Protestantism, on the other assumes, by 
 means of its episcopacy and its more liturgical character, 
 an aspect of more dignity and importance. 1 
 
 1 It is necessary to have been in England, to see, and to observe, this 
 self-complacent feeling with regard to the National Church, before one 
 can have anything like an exact idea of its strength, intensity, and 
 peculiarity. In Catholic countries the case does not occur ; since 
 Catholics except those who live scattered amongst nations of other 
 creeds are little, if at all, aware of the contrast between their own Church 
 and that of others. From their youth upwards they have heard only of 
 one Universal Church they have breathed only its air they have moved 
 only within the circle of its ideas and they know that their nation is 
 only one among many one branch of the great tree of the Church, and 
 has no peculiar advantage over any other branch. The English- 
 man, on the contrary, has sucked in, with his mother's milk, the idea of 
 an English religion, an English Church, to which all others stand related 
 only as degenerate as bastard Churches as superstition does to faith 
 and he enjoys the agreeable conviction of belonging to the chosen
 
 ITS UXACCEPTABILITY TO THE POOR. 147 
 
 The Episcopal State Church has, since the Revolution of 
 1688, and especially since 1770, suffered enormous losses. 
 In the year 1676, that is, only seventeen years after its re-es- 
 tablishment, it was calculated that Catholics and Dissenters 
 together only made up a twentieth part of the population. 
 At present, at least one-half of the nation is estranged from 
 it. What makes it pleasing and acceptable to the higher 
 classes repels the lower. They see in the Anglican clergy- 
 man only the elegant gentleman, who has no mission to them ; 
 he is not a friend, not a messenger of God, and, what is 
 worse, he has no fixed doctrine to proclaim to them, for the 
 Church he serves has none. What he teaches is only the 
 opinions of the party or school to which he belongs, by the 
 accidents of birth, of education, or of society. 
 
 It may be conceived that a great part of the people prefer 
 belonging to one of the sects which have a definite form of 
 doctrine, and leave little or nothing to the whim of a preacher. 
 
 Clergymen of the Established Church assert 1 that, since the 
 Reformation, the Church has never been so much the religion 
 of the people, has never been able to win so much of their 
 confidence, as their Catholic predecessor. But as the Church 
 of the richest country in the world, and of the richest classes 
 in that country, it has the disposal of larger pecuniary means 
 than any other; and, during the last thirty years, it has 
 done more in the way of the restoration of old, and the 
 
 people of a new Church the modern favourite of the Godhead ! It is 
 this very Jewish mode of thought that has also found so much satisfac- 
 tion in the Jew-like observance of the Sabbath. The one true Church, 
 thinks the average English'rnan, is physically and morally an Insular 
 Church. Where the firm British soil ceases, and the sea begins, there 
 ceases also the firm ground, ecclesiastical outside of it are the heaving 
 billows of superstition, and of false or defective Churches. Admirably, 
 and from the very hearts of his countrymen, has the " Saturday Review" 
 (1859, ii. 104) portrayed this state of feeling. " There is no feeling so 
 pleasant as the assurance that you are yourself right, and everybody else 
 wrong that your Church and nation are the very perfection of Churches 
 and nations and that, by implication, you are yourself the most perfect 
 specimen of both temporal and spiritual society." 
 
 1 " Christian Remembrancer," vol. xxvii. (1854), p. 385. 
 
 L 2
 
 148 SPOLIATION OF THE POOR. 
 
 building of handsome new churches, than had previously 
 been done in the present century. 
 
 There is little prospect, nevertheless, that it will ever 
 succeed in becoming what its Catholic predecessor was, or in 
 doing what that effected; that is, of becoming the Church of the 
 lower classes and of the poor, and winning both their confidence 
 and their attachment. Every one who observes the effects 
 that the change of religion has had upon this portion of 
 the population, and the relation in which the present Estab- 
 lished Church stands with respect to the poor, will admit that, 
 as regards both, there can be little room for doubt. 
 
 The depression, detriment, and spoliation of the lower 
 classes, have everywhere followed on the revolution- 
 ary change called "The Reformation." In England, the 
 robbery of the Catholic Church the transference of its 
 property, in enormous masses, into the hands of the laity 
 left thousands of the poor destitute, and transformed 
 thousands of peasant proprietors into helpless paupers. 
 Expenditure upon the poor, in Catholic times, ceased at 
 the Reformation, with the marriages of the clergy, and the 
 enrichment of the nobility, from the property of the Church. 
 "In places where formerly twenty pounds sterling were 
 given away to the poor every year," says a contemporary, 
 "the poor do not now get so much as a handful of meal." 1 
 The churches and monasteries, as well as the parish priests, 
 had hitherto chiefly provided for the poor : they had on 
 their lands a dense population of farmers and tenants. Leslie 
 and Kennett 2 describe the conduct of the Catholic clergy to 
 the poor. They did not, it is said, merely give them alms ; 
 they procured work for them ; they put their children to 
 trades and handicrafts ; the poor, when they were travelling^ 
 found shelter in the monasteries and parsonages, and the 
 pastors kept lists of the poor, that they might give alms to 
 those who most needed them. 3 
 
 But by the sudden abolition of the monasteries, and by the 
 
 1 SELDEX'S Works, iii. 1339. 
 
 * " Divine Right of Tithes," Works, ii. 873. 
 
 * " Lease of Impropriations," 1704, p. 16.
 
 ORIGIN OF ENGLISH PAUPERISM. 149 
 
 bestowal of the Church and monastic estates on the courtiers 
 and nobles, not only were countless numbers of the people 
 rendered all at once destitute, but the new proprietors found 
 it advantageous to turn fields into pastures, and so depopu- 
 late large tracts of land, on which, hitherto, an agricultural 
 population had lived under the protection of the Church; 
 so that at last " the sheep devoured men." l It appears 
 (under Edward VI.), says Burnet, 2 to have been the general 
 intention and plan of the nobility to press down the country 
 people into the same state of degradation and slavery in 
 which they languished in other countries. Thus, with the 
 very first steps that Edward's government made towards the 
 introduction of Calvinism into England, a regular state of 
 slavery was established by law. Such pitiless and un- 
 Christian severity of legislation as was now adopted (after 
 1548) had never, hitherto, been heard of. Idle persons 
 (and for confirmation of the fact of idleness, it was sufficient 
 to show that they had not been at work for three days) 
 as well as vagrant beggars, were to be branded on the breast, 
 and to be made slaves to be fed on nothing but bread and 
 water, thrown into irons, put to forced labour, and attempts 
 to escape were to be punished with death. 3 Thus a helpless 
 
 1 This was said in a political work that appeared in 1581. ( u A Com- 
 pendious or Briefe Examination of Certayne Ordinary Complaints," 
 f. 5.") "The sheep are to blame for all this mischief: they have driven 
 agriculture from the country," &c., &c., ap. EDEN, p. 115. HARRISON'S 
 " Description of England," p. 206, speaks of whole hamlets, or towns, 
 that have been pulled down, and the ground turned into pastures. 
 BECON, SANDYS, and other reformers, theologians, and Protestant 
 bishops, of the time of Edward and Elizabeth, speak of cold covetous- 
 ness, and rude, pitiless oppression of the poor, as prevailing characteristics 
 of the titled and opulent classes, and confess that in the Catholic times 
 they were much more charitable and merciful. Another Protestant 
 theologian traces this change to the doctrines of Faith and Justification. 
 STUBBES, " Motives to Good Works." London, 1596, p. 42. 
 
 2 " History of the Reformation," fol. ed., ii. 114. 
 
 3 Sir FRED. M. EDEN, " State of the Poor." London, 1797, i. 
 100-101. PASHLEY, " Pauperism and Poor Laws." London, 1852, p. 
 180. This writer calls it " a statute characterized by a barbarous and 
 ruthless severity, wholly unworthy of the legislation of any Christian 
 people."
 
 150 POOR-RATES. 
 
 pauper population was first created for England was not 
 at that time an industrial country ; and its poor were treated 
 worse than the beasts of burden. 
 
 Under Elizabeth these laws were renewed, and even boys 
 of fourteen or fifteen years old were to be branded if they 
 begged for alms. 1 If they were beyond eighteen, they might, 
 on being arrested for the second time, be put to death. 2 In 
 the year 1597, severe whipping, or condemnation to the 
 galleys, was substituted for branding. At the same time, 
 however, under Elizabeth, the burden of the poor-rates was 
 first imposed, by which free Christian charity was degraded 
 into a legal obligation, and a compulsory oppressive tax 
 substituted for a willing gift. 3 In more recent times, the 
 poor, or workhouses have been added, whose arrangements, 
 by the separation of husband and wife, parents and children, 
 are completely un-Christian, and even, according to English 
 judgment, in their present state a disgrace to the country, 4 
 since there is nothing like them to be found throughout the 
 rest of Europe. In England at an expense of six millions 
 sterling a-year this much is attained, that the working 
 classes will endure the greatest privation, and live in the 
 most disgusting filth, rather than go voluntarily into 
 " the workhouse." It is the Reformation, as it is now ac- 
 knowledged, that has brought upon the English people, as its 
 permanent consequence, a legally existing and officially 
 established pauperism. 5 
 
 By the abolition of the Catholic holidays, and the trans- 
 formation of the Christian Sunday into a Jewish Sabbath, 
 
 1 STOWE'S " Chronicles of England." London, 1630, ad. an. 1564, 
 1568, 1572. 
 
 2 EDEN, p. 128. 
 
 * See the remarks of the " Edinburgh Review," vol. xc., 507. " The 
 Poor Law," it is said, " poisons the springs of Christian love to our 
 neighbour, by making, on the one side an irresistible claim, and on the 
 other a tax, from which there is no escape," &c. At the beginning of 
 the last century, LESLIE represented the heavy Poor-Rates (ii. 873) as 
 a just punishment for having " robbed God, the Church, and the poor of 
 their patrimony." 
 
 4 PASHLEY, p. 364. 5 ' Dublin Review," xx. 208.
 
 ABOLITION OF CATHOLIC HOLIDAYS. 151 
 
 a further oppressive yoke has been laid on the poor. All the 
 cheerin" 1 and enlivening Church festivals that had been 
 
 O O 
 
 allowed to the people in Catholic times processions, rustic 
 fetes, pilgrimages, dramatic representations and ceremonies 
 were, as a matter of course, abolished, and nothing remained 
 but the sermon, read out of a book the Liturgy, read out 
 of a book and with this the grim Calvinistic suppression of 
 every social sport, and every public amusement, on the 
 Sunday. By these means the whole character of the English 
 people was changed. 1 Formerly known throughout Europe 
 as a people full of genial humour as cheerful " merry Eng- 
 land" they assumed, after the Reformation, a sullen, dis- 
 contented aspect ! 2 
 
 Music and dancing, once the favourite amusements of the 
 
 1 Literally thus (LORD JOHN MANNERS in his u Pleas for National 
 Holidays ;" London, 1843, p. 7), " The English people, who were of 
 yore, famous all over Europe for their love of manly sports and their 
 sturdy good humour, have, year after year, been losing that cheerful 
 character, and acquiring habits of discontent and moroseness." The 
 extensive spread of drinking among the lower classes is certainly con- 
 nected with this ; and experience everywhere shows that when individuals 
 are dissatisfied with their lot, and their lives are gloomy, they become 
 disposed to fall into intemperance. It is only after the middle of the 
 sixteenth cei^ury that this immoderate drinking is mentioned. In the old 
 Catholic times the English people were so free from this vice that their 
 country was regarded as the most sober of all the northern nations. It 
 was entirely changed under Elizabeth, according to the report of two 
 contemporaries, the historian CAMDEN (" Annals of Queen Elizabeth," p. 
 263), and Bishop GODFREY GOODMAN (" The Fall of Man ;" London, 
 1616, p. 366). The military men, who returned home from the wars of 
 the Netherlands, are said to have specially contributed to the spread of 
 this vice, and the first laws against it were made under James, in 
 1606. At present, the working classes of Great Britain drink every 
 year, in brandy and spirits, as much as the revenue of the kingdom, 
 namely (counting also what is spent on tobacco), more than fifty-three 
 millions sterling. PORTER, " On the Self-imposed Taxation of the 
 Working Classes," vol. xiii. of the "Journal of the Statistical Society." 
 
 * The English proverb, " All work and no play makes Jack a dull 
 boy," is specially true of the working classes in England. They are 
 overburdened with work, and the Church does nothing for them. Lord 
 John is perfectly right in designating their general condition as the " all 
 work and no play system."
 
 152 EFFECTS OF PURITANICAL BIGOTRY. 
 
 people, have disappeared. An Englishman of the humbler 
 ranks is unmusical, and neither will nor can dance. All the 
 enjoyments of life, all the means of making the Puritan mo- 
 notony of an English sabbath more tolerable, are reserved to 
 the higher classes. To the working classes nothing is left 
 but drink ! Since the authority and intervention of the 
 Church, which protected all classes equally in the enjoyment 
 of their holidays, has been abolished, the people cannot any 
 longer allow themselves any time for rest ; for amidst a general 
 breathless competition, days of rest nay, hours of rest 
 would be the forerunners of want, misery, and death. At 
 the aspect of such a state of things, even so ardent a Pro- 
 testant as Robert Southey could not refrain from casting 
 longing glances on Catholic countries like Spain, where re- 
 ligion favours and consecrates the innocent pleasures of the 
 people. He complained of the Calvinism of his country, 
 which, with its gloomy, joyless sanctimoniousness, its Jewish 
 observance of the Sabbath, and its suppression of all holidays, 
 had crushed down and brutalized the working classes. 1 
 
 English sovereigns have long recognised this evil. Charles 
 I. wished to protect the freedom of the population against 
 the Puritanism of the Parliament, but was defeated ; and the 
 "keeping holy the Sabbath day" became an effective war- 
 cry against the King, who was unfortunate even in his best- 
 intended measures. 2 A hundred years later the first king of 
 the House of Hanover had to content himself with the bar- 
 ren wish, "that the amusements and games of which his 
 people had been deprived by Puritanical bigotry, and pre- 
 sumptuous latitudinarianism, might be restored to them." 3 
 But to do anything effectual in this direction is for the ex- 
 isting shadow of monarchy impossible. 4 
 
 Down 'to the time of the Reformation, there were in 
 almost every parish in England several chapels and oratories, 
 
 1 Espriella's " Letters." London, 1814, p. 147. 
 
 J. DISRAELI'S " Commentaries on the Life of Charles I." London, 
 1839, ii. 29. 
 
 1 LORD JOHN MANNERS, p. 21. 
 
 4 See, amongst others, POLWHELE'S u Letter to the Bishop of Exeter." 
 Truro, 1833, p. 23.
 
 THE POOR EXCLUDED FROM THE CHURCHES. 153 
 
 which were doubly desirable for the poorer classes and the 
 country people, in a land were there were few actual villages, 
 but so many of the rural population lived in scattered farms 
 and cottages, and the parish church was at a great distance 
 from a considerable part of the congregation. All these 
 chapels and religious places Protestantism has destroyed, and 
 left no more than the parish church. 
 
 But even this was not thought enough. The church is 
 the house of the poor, in which if it is anything more than 
 a lecture-room they feel themselves happy, for this reason, 
 that they find there what is wanting in their confined and 
 mostly cheerless homes the adornment of pictures; symbols; 
 ample space ; the solemn influence of architectural beauty 
 and proportion ; tranquillity and silence inspiring devotion; 
 an atmosphere and the example of prayer. Protestantism has 
 not only robbed the churches it permitted to remain of every 
 ornament, but it has even locked and bolted them up, so 
 that during the week no one can pay a visit to the church. 
 
 Before the Reformation no closed pews were allowed in the 
 churches ; the space belonged to the whole congregation, and 
 high and low were mingled together when they prayed. 1 
 With Protestantism, however, pews, or boxes, obtained an 
 entrance pews furnished with all comforts, in which the rich 
 and great can remain completely apart and separated from 
 the common people. 
 
 Thus all things have combined together to exclude the 
 poor from the Churches of England, or induce them volun- 
 tarily to keep away : the listless form of a service consisting 
 almost wholly of readings ; the space taken up by the pews of 
 the rich, the feelings of the humbler as to the wretchedness 
 of their attire ' by the side of the elegant costumes of the 
 opulent ; and then the widening separation and estrangement 
 between these different classes. 
 
 To the Dissenting sects the utterly poor cannot turn, since 
 these sects are supported entirely by the payments of their 
 members ; and the consequence is, that the masses have sunk 
 
 1 This is remarked by Bishop KENNETT in his u Parochial Antiquities," 
 new ed., by Bandford. Oxford, 1818, ii. 282.
 
 154 POVERTY AND DEPRAVITY. 
 
 into such a state of complete religious and moral barbarism, that 
 a "numerous nation.of heathens" has grown up in the country, 1 
 or rather, according to the confession of one of the bishops, 
 something worse than heathenism, for a fierce hatred against 
 the Christian faith rages in many parts of England. 2 According 
 to a statistical statement, only a fifth part of the population 
 of London, and that even of the opulent classes, goes to 
 church. " The poor," says one of the city missionaries, " ab- 
 sent themselves almost wholly from religious worship." 3 He 
 found that in the parish of Clerkenwell, containing 50,000 
 souls, only one in fifty goes occasionally to church. 4 The 
 consequences have not failed to follow ; Worsley, a clergy- 
 man of the Established Church, maintains that among the 
 poor in the manufacturing towns the last remains of modesty 
 between the sexes have almost disappeared ; and, what is still 
 more significant, that even in the country villages chastity 
 and continence have almost entirely disappeared from among 
 the labouring classes. 5 
 
 Along with the churches the schools also were abstracted 
 
 1 An expression of PUSEY'S, in his sermon, " Christ the Source and 
 Rule of Christian Love," pp. 5, 11. 
 
 * u Charge of the Bishop of Exeter," p. 56. German observers also 
 certify to this fact. " The poor in England find no other way of avoid- 
 ing complete religious and moral destitution than that of going to Borne. 
 It is not, alas ! to be doubted, that the great majority of the poor who, 
 in the widest extent of the word, may be called the mass of the lower 
 orders of the people, have passed away without having had any part in 
 its moral and religious life." B. A. HCBER, " Hengstenberg Kirchen- 
 Zeitung," 1858, p. 345. 
 
 VANDER KISTE, u Notes and Narrations of a Six Years' Mission, 
 principally among the Dens ot London," 1853. He says, (p. 14), 
 " Heathenism is the poor man's religion in the metropolis." 
 
 * According to the Census of 1851, it appears, that if we take the 
 number of persons capable of attending Church at fifty-eight per cent, 
 of the population, six and a half millions belong to the Established 
 Church, six millions to the Free communities, Catholics and Dissenters, 
 and five and a half millions to no Church at all. In the towns the num- 
 ber of Established Church people is less than that of the Dissenters, and 
 in Wales and Monmouth not one third of the population belongs to the 
 Established Church. 
 
 " Prize Essay on Juvenile Depravity." London, p. 68-82.
 
 EXCLUSION OF THE POOR FROM SCHOOLS. 155 
 
 from the poor. In the year 1563, the Speaker of the Lower 
 House declared that, in consequence of the robbery and 
 plundering of the foundations at the Reformation, the edu- 
 cation of youth had been prevented, and a fresh supply of 
 teachers cut off. That there were a hundred less schools now 
 than had formerly existed, and that many of those that re- 
 mained were very poorly attended. This was the cause of a 
 glaring diminution in the number of learned men. 1 Several 
 grammar-schools were afterwards founded, but the poor were 
 excluded from these also, and the case was the same at the 
 two universities. Among the numerous colleges several had 
 been founded in Catholic times expressly for poor students, 
 but after the Reformation these also were made aristocratic. 
 
 Even an organ of the Established Church cannot help con- 
 fessing, in the face of these facts, that the Reformation in its 
 results was, without doubt, a triumph of the rich over the 
 poor, and of money over the rights of labour. 2 
 
 The laws from the time of the three Tudors, Henry, Ed- 
 ward, and Elizabeth, declare the supremacy over the Church 
 to be an inalienable prerogative of the Crown. These 
 statutes still exist in full force. The king or the reigning 
 queen is in possession of the Church ecclesiastical power, and 
 that of the bishops is only an emanation of the royal autho- 
 rity. The wearer of the crown is consequently in one re- 
 spect the most uufree person in his dominions ; for if he were 
 to enter into communion with the Papal See, become a Ca- 
 tholic, or even take a Catholic wife, he would thereby incur 
 an abdication or loss of his throne. According to the statute 
 of 1689, the nation would be in that case released from the 
 oath of fealty and allegiance. 3 At the same time, he must 
 
 1 COLLIER'S " Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain," ii. 480 ; also 
 HALLAM'S u Introduction to the Literature of Europe," ii. 39, Paris ed., 
 mentions the poverty and insignificance of English literature in the time 
 of Elizabeth, and remarks that Spain, at that time, stood higher than 
 England in this respect. 
 
 2 " British Critic," vol. xxxiii., p. 419. 
 
 * See upon this the remarks of PUSEY in " Patience and Confidence the 
 Strength of the Church." Oxford, 1841, p. 30. He cites the words of 
 the statute : " The people are, in such case, absolved from their allegi-
 
 1-56 THE STATE CHURCH A CREATION OF THIS WORLD. 
 
 be, in fact, by turns the religious head of two Churches, and 
 of two opposite, and sometimes mutually hostile religions ; 
 for in Scotland, Presbyterian Calvinistic Protestantism is the 
 Established Church. 
 
 The present Queen, therefore, is accustomed to be in win- 
 ter an English Episcopalian, and in summer a Scotch Pres- 
 byterian ; in winter she attends the Anglican Liturgy, and 
 has the sacrament administered to her by the hand of a 
 bishop, or an Episcopally ordained clergyman and during her 
 summer residence in Balmoral, or any other part of Scotland, 
 she hears a Calvinistic sermon, and receives the Communion 
 from a clergyman who would not in England be admitted to 
 a pulpit of the Establishment, and that a great part of the 
 clergy and laity would not regard as a regularly ordained 
 clergyman. 
 
 Besides the Ministers and the Parliament, " the Privy 
 Council," since 1833, exercises a supremacy over religion 
 and the Church. It was appointed by Parliament to be the 
 Supreme Court of Appeal in ecclesiastical disputes, whether 
 concerning doctrine or discipline, and consists wholly or 
 chiefly of laymen, who are in part not even members of the 
 Established Church. 
 
 A ministerial daily paper, the " Globe," published, a few 
 years ago, a declaration upon the nature and position of the 
 National Church, which even Bishop Wilberforce, of Oxford, 
 publicly adduced as the expression of the views of the 
 Government. " The State Church, by law established," it is 
 stated, " is, in fact, a creation of this world ; it is a machine 
 for the employment of the spiritual element in the variable 
 public opinion of the day. Its government is managed 
 by the Prime Minister ; its characteristics are passive 
 immobility, persevering silence, an absolute nullity in its 
 censures and, then, the thousands of its declared adherents, 
 who laugh aloud, whenever its ministers overstep their 
 humble sphere, as officers of a national institution all these 
 things are signs and tokens of a servitude which the lowest 
 sect of Jumpers would not subject itself to, but which, 
 in our department of public worship, is both natural and 
 appropriate."
 
 THE BISHOPS. 157 
 
 When, about the same time, a desire for a certain inde- 
 pendent Sy nodical action arose, the "Times" said It ought 
 to be considered that this Church, to which the Parliament 
 had given its present form, " possesses every attribute, every 
 advantage, and every disadvantage of a compromise. Her 
 Articles and authorised formularies are so drawn as to 
 admit within her pale persons differing as widely as it is 
 possible for the professors of the Christian religion to differ 
 from each other. Unity was neither sought nor obtained ; 
 but comprehension was aimed at and accomplished. There- 
 fore we have within the Church of England persons differing 
 not merely in their particular tenets, but in the rule and 
 ground of their belief the one party seeking religion in the 
 Bible, with the help of the Spirit, the other in the Church, 
 by the means of tradition. The same power of freely meet- 
 ing and deliberating, of discussing and altering, which is 
 essential to the existence of a voluntary Church, is destruc- 
 tive to a compromise entered into and carried out under the 
 sanction and authority of the state." 1 
 
 The Bishops are, on the whole, powerless concerning 
 doctrine and discipline ; and, for fear of a long and expensive 
 lawsuit, they seldom venture to proceed against a beneficed 
 clergyman. They have greater power over the curates, 
 who, also, are mostly very poor ; whilst Cathedral institutions 
 have no place in the organization of the Church, and consist 
 of sinecures. The numerous Ecclesiastical Courts have also 
 a crowd of sinecure places attached to them. Of the 11,728 
 benefices of England and Wales, the Crown has the disposal 
 of only 1,144, and private persons, 6,092, which they may 
 give away by mere favour, without any conditions concerning 
 examination to be passed, or years of service. The Bishops 
 dispose of 1853 livings, with the widest opening for nepotism, 
 which has become proverbial among them. Plurality, or 
 the simultaneous possession of several benefices, and the 
 consequent inevitable absenteeism, although somewhat re- 
 strained by recent enactments, is still of frequent occur- 
 
 1 "Times," 5th August, 1852. The article may also be seen in the 
 " Christian Remembrancer," vol. xxiv., p. 382.
 
 158 MERCANTILE SPIRIT OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 rence. In Ireland, in the year 1834, out of 1385 church 
 livings, 157 had no divine service, and 339 no resident cler- 
 gyman. 
 
 Thus, according to the confession of serious and conscien- 
 tious men in the English Church, it is an intensely worldly 
 institution. The ecclesiastical offices have been, for 150 
 years, disposed of by the civil power, chiefly according to 
 political views, and regarded and treated according to their 
 lucrative value. The Bishoprics, and other rich preferments, 
 have been employed to procure for the ministry the support 
 of influential families. At present they are chiefly bestowed 
 on men of the Evangelical party, as these are most agreeable 
 to powerful dissenters, and to great numbers of similarly- 
 disposed Anglicans of the middle class. The designation of 
 a church benefice as a living is very characteristic. It is 
 regarded entirely as a piece of private property as a mere 
 ware, that may be bought, and sold, and bargained for, as 
 one pleases. The most open simony is an everyday occur- 
 rence in England, and meets with no remonstrance on the 
 part of the Bishops. It creates no surprise when the next 
 presentation to a living is publicly offered for sale ; and it 
 is quite usual for a father to buy for one of his sons a 
 commission in the army; and for the other, the next presen- 
 tation to a church living. 1 And yet, every clergyman, upon 
 entering on his living, has to take an oath that he has not 
 obtained it through simony ! A thoroughly mercantile spirit 
 has taken possession of this part of the Church system. The 
 office of preacher to a church or chapel, built on speculation, is 
 publicly advertised, with the remark, that a free and complete 
 " preaching of the Gospel (that is, according to the con- 
 venient Calvinistic doctrine of Justification) is expected." 
 Not unfrequently clergymen offer themselves, and mention 
 their recommendations their powerful voice, their impressive 
 manner, their pure Protestant principles, or their attachment 
 to the " moderate and liberal" views of the Establishment. 2 
 
 1 " British Critic," vol. xxx., p. 281. 
 
 2 A great number of such tenders of their services are to be found in 
 the " Ecclesiastical Gazette."
 
 THE PURCHASE OF LIVINGS. 159 
 
 Others profess " decidedly Evangelical principles," and 
 very generally " extreme religious views are disclaimed," and 
 moderation and sobriety announced. Others, again, state 
 that they have '" Anglo-Catholic principles," or an agreement 
 with the theologians of the seventeenth century. 
 
 There is probably no Church journal in the world in which 
 there is so much talk of "views," and such a choice of opinions 
 to suit every taste, as the publication in which the clergy of 
 the Established Church, so to speak, sit in the market, and 
 offer themselves for hire. In a country like England, one 
 would suppose that nothing would be more intolerable to the 
 freeborn Briton, usually so great a stickler for his rights, 
 than the state of so many congregations the being obliged 
 to allow themselves to be sold to the first purchaser who 
 may present himself. "There is nothing," said the "Times" 
 lately, "to prevent any one from going into the market, 
 and buying a living for any silly, fanatical, extravagant, or 
 incapable booby of a son, and installing him forthwith as the 
 spiritual mediator between the Almighty and one or two 
 thousand of his creatures." 1 And yet there has never yet 
 been, as far as I know, any agitation against this enor- 
 mous abuse, which can hardly be equalled out of Tur- 
 key. 
 
 The inextricable contradiction between the 39 Articles, 
 which are essentially Calvinistic, and the strongly Catho- 
 licized Liturgy, originated in the circumstance of the age of 
 the Reformation. The Articles were to be the dogmatic 
 fetters, binding the clergy to Calvinism, and were only laid 
 before them for signature. But the Liturgy, with its prayers 
 and sacramental forms, was intended to prove to the people, 
 who were still more Catholic than Protestant, and who had 
 to be threatened with pecuniary fines before they would 
 attend the service, that their religion had not been essen- 
 tially altered, and that the old Catholic Church still really 
 existed. 2 
 
 The Anglican Church is, therefore, distinguished from all 
 
 1 See " Weekly Register," May llth, 1861. 
 
 7 This must be openly admitted even on the Protestant side. See
 
 160 CONTRADICTIONS IN DOCTRINE. 
 
 other Protestant Churches in this, that they possess in their 
 symbolic books at least the possibility of unity of doctrine, 
 and a corresponding ecclesiastical life as, for example, the 
 Lutherans, by keeping seriously and closely to their Concor- 
 dian-Book, might effect a unity of life and doctrine, provided 
 they got rid of theology. But the English Church has the 
 germ of discord and ecclesiastical dissolution in its normal 
 condition, and in its Confessions of Faith. It is a collection 
 of heterogeneous theological propositions, tied together by 
 the Act of Uniformity ; but which, in a logical mind, cannot 
 exist by the side of one another, and whose effect upon the 
 English Churchman is, that he finds himself involved in con- 
 tinual contradictions and disingenuousness, and can only 
 escape the painful consciousness by sophistical reasoning. 
 
 Each of the two great parties in the Church cast on each 
 other an aspersion of hypocrisy and disingenuousness, with 
 equal right : for the one cannot sign the Calvinistic articles 
 with inward conviction ; and the others can only accept the li- 
 turgy, to which they have an antipathy,for the sake of the bene- 
 fices they receive, and are obliged to wrest the meaning of 
 liturgical forms in the most violent manner. Many feel the 
 contradiction involved in the rule that the doctrinal articles 
 are to be binding on the conscience, whilst there is no 
 authority to be found that might guarantee the truth of 
 these articles. No such authority is, in fact, recognised. One 
 of the articles declares, indeed, that the Church has authority 
 in matters of faith, but no one is able to say what and 
 where this Church is. It cannot be the English State- 
 Church, for this has no organ, and, since the Reformation, 
 has never had one ; unless, indeed, it be the political supre- 
 macy of the prime minister for the time being, and his privy- 
 council of laymen. 
 
 The present distracted state of the Established Church, in 
 
 WILL. GOODE'S " Defence of the thirty-nine Articles." London, 1848, 
 p. 10. The " Christian Remembrancer" (vol. xvi., p. 472) thinks, in- 
 deed, that Mr. Goode has herein manifested an extremely presumptuous 
 contempt of the Church, of which he is the servant. But the matter is 
 familiar to every reader of history.
 
 RISE OF THE EVANGELICAL PARTY. 161 
 
 which there are not so many various Schools, as parties with 
 extremely various and contradictory views, is the consequence 
 of the measures adopted at the Reformation, and of its 
 subsequent historical course. The old contrast between 
 genuine Protestant, and old Church or Catholic views, has 
 manifested itself from time to time, under various forms, in 
 the bosom of the Church itself. 
 
 After the Revolution of 1688, arose that class of theologians 
 and clergymen who were the forerunners of rationalism the 
 so-called Latitudinarians. Archbishop Wake said, in 1710j 
 that " the English Church was only preserved from destruc- 
 tion by her hands being bound (by the civil power), so that 
 she could not destroy herself." 1 
 
 During the long period of perfect languor and indifference 
 which followed, the contrast between the two parties died 
 away. Towards the end of the last century, there arose the 
 elder Evangelical school; and through its means, and the 
 struggle with Methodism, some symptoms of life began to 
 re-appear in the hitherto benumbed limbs of the English 
 Church. This was a re-action against the spiritless mecha- 
 nism and the half-veiled infidelity of the English Church ; 
 a religious movement proceeding from the re-awakened 
 Calvinism of the Church doctrine, which had been so long 
 dormant. To this earlier generation of Evangelicals, the 
 English owe the abolition of slavery, and the establishment 
 of several useful societies, which are still, in fact, financially 
 prosperous. But the present race of Evangelicals may, in 
 comparison with the former, be called a declining one. As 
 the party is at present constituted, it represents within the 
 Established Church, continental Protestantism, but without 
 any Lutheran feature ; on the contrary, with a prepondera- 
 ting Calvinism for example, it has the Calvinist feature of 
 a degradation of the sacraments into mere symbols. Its 
 favourite doctrine, and most effective instrument, is the 
 dogma of "Justification by imputation," which is so popular 
 in England and America ; and, when proclaimed with fluent 
 oratory, fills both chapels and churches. This party is 
 1 CALAMY'S " Life of Baxter," i. 405. 
 
 M
 
 162 THEIR CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 mostly deficient in university culture, and there is no question 
 of theological science among its adherents ; their literature 
 consists almost, wholly of sermons and writings " for edifica- 
 tion;" they also occupy themselves and their hearers much 
 with Apocalyptic and Chiliadic theories and prophecies ; 
 with " the approaching fall of the Man of Sin," and " the 
 Beast," or with " the discovery of the ten lost tribes," and so 
 forth. A narrow understanding, a defective education, and un- 
 acquaintance with the world are, according to Arnold's defini- 
 tion, the signs of an Evangelical. The party is internally 
 much nearer to the Methodists, the Congregationalists, and 
 Baptists, than to the High Church and the " Tractarians," 
 whom they fervently hate, though both belong to the same 
 Church. 
 
 Since this party is entirely deficient in everything that 
 could be called theology, it is hard to say how the various 
 fractions into which it has now fallen are to be distinguished 
 one from another. Besides the characteristics above-men- 
 tioned, their most prominent features are the rejection of the 
 whole body of Church tradition the denial of the visible 
 Church as a divine institution the treatment of the Bible 
 according to a theory of literal inspiration which would make 
 every theology impossible the transformation of the Chris- 
 tian Sunday into a Jewish Sabbath, and in accordance with 
 which the lower classes of the people are prohibited from all 
 recreation, and even children are forbidden to laugh and play. 
 The sacramental system is, in their eyes, only Popery in 
 disguise. Of the decided Calvinist Record-party, Cony- 
 beare 1 says, " The religion of many of its members seems to 
 consist only of love to the Jews, and hatred of the Papists." 
 On the whole, the Evangelicals may be regarded as sons 
 and descendants of the old Puritans, but without their deep 
 earnestness, or their hatred against the Episcopal constitu- 
 tion of the Church ; which, indeed, in the absence of all 
 authority, is but the shadow of a Hierarchical order. In 
 the year 1660, when matters came to a rupture between the 
 
 1 In his description of the English Church parties in the " Edinburgh 
 Review," vol. xcviii. p. 274, et seq.
 
 THE ANGLICAN OR HIGH CHURCH PARTY. 163 
 
 Puritans and the Episcopalians, the present Evangelicals 
 would have left the Church, or been driven from it. It is 
 at bottom only the Liturgy the Prayer Book to which they 
 submit, though unwillingly. They scornfully call their 
 opponents " Prayer-Book clergymen," but the State supre- 
 macy they are not willing to part with, especially since the 
 government has bestowed many bishoprics on men of their 
 school. 1 
 
 The true Anglicans, or High-Church men, take a middle 
 position between the Evangelicals and Tractarians. They 
 reject, as a rule, the Protestant doctrine of Justification, and 
 the Calvinistic degradation of baptism to a ceremony. They 
 value the professed apostolic succession of the Anglican 
 episcopacy they maintain the existence of a Church 
 endowed with doctrinal authority; but they defend them- 
 selves against every logical conclusion that must be drawn 
 from such premises. The English Established Church is 
 not only in their eyes the only true one, but it is the purest, 
 the best constituted, the most free from all exaggerations. 
 They are really the best sons and the truest representatives 
 of this Church, and are most content with its existing state ; 
 and since, also, they are by no means exacting in their claims 
 on the Christian lives of their congregation?, they are 
 much in favour with those classes which give the tone to 
 society. That they should form so considerable a part of 
 the English clergy, is only explicable with a nation to whose 
 peculiarities it belongs, that, even according to the judgment 
 
 1 What motives often determine a clergyman to join the party of the 
 Evangelicals, and how much their teaching is in favour with the circles of 
 the rich and fashionable world, is strikingly exhibited in the " Tales by a 
 Barrister." London, 1844, iii. 174-183. The clergyman, above all 
 things, finds that the Anglo-Saxon School requires too much devotion to 
 the Church, and provides too little for the interest and personal import- 
 ance of the individual He remarks that the position of the " Evan- 
 gelical" preacher is a far more favourable one. And then the doctrine 
 is so admirably adapted to the taste of the polite world. Such consolatory 
 views of the utter depravity of our nature ! such sweet assurance deduced 
 from the tranquillizing doctrines of Election and Grace ! &c., &c. 
 
 M 2
 
 164 TRACTARIANISM. 
 
 of Englishmen themselves, they do not see the logical con- 
 sequences of their own doctrines. 1 As these Anglicans 
 formerly found the continual profanation of the Lord's 
 Supper, in consequence of the Test Act, to be quite a 
 matter of course; so they now feel no repugnance at the 
 Burial Service ; 2 and the clergy of the Established Church, 
 Evangelicals, and High-Church men, are certainly the 
 only clergy in the world who "give every deceased person 
 to the grave," let him have lived how he may let him be 
 even a Catholic or a Dissenter in the "sure and certain hope 
 of a blessed resurrection." 3 There can hardly be a more 
 distinct declaration that, after all, belonging to the Church, 
 taking part in her services, and using her means of salvation, 
 can be a matter of no consequence. 
 
 Public opinion has borne so much the harder for this 
 reason on the Tractarians. This school arose thirty years 
 ago at Oxford, chiefly in the view of awakening the Church 
 from its lethargic slumber, when its safety seemed endan- 
 gered by the suppression of ten Irish bishoprics ; and it then 
 attempted to revive the theology and the Church prin- 
 ciples of the Carolan age (that is, from 1625 to 1680), and 
 to inspire them with new vigour. But the experience of a 
 few years rendered it evident that the re-establishment of a 
 
 1 "The peculiar incapacity of the English mind for perceiving the 
 sequence of doctrine," is the observation of the " Christian Remem- 
 brancer," vol. xxxvi., p. 247. 
 
 2 And yet I find that in the year 1852, 4000 clergymen did present 
 to the Archbishop of Canterbury, a remonstrance against the compulsory 
 use of the " Burial Service." The Archbishop, with a number of his 
 bishops, considered the matter ; but decided that every attempt at an 
 alteration would meet with insuperable difficulties. "Christian Remem- 
 brancer," vol. xxiv., p. 254. 
 
 3 " Every Dissenter who is to be buried in a parish graveyard must 
 be committed to the grave with the Church Service, and by an Estab- 
 lished Church clergyman : that is to say, he must, as the phrase is, return 
 at his death into the bosom of the Established Church. In the April of 
 the present year, Sir M. Peto moved, in the Lower House, ' That Dis- 
 senters be allowed to bury their dead in the parish churchyards, accord- 
 ing to the forms of their own confessional ritual,' but the bill was thrown 
 out by a majority of eighty-one ""Allg.-Zeitung," May 1, 1861, p. 1976.
 
 RECOGNITION OF CATHOLIC DOCTRINE. 165 
 
 theological and ecclesiastical position that had long since 
 passed away was a sheer impossibility, and that the frag- 
 ments of a system which, in the seventeenth century, was a 
 mere arbitrary one, intended to meet a peculiar condition of 
 circumstances, could not be made to suffice for the nine- 
 teenth. Men still believed, indeed, and not without reason, 
 that in the Prayer Book they possessed a memorial and a 
 guarantee of old-church, anti-Protestant views; but the 
 greater part of the members of the Established Church had 
 come to a tacit agreement to regard these things as a mere 
 dead letter. The originators of the movement, and the men 
 of most note, of the same way of thinking, entered the 
 Catholic Church ; whilst many others, when they were made 
 aware, by this event, of the consequences of their own prin- 
 ciples, turned back, and, from being "Anglo-Catholics," 
 became again mere ordinary Anglicans. 
 
 Many have remained true to their principles, and have 
 therefore necessarily been carried further in fact, to the 
 extreme limits of the Established Church, or even over them, 
 into the Catholic territory. They are those (the nutnber of 
 the clergy is estimated at 1,200) whose organ is the paper 
 called the " Union." They belong, fundamentally, quite to 
 the Catholic Church they recognize the necessity of an 
 infallible authority in the Church, and they find it in the 
 Catholic they remain for the present in the English Church, 
 only in the hope of coming events. Catholic doctrines and 
 modes of thought have, they flatter themselves, gained so 
 firm a footing, and made, in silence, such progress, that the 
 Catholicizing of the Established English Church is now only 
 a question of time; 1 but then it must indeed cease to be in 
 the sense in which it has hitherto been a State Institution. 
 Events are not favourable to this view : the clergy and 
 laity have the current of public opinion in the upper and 
 middle classes against them ; and in the lower the influence 
 of the Anglicans is very small. 
 
 Finally, a school or party of the clergy has been distin- 
 
 1 See the declaration in the work called " Church Parties." London, 
 1857, p. 87.
 
 1 66 THE " BROAD CHURCH." 
 
 guished as the " Broad Church." The designation of " par- 
 ty " is not quite appropriate, since those included in it have 
 nothing positive in common. Their entity is in negation : 
 they can only be described by saying, they are not Angli- 
 cans, they are not Evangelicals, and so on. They are all 
 under the influence of German literature and theology ; they 
 are opponents of a fixed form of doctrine, and they endea- 
 vour to make the contradictions of the Anglican Church 
 formularies more tolerable, by'assigning to dogma in general 
 only a relative and temporary value ; and declare a sort of 
 general Christianity, levelled and smoothed on rationalistic 
 principles, to be all that is essential; 1 though they are well 
 content with the Established Church, or a decorous institu- 
 tion the best embodiment of the national will in matters 
 ecclesiastical, and well adapted to the real state of things. 
 
 For the more serious Anglo-Catholics, or Tractarians, 
 " the yoke " of the State Supremacy may in truth be named 
 one of "iron." All the powers are against them public 
 opinion is altogether hostile to them ; the higher and middle 
 classes are decidedly Protestant, that is, they are opposed to 
 all that is Catholic in doctrine, rites, and discipline. Every 
 attempt to introduce or re-animate an old-church element in 
 the Establishment has been frustrated by the resistance of 
 the government, the bishops, and of the people every ques- 
 tion has been decided to their disadvantage. They have 
 been defeated in the struggle with theological rationalism in 
 the Hampden controversy ; they have suffered in the 
 Gorham dispute a two-fold defeat first, that the question 
 has been decided according to the opinion, and in favour of 
 the Calvinists ; 2 and that lay state officials, acting in the 
 name of the Queen, have been recognised by almost the 
 whole clergy, and of course by the people, as the highest 
 
 1 The "Semi-Infidelity of the Broad Church School" is_the expression 
 of the " Union," Jan. 4, 1861. 
 
 2 The Church doctrine as to the effect of baptism was, nominally, not 
 rejected ; but the Calvinistic was declared permissible ; and this, in fact, 
 amounted to a declaration that the English Church has no doctrine con- 
 cerning baptism, and that every one may think and teach what he pleases 
 about it.
 
 ESTABLISHED CHURCHES OF BRITAIN. 167 
 
 tribunal, indeed the only organ of the otherwise completely 
 dumb English Church an event to which there can be 
 found no parallel in the whole history of the Church previous 
 to 1517. At the same time, the first prelate of England, the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, when publicly questioned by a 
 clergyman on the subject, answered, that in such things he 
 had no more power than any other man that everyone who 
 could read, and who took the Bible into his hand, was as 
 capable of deciding the question, and as much entitled to 
 decide it, as he was. Every member of the Church must, 
 therefore, be under the necessity of renouncing the hope of 
 any authoritative decision of any announcement of doctrine 
 on the part of the Church ; and however bitter it might 
 be, they must adopt the view of the Evangelicals, that in 
 England the Church is no more than a religious club, 
 which the civil power superintends, and takes charge of and 
 keeps in order: the same civil power which in England 
 supports the Episcopal Church, and by which in Scotland 
 and Ulster Presbyterians, in India Brahminism, in Ceylon 
 Buddhism, are paid and supported. 1 In fact, if the validity 
 of Church principles is to be really asserted, the Church 
 standard must be applied, and the Establishment declared to 
 be an institution, infected through and through with heretical 
 principles, corrupt to the very core, and the Erastianism 
 of which makes every attempt at cure almost hopeless. At 
 every step the lay supremacy comes in the way. The 
 Church would gladly, for example, restore the Eucharistic 
 Sacrifice, in the Catholic sense, and make it a ceremony of 
 divine service for the congregation ; but the ministry, or the 
 Privy Council, has declared that no " altar " shall be erected 
 in a church, but only a "communion-table" that no lights 
 
 1 How little fixed and secure are the prospects of the British Estab- 
 lished Church will become clear, if we consider that in Scotland it in- 
 cludes rather less than a third of the population, in Ireland a seventh, in 
 Wales a tenth, in England the half. Since the English and Irish Church 
 are legally joined as " the United Church of England and Ireland," it 
 results that this exclusive Established Church includes only a third of 
 the population of both countries.
 
 I 68 PARLIAMENT AND THE DIVORCE QUESTION. 
 
 shall be burnt upon the altar during divine service, and so forth. 1 
 A new defeat for the seriously-disposed among the clergy 
 is the law of 1858, which declared that marriages could be dis- 
 solved, and at the same time erected a divorce court. Theques- 
 tion had formerly been disputed in the Anglican Church. Bur- 
 net relates that, as early as 1694, a division had taken place 
 among the clergy concerning it that all the older bishops, 
 those appointed under Charles II. and James II., declared 
 themselves against the dissolution of marriage on account of 
 adultery ; but the new ones, those appointed since the Revolu- 
 tion, had pronounced in favour of second marriages in such 
 cases. 2 
 
 At this time there were not even two parties amongst the 
 Bishops. Not one of them declared himself decidedly for 
 the indissolubility. Bishop Wilberforce, of Oxford, indeed, 
 was inclined to do so, but contented himself with setting up 
 a general claim for the Church to decide the question, and 
 complained of the wrong done by a body like the Parliament, 
 a great part of which did not even belong to the Church, 
 arrogating to itself the power to decide upon God's law 
 with respect to marriage. With the same right, he said, 
 they might decide concerning baptism, the communion, and 
 the confession of faith. 
 
 The Bishop seems to have forgotten that this had already 
 actually been done namely, in the Gorham case, where they 
 did decide concerning baptism and confession of faith. 
 Whether the Parliament or the Privy Council does this is a 
 matter of indifference, since the Privy Council really only 
 exists by the will of Parliament. To the question, whether 
 a clergyman was bound to solemnise the marriage of a 
 couple separated by a divorce, the Attorney-General declared 
 that it was the duty of a clergyman, as a minister of the 
 National Church, to do whatever the State ordered him. 
 This the Bishop of Oxford found rather too hard. It gave 
 the idea of a thoroughly degraded, demoralized, and, for 
 religion, impotent Church its bitterest enemies could have 
 
 1 HENGSTENBERG'S " Kirchen-Zeitung," 1858, p. 791. 
 " History of his own Times," ed. 1838, p. 601.
 
 ANOMALOUS POSITION OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH. 169 
 
 said nothing stronger upon its disgraceful condition. 1 At 
 the same time, if we accept what the English Constitution 
 says of the Supremacy of the State, it is impossible to arrive, 
 logically and juridically, at a different conclusion from that 
 of the Attorney-General. If the English clergy find this 
 position dishonourable, it does but remind one of the fable 
 of the watch-dog, who, in return for the comforts of his life, and 
 the caresses of his master, had to allow himself to be chained. 
 
 Lord Chatham said, in his time, that the English Church 
 had Calvinistic Articles, a Papistical Service, and an Arminian 
 clergy. The saying has become a general opinion, but the 
 designation of the dogmatic sentiments of the clergy is only 
 now in so far correct, that the great majority of the clergy 
 agree with the Arminians in rejecting the favourite doctrines 
 of the Reformation age "Justification by imputed right- 
 eousness, 1 ' and Calvinistic " Predestination.". The fact, 
 however, that the Established Church has not so much as 
 the semblance of unity of doctrine and character, is well 
 known to every educated Englishman, and appears as 
 something quite natural, and as a matter of course. It has 
 the effect that, even to the religious-minded Englishman, 
 doctrine appears as something relatively unimportant and 
 subordinate, which one need not be too exact about ; and it 
 has also the further effect, that in questions of doctrine very 
 little confidence is placed in clergymen of the Established 
 Church, when it is seen that, with the most contradictory 
 views, they are able to accommodate themselves to the same 
 formularies. 2 
 
 From this circumstance we may explain the fact, that, in 
 general, there reigns among the clergy a certain fear of 
 theology, and a disinclination to theological studies. Pro- 
 fessor Hussey, in his last discourse at Oxford, shortly before 
 his death, complained that the study of theology was dying 
 
 1 See u Charge of the Bishop of Oxford," 1858." Christian Remem- 
 brancer," vol. xxv., p. 258. 
 
 * " The result is, that the preachers of truth, in their own place and 
 office, are the very last persons in the nation to be believed ; that the 
 pulpit is as little trusted for sincerity as that appointed resort of hired 
 advocacy the bar." " Westminster Review," vol. liv., p. 485.
 
 170 THEOLOGICAL STERILITY. 
 
 out in England. 1 In a theological periodical it has lately 
 been maintained that there were not now in Oxford six 
 clergymen left who occupied themselves with the study of 
 theology. 2 That is comprehensible. The most important 
 theological works of recent times have been written by men 
 who soon after became Catholics. 3 Since then, the works of 
 the Germanized Rationalists, or Broad Church men, have 
 been the theological writings most esteemed. 4 The Evan- 
 gelicals are struck with sterility, and all the better intellects 
 of the younger generation are turning with dislike and 
 contempt from this degenerate school, whose average amount 
 of culture does not attain to the degree of a good German 
 schoolmaster. The Anglican, or High Church school, has 
 never, even in its most flourishing time, produced a systematic 
 and comprehensive theology. They furnish nothing more 
 than essays and fragments ; and it is very characteristic, that 
 the whole Anglican Church has not a single system or hand- 
 book of doctrine to show. 5 This Church, as the excellent 
 Alexander Knox has complained, is wanting in all settled 
 dogmatic principles. 6 A theological system a dogmatic 
 divinity presupposes a knowledge of what the Church 
 really teaches j but in England no one knows that, or can 
 know it not even the Prime Minister and his Privy Council. 
 If, for example, a hand-book of Anglican Theology had been 
 issued before the decision of the Gorham controversy, it must 
 have been after that decision entirely remodelled, since the 
 principle thereby disavowed, and the one thereby established, 
 govern the entire organism of doctrine for the question that 
 was answered in the negative by the celebrated decision of 
 the Privy Council was, whether the dogma of the sacramental 
 
 1 " Christian Remembrancer," October, 1860, p. 325. 
 
 2 " Ecclesiastic and Theologian," December, 1860, p. 547. The article 
 is entitled, " Intellectual Declension of the Clergy." 
 
 * Newman, Wilberforce, Manning, William Palmer, Allier, and others. 
 
 4 Jowett, Maurice, the authors of " Essays and Reviews," &c. 
 
 s PEARSON'S "Exposition of the Creed," which is given to the young 
 as a book of instruction in doctrine, cannot satisfy even the scantiest 
 requirements. 
 
 8 " Remains." London, 1837, iv. 233.
 
 LIFE OF THE ENGLISH CLERGY. 171 
 
 effect of baptism was a doctrine of the Anglican Church. 
 The view of the Evangelicals, according to which baptism is 
 a mere rite of consecration, has hereby obtained its franchise 
 in the Anglican Church ; and that is, even according to the 
 Lutheran theology, " a heresy which alone would make 
 every union of the Lutherans and Calvinists for ever impos- 
 sible." 1 
 
 It may be said of the English Church, that it is like an 
 Indian idol, with many heads (and every one with different 
 " views "), but very few hands. The want of freedom in the 
 English Church its being bound to the chariot-wheels of 
 the State, and dragged after it through thick and thin, acts 
 so much the more injuriously, as it affords to the feebleness, 
 slothfulness, and indecision of the English clergy a welcome 
 pretext for doing nothing. A large portion of them are quite 
 satisfied with their Sunday reading exercises, and pass the 
 remainder of their time with their wives and children, or in 
 paying visits ; 2 and in the meantime there exist in England 
 millions of persons, who, according to the fiction of "a general 
 national religion," are members of the Established Church, 
 
 1 KAHXIS "Die Sache der lutherischen Kirche gegeniiber der Union." 
 Leipsig, 1854, p. 17. 
 
 * Only a few months ago an Established Church periodical made the 
 remark, " Perhaps no men in any other profession under the sun spend so 
 much time with their wives and children." " Ecclesiastic and Theologian, "' 
 Dec., 1859, p. 553. Thus there are in England two modern heresies, 
 which have helped to bring about the deplorable state of the English 
 Church. The first is, the u gentleman heresy," of which the deceased 
 Froude so frequently complained that is, the idea that a clergyman 
 must be and appear before all things a " gentleman." Edward Lytton 
 Bulwer (in his " England and the English," p. 214) says : " The vulgar 
 notion that clergymen must be gentlemen 6orw, is both an upstart and an 
 insular opinion." In the second place, the " domestic heresy," in accord- 
 ance with which, for the sake of family life, the congregation goes away 
 empty. The marriage of the English clergy is, nevertheless, according 
 to the remark of a celebrated English dignitary, the solid basis upon 
 which the Church of England rests, and by which it is kept together. 
 But for that, Englishmen, so accustomed to freedom and self-govern- 
 ment, would not have borne so tamely and patiently the yoke of minis- 
 terial supremacy.
 
 1 72 SPIRITUAL IMPOTENCE OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 but of whom no clergyman of this Church ever takes the 
 slightest notice, and thousands of whom have never heard 
 the name of the Saviour mentioned. 
 
 The warmest adherents of the State Church complain of 
 its want of influence on the people of its moral and spiritual 
 impotence. Alexander Knox thinks that, interiorally, the 
 English Church is the most excellent of all, but practically, 
 indeed, the most inefficient. 1 " If the whole Episcopal 
 constitution were done away with," says Hallam, " it would 
 make no perceptible difference in the religion of the people.'" 2 
 The Catholic idea, that the Church is the guardian of divine 
 truth, the divinely -appointed teacher, is foreign to the 
 Englishman : " The true Church," says Carlyle, not un- 
 fairly, " consists now of the publishers of those political news- 
 papers, which preach to the people daily and weekly, with 
 an authority formerly only possessed by the reformers or 
 popes." 3 
 
 The Church of England declares pure doctrine, the right 
 use of the Sacraments, and the maintenance of discipline to 
 be the three signs of a true Church. The Church itself, 
 however, has no fixed doctrine ; its formulas contradict each 
 other; and what one part of its servants teach is rejected 
 by the other as a soul-destroying error. It is also dumb, and 
 incapable of making known, in any form, its true sentiments, 
 even when it has them. Concerning the proper administra- 
 tion of the Sacraments, there exist within its bosom the same 
 contradictions as with respect to doctrine ; and as to dis- 
 cipline, it has lost even the semblance of unity. How can 
 there be even a talk of any correctional discipline in a Church 
 that declares every one at his burial in a state of grace 
 whatever chain of sin he may have dragged through his whole 
 life, and without his ever having given any sign of repent- 
 ance, and who has not even externally or nominally belonged 
 to its communion ? How fatal is the effect of this general 
 beatification at the grave prescribed by the Liturgy, and 
 
 > " Remains." London, 1832, i. 51. 
 
 * " Constitutional History of England," ii. 238. 
 
 * " Miscellanies," ii. 165.
 
 ITS DISSOLUTION A QUESTION OF TIME. 173 
 
 into what false security it lulls the m ind, has been described 
 by Englishmen themselves with terrible severity. 1 
 
 But even in this case* the Church is helpless, from the 
 fear that any change in the liturgy would be used by the 
 Evangelicals as a breach through which greater changes 
 might be effected. 
 
 On the whole, the entire existence of the Established 
 Church is seriously threatened, and its dissolution only a 
 question of time. It is completely in the power of the 
 House of Commons, and of the Cabinet constituted by the 
 majority of that House, which already counts among its 
 members a considerable number of Dissenters, who are all 
 enemies of the State Church, as well as Catholics, and, it is 
 not necessary to mention, the Jews. In the proportion in 
 which, through new Reform Bills, extending the suffrage, 
 the democratically-disposed middle classes attain to dominion, 
 the Church will be damaged by the combined hostility of 
 the sectarians and of the professors of no religion, who are 
 increasing every year in numbers and influence. Perhaps it 
 will, like the Church of the Vaudois, be bound more and 
 more closely in the bonds of State authority and the will of 
 the majority. The dissolution of this ill-connected organism 
 will then follow ; the profounder and more earnest minds 
 will withdraw from a Church in which the double yoke of 
 governmental authority and compulsory communion with a 
 foreign doctrine will not allow them in honour and conscience 
 any longer to remain. 
 
 THE ENGLISH DISSENTING SECTS. 
 
 The Protestant sects of England, taken as a whole, appear 
 flourishing and vigorous. They have, in the course of 200 
 years, won for themselves a broad territory ; they have taken 
 away millions of Englishmen from the State Church, and 
 they afford a splendid proof of the power of association, of 
 the gift of organization, instinctive in the Anglo-Saxon race. 
 
 1 See, for example, THORX'S " Fifty Tracts on the State Church." 
 Tract xii. p. 3.
 
 174 DISSENTING SECTS. 
 
 They enjoy the most perfect freedom, they arrange their 
 affairs quite as may seem good to themselves. The State 
 does not ever exercise any superintendence over them, and 
 they look down with no unjustifiable feeling of contempt on 
 the helplessness and slavery of the Established Church, 
 which, in its rent and divided condition, its want of fixed 
 doctrine and ecclesiastical discipline in its incapability of 
 manifesting an activity corresponding to the wants of the 
 nation, and enlarging its sphere of action can hardly do 
 otherwise than shun a comparison with a free religious com- 
 munity. With some who have left the Church, the wish to 
 do so has no doubt been influenced by the determination to be 
 no longer members of an institution so humiliated, so shackled, 
 and so trammeled in the fulfilment of the first and simplest 
 duties of a Church. But there is usually another motive 
 which has led the trading middle classes out of the Church 
 to one of the Dissenting sects. The practical Englishman 
 desires a doctrine that shall be accommodating, intelligible, 
 consolatory, and tranquillizing, and which shall flatter his 
 self-complacency and his prevailing tendencies. All this he 
 finds in Calvinism, as it is conceived and taught by the 
 Dissenting sects. A man is there taught that, by an act of 
 mere imputation of the righteousness of another, one may 
 pass into a state of perfect security and certainty of salvation. 
 He believes as firmly as he can believe that he is " elect," 
 that by being clothed with the merits of the Saviour, he may 
 be received by God as righteous, though inwardly he is not 
 so; and that he can never forfeit this state of grace this 
 crown of everlasting glory. He knows no better than that 
 all depends on his having a completely favourable opinion of 
 his own state. This is the "Assurance" 1 that plays so im- 
 
 1 " Zuversicht." JONATHAN EDWARDS, the most renowned of the 
 American theologians, remarks that he scarcely knew a single instance of 
 a man who, in consequence of an easy and common self-delusion, had 
 arrived at a false conviction of his own " state of grace,'' ever being unde- 
 ceived. For with the natural tendency to self-flattery and self-exalta- 
 tion, there was united in almost all the entire absence of due caution and 
 fear of self-deception. WORKS, London, 1839, i. 257.
 
 THEIR INTERNAL HISTORY. 175 
 
 portant a part in the religious life of England and America. 
 Preachers in public places, as well as in churches and 
 chapels, announce to their hearers the immediate and certain 
 forgiveness of all sins and assurance of salvation as the 
 price of a momentary excitement and concentration of feel- 
 ing. This is called "preaching the Gospel in its fulness 
 and freedom." 
 
 The internal history of these sects, therefore, turns essen- 
 tially on the doctrine of "Justification" and what is con- 
 nected with it; and it may be said that they cannot exist 
 and flourish either without this doctrine or with it. Not 
 without this doctrine for, were it renounced, the talisman 
 would be broken by which men have been attracted to the 
 sect and kept in it and the decay of the congregation, 
 where the favourite doctrine was no longer heard or even 
 of the whole denomination would soon follow. 1 But even 
 with this doctrine the sects cannot prosper, for its moral 
 and religious effect has always been very injurious. The 
 crop of fancies which have been regularly brought forth by 
 the preaching of the doctrine of "Justification" has been 
 generally called in England by the name of Antinomianism; 
 but the most, distinguished theologians Baxter, Williams, 
 Bull, and others showed, as early as the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, that what was so called was nothing else than genuine 
 Calvinism, followed out into its clearest and most irrefragable 
 consequences. In the history and literature of these Churches 
 and sects, we accordingly meet with perpetually renewed 
 complaints of the plague of Antinomianism, 2 or, what was 
 in fact the same thing, of a Calvinism which hardens the 
 conscience and lulls men into a false security. 3 The society 
 of Baptists was, according to the strong expression of their 
 
 1 J. BOGUE and BENNETT'S " History of the Dissenters," iii. 318. 
 
 2 BOGUE and BENNETT, iv. 390. 
 
 s Strong admissions are made on this subject by ROBERT HALL, the- 
 most distinguished of the Baptist preachers. " Difference between 
 Christian Baptism and that of John," p. 58 ; and also in his collected 
 Works, 1839, iii. 123.
 
 176 DOCTRINAL FLEXIBILITY 
 
 preacher Fuller, very near becoming, with its Calvinism, a 
 moral dunghill. 1 
 
 If we wish to understand rightly the nature of these made 
 religions, we must study the English and American sects 
 and dissenters. Christianity is a dough that in their hands 
 is kneaded into the most convenient form. The first requisite 
 is a doctrine easy to be understood ; and that may be com- 
 pressed into a few ideas and feelings, which may be found 
 pleasantly accommodating to the ruling inclinations and 
 course of life among the middle classes to the trading and 
 artisan community. Fixed and accurately expressed Con- 
 fessions of Faith are regarded as a burdensome yoke, to which 
 neither preachers nor congregations would like to submit. 
 Of their own society, Dissenters in general have a poor 
 opinion ; they are very far from regarding it as the Catholics 
 do their Church as a divine institution, endowed with power 
 and authority from above. They know very well lhat their 
 sect, or church system, is only a very recent production, 
 contrived for a specific purpose, 2 and they reserve the right 
 of altering its arrangements as may seem good to them. 
 That objective certainty, affording security against all error 
 in doctrine, which the Church claims for herself, appears to 
 the practical middle-class Englishman of no value. 
 
 The only thing he is anxious about is his own subjective 
 infallibility ; he requires a system that may afford him an 
 easy certainty of his own election, justification, and salva- 
 tion. If he has this, he is not very uneasy about dogmatic 
 scruples and biblical obscurities. He has a decided aversion 
 
 1 MORRIS'S " Life of A. Fuller ;" London, 1816, p. 267. " Baptists 
 would have become a perfect dunghill in society." 
 
 * u What shop do you go to ? " (Welchen Kramladen besuchen sie ?) 
 the middle-class Englishman will say, when he wishes to inquire to what 
 Church or Dissenting community any one belongs. Of a preacher, they 
 say, " He works that chapel," as they might say, " He works that 
 factory." Churches and chapels are, indeed, frequently " shops." They 
 are built upon speculation, and the proprietor is accustomed, when he 
 finds that the preacher he has engaged does not possess sufficient power 
 of attraction to fill the chapel properly, to dismiss him, and employ 
 another.
 
 POSITION OF DISSENTING MINISTERS. 177 
 
 to religious practices, symbols, and exercises ; to the worship 
 of God in humble prayer, and to kneeling. Almost every- 
 thing in religion, which is not a sermon, falls, with him, under the 
 general head of " superstition," and its empire is in his regard 
 illimitable. But he likes to keep the " Sabbath ;" that is to 
 say, he does not work on that day, and he listens to preaching ; 
 and it suits him much better to sit in judgment upon the 
 form and contents of the sermon, than to cast himself down 
 in humble adoration before God. 
 
 How little, on the whole, is done by the free or Dissenting 
 congregations for the millions of poor, is evident from the 
 remark made by Dr. Hume, before a Committee of the House 
 of Lords " That when a district became impoverished, the 
 Dissenting congregations generally moved off, and met else- 
 where." 1 The preachers are, except among the Methodists, 
 entirely dependent on the congregation ; they are mostly 
 scantily paid, and in constant fear of losing a part even of 
 their trifling income, through the discontent, or from the 
 increased parsimony, of their congregations. The hearers of 
 the preacher are his judges and his masters; they decide 
 whether his sermons are, according to the standard of 
 the sect, orthodox, evangelical, and edifying or not, and 
 upon this decision depends^ his existence. Before all things, 
 the congregation desires to hear repeated its favourite 
 doctrine, that man need do nothing himself for his salva- 
 tion, but only lay hold of the merits of Christ, and firmly 
 believe in his own election and justification ; 2 that the little 
 community is the elect, that it alone is in possession of the 
 pure unadulterated Gospel, and is the most genuine and 
 the best of all Churches. 3 Were the preacher incautious 
 
 1 " Christian Remembrancer," 1860, ii. 97. 
 
 2 See " British Critic," vii. 232. Spurgeon, the greatest favourite 
 among the preachers of the day, proclaims the purest Calvinism, and is 
 fond of telling his numerous hearers how infallibly certain he is of his 
 salvation so that, in fact, there are only two things he need do sing 
 hymns, and sleep. SPURGEON'S u Gems." London, 1859 ; and the 
 " Saturday Review" thereupon, 1859, i. 340. 
 
 * See the striking description of the position of a Dissenting preacher, 
 in the u Christian Remembrancer," 1860, ii. 86. 
 
 N
 
 178 PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND. 
 
 enough to touch on the failings and sins to which his con- 
 gregation, especially the richer portion of it, might seem 
 most liable, he would be ruined. (t As soon," says Thomas 
 Scott, one of the most considerable theologians among the 
 Evangelicals, " as a preacher begins to appeal in an earnest, 
 practical manner to the consciences of his hearers, a party is 
 formed against him to censure, intimidate, humiliate, resist, 
 and finally eject him." ' But, even without having given any 
 such offence, he must be prepared, after a few years, to 
 receive a hint to resign, when he has preached himself out, 
 or the congregation is tired of seeing the same man and 
 hearing the same phrases ; or even if his wife or his daughter 
 has displeased the feminine part of the congregation by 
 dressing too well ; or if, at a political election, he has not 
 voted for the candidate favoured by the majority of his 
 hearers. 
 
 The old Presbyterian community, once the most powerful 
 and influential among non-episcopal connexions, has, in the 
 course of the last century, fallen completely into decay in Eng- 
 land, and therewith genuine Presby terianism has died out. The 
 cause of this is to be found chiefly in the change of doctrine. 
 The most distinguished theologians of the party Richard 
 Baxter and Daniel Williams had demonstrated so clearly 
 and convincingly the contradictions in the Calvinistic doc- 
 trine of Justification, and its inevitable moral consequences, 
 that most of the congregations renounced this doctrine, and 
 became, according to the customary mode of expression, 
 Arminian. 2 By that means, however, the spiritual bond 
 which had held these communities together was loosened ; 
 and in the latter part of the seventeenth, and the beginning 
 of the eighteenth century, an internal dissolution of the 
 Presbyterian congregations commenced. Several of them 
 turned to Arianism, at that time recommended by some 
 theologians even of the Established' Church, and they, in a 
 short time, naturally passed into Socinianism. Thus have 
 
 1 JOHN SCOTT, " Life of the Rev. Thomas Scott ; " London, 1836, p. 
 13G. The whole description is instructive. 
 * BOG UK and BENNETT, ii. 303. New ed.
 
 THE METHODISTS. 179 
 
 arisen the present Unitarian congregations, which, rejecting 
 almost all the chief doctrines of Christianity, stand at some- 
 thing like the same grade that is occupied in Germany by 
 the " Free Congregations." Of the 229 Unitarian chapels 
 which existed in the year 1851, 170 had been originally 
 Presbyterian. The Presbyterians who remained Calvinists 
 became amalgamated with " the Independents." There are 
 at present, in England, 160 Presbyterian congregations with 
 a Calvinistic doctrine ; but most of these are of Scottish 
 origin, or consist of immigrant Scotchmen, and are con- 
 nected with Scotch sects. 1 
 
 The Methodists, or Wesley ans, who have now subsisted 
 for a hundred years, may promise themselves a longer life 
 than was appointed to the Presbyterians. John Wesley, 
 next to Baxter, certainly the most important man whom 
 Protestant England has produced, did not really wish to 
 establish a new religious community in addition to the 
 Established Church, but only an auxiliary society. Under 
 his successors, however, and especially by means of Bunting, 
 who first gave the connexion its firm organization, the 
 auxiliary became a rival, and the Wesleyans have now 
 for twenty-five years called their " connexion" a Church, 
 though they still constantly maintain that they are one in 
 doctrine with the Establishment. 
 
 In Wesley's community, also, the Justification doctrine 
 forms the turning-point, and runs like the thread of destiny 
 through the whole history of the sect. Wesley himself fell, 
 with respect to this doctrine, into the most flagrant contra- 
 dictions, and made great leaps from one dogma to its very 
 opposite. For ten years, he said, he had been really a 
 Papist without knowing it, and had taught Justification by 
 Faith and Works, that most destructive of all the errors of 
 Rome, in comparison with which the other errors of "the 
 mother of all horrors" were mere insignificant trifles. 2 But 
 his zeal for the favourite doctrine of Luther and Calvin did 
 not last long. The experience of some years convinced him, 
 
 1 MANN'S " Census of Religious Worship," p. 1. Ixviii. 
 * SOUTHEY'S " Life of Wesley," i. 287-288.
 
 180 CALViNISTIC METHODISTS. 
 
 as well as his brother and assistant, Charles Wesley, that 
 Protestant Justification by Faith, and Calvinistic Predestina- 
 tion, were the utter ruin of all serious religious life. Anti- 
 nomianism, he said, had been a greater hindrance to the 
 success of his work than all other obstacles together, and 
 had destroyed the seed he had been scattering for many 
 years. 1 " We must all fall," he wrote to his brother, 
 " through Solifidianism, if we do not summon James to our 
 help." 2 In the year 1770, John Wesley gave his community 
 the signal for a doctrinal revolution ; and it shows strikingly 
 the personal greatness of the man, and his wonderful gift for 
 controlling the minds of his followers, that he could, without 
 forfeiting anything of his authority, make so public and 
 undisguised a confession of an error in a fundamental doc- 
 trine of Christianity, and that he was able to make his whole 
 sect alter their creed, and, from Calvinists, to become 
 Arminians. 3 
 
 A hundred other founders of sects would have failed in 
 such an attempt. He obtained an effective support in his 
 friend Fletcher, of Madely, whose writings against the Pro- 
 testant system are the most important that the theological 
 literature of England has to show. It was the fear of 
 Calvinistic infection that ultimately induced Wesley to take 
 unwillingly the step he had so long delayed, and separate his 
 community from the Established Church. 4 His success in 
 this was, indeed, only partial a breach occurred, and 
 Whitfield, who had hitherto been his friend, with a troop of 
 Calvinistically-disposed members of the society, separated 
 themselves from Wesley, and from those who had remained 
 faithful to him. A Calvinistic community of Methodists 
 was formed, whose prophet was Whitfield, and its mother in 
 
 1 SOCTHEY, ii. 318. 
 
 * FLETCHER'S "Works." London, 1836, i. 105. 
 
 * The proclamation (Minutes) of Wesley is given in Southey, ii. 3G6 ; 
 and more completely in the work called u Life and Times of Selina, 
 Countess of Huntingdon." London, 1841, ii. 236. 
 
 4 " Correspondence of J. Jebb and A. Knox," ed. by FORSTER. London, 
 1836, ii. 472.
 
 ORGANIZATION OF METHODISM. 181 
 
 the Church, the Countess of Huntingdon, a gifted woman, 
 who considered it her appointed vocation to rule over the 
 Church, and appointed and displaced at her pleasure the 
 preachers of the "Connexion." 1 This sect, which in 1794 
 had 100,000 followers, had, in spite of its pure Calvinism, 
 sunk down, in 1851, to 19,159, with about 109 chapels. 
 
 The great body of the Wesleyans continued for some time 
 in complete prosperity, and, until lately, in increasing growth, 
 and such success they owe to their firm, well- calculated organisa- 
 tion. But a Protestant community, with Arminian doctrines, 
 and which has renounced the imputation doctrine, is not 
 generally able, (as the example of the Remonstrants, in the 
 Netherlands, shows,) to maintain itself long, at least in such a 
 community as is desired by the mass of the people. The 
 Methodists are gradually passing back to a conception of 
 the process of conversion and justification more suited to 
 Protestant ideas, and they are accustomed to place the 
 essence of religion in the strongest possible excitement of 
 feeling, and an imaginary certainty of grace and salvation. 
 With this notion, Wesley's favourite doctrine of a perfect 
 state of sanctification, to which it is possible to attain in this 
 life, will not agree ; and, at the same time, the idea of 
 immediate justification by feeling opens the door to the most 
 dangerous illusions and self-flattery. This opening is still 
 further widened by the institutions of the society. The 
 members are divided into Bands and Classes, and in their 
 meetings they have reciprocally to inquire into the state of 
 each other's consciences; they are to question each other 
 publicly as to their inward feelings and "experiences" a 
 practice which has this inevitable result, that they confess 
 not their sins, but their virtues, and their imaginary 
 assurances of. grace ; and whilst they call themselves the 
 most miserable sinners, always declare that they have the 
 assurance of salvation. Probably no institution has ever 
 been invented that makes it easier for spiritual pride to 
 clothe itself in the garb of humility, and to induce persons 
 to deceive first themselves, and then others. 
 
 1 MARSDEN'S " History of Christian Churches and Sects," ii. 8.
 
 182 SECESSIONS FROM THE ORIGINAL BODY. 
 
 It has been stated, to the honour of the Methodists, that 
 they had a special gift for alarming, by their preaching, the 
 consciences of hardened, unrepentant sinners. Their mode 
 of preaching is, above all things, calculated to heat the 
 imagination, and the bodily sensations it awakens are 
 then regarded as inspirations and effects of the Spirit. 
 They have, like certain physicians, only one medicine for all 
 ages, sexes, and classes, without any distinction. Their 
 uniform method is to frighten people, and agitate them to 
 the brink of insanity to make them at first completely dis- 
 consolate, as it is stated in their writings, and then to lead 
 them to absolute certainty of being in a state of grace, for 
 which one act of faith alone is sufficient. 1 A man is desired 
 to feel that it is God who has justified him, and thence- 
 forth he is justified. Whatever aversion Methodists may 
 usually feel to the Calvinistic doctrine, on this point it 
 comes very close to it. 2 The effect of it is such, that in 
 districts where Methodism is very prevalent, an actual change 
 takes place in the physiognomy of the people, and you meet 
 an unusual number of hard, coarse, and gloomy faces. 3 
 
 The often-admired strength of the Methodist Church 
 constitution has not been able to prevent continued sepa- 
 rations, and a decay that is becoming more and more 
 visible. The first separation (by Kilhatn) took place in 
 1796, and twenty years afterwards the introduction of an 
 organ led to a second separation. In 1 835 came the third 
 great secession, and the new association of Warren was 
 founded. In the meantime, discontent was increasing at 
 the boundless and arbitrary power of the Conference, which 
 was self-renewing, and had the entire direction of the 
 society's affairs. This oligarchy of preachers was accused of 
 permitting itself to be ruled by a clique, so that in 1850 
 
 1 It is " a distinct and indubitable internal witness which tells the be- 
 liever of his certain acceptance." "British Critic," xvi. 12. 
 
 * Thus it was remarked lately (1857) that in Cornwall Methodism was 
 altogether An tinomian, that is to say, deeply Calvinistic in its colour." 
 " Quarterly Review," vol. cii., p. 323. 
 
 * "Quarterly Review," iv. 503.
 
 CONG REG ATIONALISTS. 183 
 
 violent internal disputes broke out, and the whole society 
 was- thrown into a state of confusion and raging insurrection. 
 The Reformers wished to render the constitution of the 
 society more democratic, and give the lay element more 
 influence. The Conference resisted with unyielding rigidity, 
 and the result was, that within three or four years there 
 was a further separation of 100,000 members, that is to say, 
 nearly one-third of the entire society. 
 
 After the Methodists, the sect of Cougregationalists, or 
 Independents, is the most influential from its numbers, and the 
 opulence of its members. It has in England 1401 preachers, 
 and some hundreds of congregations without preachers. 
 They separated themselves from the Presbyterians in the 
 seventeenth century, on the principle of complete indepen- 
 dence of individual congregations, and to carry out the 
 plan of a mere association among themselves. Formerly 
 they were strictly Calvinistic in doctrine, and were, there- 
 fore, strengthened by the accession of the followers of 
 Whitfield, 1 who felt more nearly related to them than to the 
 Arminian Wesleyans ; whilst in Wales, the Calvinistic 
 Methodists form an independent and tolerably numerous 
 sect. The Independents, in 1833, published a Confession 
 of Faith, 2 which is wide enough, and vague enough, to admit 
 of very different views, and, moreover, all authority and 
 binding power are expressly renounced. It is, therefore, 
 signed by no one, and there cannot be, consequently, any 
 question of a definite doctrine among the Congregationalists. 
 The preachers are, therefore, free to preach this or that 
 doctrine at their pleasure ; or, rather, they have to accom- 
 modate their preaching to the views and expectations of 
 their congregations, and especially of the more opulent and 
 influential members. In order to maintain their position 
 they must continually keep their finger on the mental pul^e 
 of their hearers, and see that their lectures are in harmony 
 with it. 
 
 1 MARSDAN, ii. 22. 
 
 2 It is to be found in MANN'S " Causes of Religious Worship," 1853, 
 p. liv.
 
 184 BAPTISTS, QUAKERS, ETC. 
 
 The Baptists also are, in general, decided Calvinists in 
 their views of the dogmas of Election and Justification ; 
 they are distinguished, from the other parties of the same way 
 of thinking, by their principle of performing baptism only 
 on adults, and by complete immersion, since any other form 
 is, in their opinion, no baptism at all. They arose in 
 England about the year 1608, but never formed any connec- 
 tion with the Mennonites of Holland and Germany, and did 
 not attain to any importance till 1688. Towards the end of 
 the last century, their Calvinism, or Antinomianism, was so 
 fully developed, that most of their preachers would only 
 speak of and to the elect, and would have nothing to do 
 with sinners in their congregations. 1 The absence of a con- 
 fession of faith, laxity of Church constitution, and the 
 complete dependence of the preachers on the congregations, 
 belong to their character as a sect. From the chief party, called 
 "Particular Baptists," five smaller sects have diverged, 
 partly from aversion to Calvinism, partly on account of 
 certain differences. In 1851, the Particular Baptists num- 
 bered 1947 congregations. 
 
 The Quakers, or Friends, who, being convinced that the 
 immediate inspiration of the Holy Ghost is attainable by 
 everyone, have neither sacraments nor ordained preachers, 
 but edify themselves by the discourses of spiritually-awak- 
 ened men and women. These are now a declining sect, and, 
 since the beginning of this century, have decreased consider- 
 ably in England. The Moravian Brethren vegetate in Eng- 
 land, with their little community of thirty-two chapels, as a 
 quiescent, scarcely noticeable little household ; and the Swe- 
 denborgian Church of the New Jerusalem, since its doctrines 
 have no especial comfort in them, cannot infuse any greater 
 animation into their fifty congregations; for such was the 
 number in 1851. More sensation has been caused by the 
 still young Irvingites. Agreeing with the Plymouth Bre- 
 thren, that immediately after the Apostles the Church began 
 to decline, they have undertaken, by means of a new 
 
 1 This is mentioned by OLINTHUS GREGORY, in the Biography of the 
 celebrated Baptist Preacher, Robert Hall. See MARSDEN, i. 83.
 
 IRVINGITES AND PLYMOUTH BRETHREN. 185 
 
 gift of the Holy Ghost to them, to re-establish the true 
 Church (long since fallen into fragments and ruins) with its 
 four essential offices those of Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, 
 and Shepherds. They reject entirely Protestantism, with its 
 assumption of sovereign judgment for every individual in 
 matters of faith its revolutionary method of proceeding 
 "from below upward" and in the Justification doctrine; 
 whilst in the Sacraments, and in the sacrificial character of 
 their service, they approach nearly to the Catholic Church. 
 The personal visible appearance of the Saviour, the first 
 resurrection, and the commencement of the Millennium, are 
 expected speedily. But the community of the Apostolic 
 Church has nothing especially attractive to the English ; its 
 doctrine is not, like that of other sects, consoling and flatter- 
 ing to self-love it is wanting in the talisman of the Imputa- 
 tion dogma, and the cheap certainty of salvation it has too 
 much that is Catholic, Liturgical, and Sacramental. It has, 
 therefore, only a few small congregations in England, and 
 has no prospect of increasing them. On the other hand, 
 Mormonism, with its Christian mask, which has been intro- 
 duced from America, has obtained within a few years nearly 
 20,000 adherents. 
 
 The Plymouth Brethren, or Darbyites, as they are called, 
 from their still living founder, may be said to exist on the real 
 or assumed decrease of all other Churches. For in consequence 
 of an apostacy of the first Church, which took place, they say, 
 in the Apostolic time itself, there is no true Church nor any 
 spiritual office any more existent, but all Churches are under 
 the Divine curse. No one must presume to build up again 
 this fallen Church ; but the Holy Spirit, with its gifts, has re- 
 mained to the faithful, and the Brethren edify one another by 
 means of these gifts present among them. The sect is a re- 
 juvenated and modified Quakerdom : it is distinguished 
 chiefly by negations ; it will have no confession-formula no 
 liturgy, no church organisation, no sabbath according to the 
 English fashion, no sacraments, and only two symbols or 
 testimonies baptism and the breaking of bread. This, like 
 most English sects, occupies itself much with the expecta-
 
 186 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND. 
 
 tion of the approaching thousand years of Christ's kingdom. 
 In the year 1851 it& places of meeting amounted to 132. l 
 
 THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND. 
 
 In Scotland, John Knox, Calvin's most devoted son, triumph- 
 antly succeeded in establishing the Calvinistic-Presbyterian 
 doctrine and church form, after the pattern of Geneva. The 
 people have become completely imbued with this system. 
 Under Charles II. Presbyterianism was indeed defeated ; 
 four hundred preachers had to withdraw, and the Episcopal 
 Constitution appeared to be victorious. The Cameronians 
 alone maintained themselves in remote districts. The change 
 was nevertheless merely external. Doctrine, Church customs 
 and observances, were not touched, and Calvinism continued 
 to be in accordance with the general mode of thought. In 
 this Ions: struggle of the Scotch Church, and its resistance 
 against the Royal power, the opposition of the Scotch was 
 strengthened by the republican constitution of their Church, 
 which associated together both clergy and laity in one com- 
 mon action. The result has been, that this Church, among 
 all Protestant communities, became distinguished by its in- 
 dependence and freedom, and for its never having sunk into 
 the notorious servitude of the English Church. 
 
 With the Revolution of 1688, and the elevation of William 
 (himself a Calvinist and Presbyterian), there commenced a 
 complete and absolute change of circumstances. The " par- 
 sons," so were the Episcopal clergy called, were in a popular 
 insurrection ill-treated, plundered, and driven away, and 
 " ministers " (for the Scotch will not hear of " parsons, 1 ' or 
 "priests," or "clergymen," but only " servants,") and these, 
 the "ministers," immediately placed themselves in possession 
 of the parsonages and churches. The Presbyterian National 
 Church, being now also favoured by the Government, pre- 
 sented itself as the sole established Church of the country, 
 and was able to plant its foot on the neck of its enemy, the 
 Episcopalian Church. It is, in truth, one of the most extra- 
 1 REUTER'S " Repertorium," vol. 1., p. 276, and vol. li., p. 82.
 
 DEBASING INFLUENCE OF CALVINISM. 187 
 
 ordinary but significant facts in the history of Protestantism, 
 that after the last rising of the Highlanders in favour of the 
 Stuarts, in 1745, the British Parliament which at that time, 
 of the 526 members in the Lower House, could count 513 
 as belonging to the Episcopalian Church should yet have 
 passed a series of Penal Laws against the self-same Church, 
 on the other side of the Tweed laws which threw its clergy 
 completely within the power of their bitter enemies the 
 Presbyterians, 1 and brought down upon them a harsh perse- 
 cution. 
 
 Upon the whole, Calvinism, after a rule of one hundred 
 and fifty years, exercised no favourable influence on the 
 social condition of the Scotch nation. The Scotch patriot, 
 Andrew Fletcher, of Saltoun, describes its situation at the 
 close of the seventeenth century in the gloomiest colours : 
 " One-fifth of the population then consisted of wandering 
 beggars, and many of these were dying of starvation ; there 
 were one hundred thousand vagabonds living by theft and 
 robbery in the country, and one-half of the whole landed 
 property was in the hands of an idle, worthless, violent gang 
 of robbers." 2 Fletcher knew of no other remedy to be pro- 
 posed for such a state of barbarism than the introduction of 
 slavery ! 
 
 It is a very significant fact, that the Scotch people, who 
 on many occasions exhibited a fiery zeal for Calvinism, and 
 who could be easily roused by their preachers to a religious 
 insurrection, should yet, for centuries together, have done 
 nothing as regards their churches. The Reformation had 
 nowhere awakened a more wild desire for destruction than in 
 Scotland ; it had left only a few ruins of the beautiful and 
 spacious churches of the country in the times of Catholicity. 
 Since then the people made shift with wretched hovels, with 
 damp unhealthy cabins, which often had more the appearance 
 of stalls for cattle than God's houses ; and during the whole 
 of the eighteenth century not one single church had been 
 
 1 STEFHENS'S "History of the Church of Scotland." London, 1848, 
 iv. 327. 
 
 * TYTLEB'S " Memoir of Lord Kames." Edinburgh, 1814, ii. 227.
 
 188 PURITANISM AND INTEMPERANCE. 
 
 built by a people who regarded themselves as the most reli- 
 gious in Europe. Many parishes had no church at all, and 
 the people listened to their preachers in the open air. 1 
 
 As regards the present time, what surprises one at the first 
 glance is, that the people who are regarded by Englishmen 
 as the most theological amongst all European nations, should 
 be also persons with whom there is a universal passion for 
 drink. "It is a fact," says the "Saturday Review," 2 "that Scot- 
 land presents the spectacle of the most Puritanized and most 
 drunken community on the face of the earth. New York is 
 about the most profligate city in the world. In Geneva, re- 
 ligion is all but unknown ; and in Glasgow the sons of the 
 Covenanters are the most drunken population on the face of 
 the earth." 3 
 
 If the Church of the Netherlands and of Scotland are 
 compared with one another, the contrast is striking. Both 
 Churches have, in the main, a like faith, and the one doc- 
 trine, founded on the fifth Dordrecht article ; they have, too, 
 a similar Constitution ; and yet, how great is the difference 
 between them ! Whilst Protestantism in the Netherlands 
 has produced so abundantly a theological literature, Scotch 
 Calvinism although, by similarity of language, brought 
 under the operation of rich English literature has yet 
 remained sterile ; and has, in its spiritual poverty and 
 lethargy, contented itself with very few, and very poor, pro- 
 ductions a fact the more surprising, when occurring amongst 
 a people so intellectually gifted. Gross ignorance in theolo- 
 
 1 CUNNINGHAM'S " Church History of Scotland." Edinburgh, 1860, 
 ii. 586-587. 
 
 2 October 8, 1859, p. 421. 
 
 3 " Scotland is now, by its increased consumption of spirits, the country 
 most given to drink in all Europe. Since 1825, the consumption of 
 spirits has quintupled. In a similar proportion have crime, diseases, and 
 deaths increased." " Neue Preuss. Ztg.," 21st Feb., 1854. The Scotch- 
 man LAING ( u Observations on the Social and Political state of the 
 European People," London, 1850, p. 284,) says, that his countrymen 
 must not boast of their morality, so long as, according to statistical re- 
 turns, they exceed England in their enormous consumption of spirits, 
 and drink about four times as much as Ireland.
 
 THEOLOGICAL STERILITY OF CALVINISM. 189 
 
 gical matters had always been a striking feature of the Scotch 
 preachers. Burnet, even in his time, makes the remark. 1 
 Since the Reformation, Scotland has had, in fact, only two 
 important theologians Robert Leighton and Forbes; and 
 both belonged to the Episcopal Church, and were themselves 
 bishops. Theological instruction has been very negligently 
 carried on : " the students were for the greatest portion or, 
 at the least partly a very large portion of each year dis- 
 charged from the strictly scientific course," and, in the inter- 
 mediate time, occupied themselves with the teaching of 
 children. 2 If we put aside a period of prevailing moderatisrn, 
 but which was merely scepticism as to dogma, 3 we find that 
 original thought, and variety in opinion and teaching, were 
 unheard of in Scotland among the clergy, as well as the 
 laity, although the official Catechism makes it the duty of 
 every Scotch Christian to examine what he has heard in 
 sermons by the Holy Scriptures. 4 Had this " duty" really 
 been performed, by only a small number, ecclesiastical divi- 
 sions would naturally have become much greater than they 
 have been. The spirit of the nation remained bound up in 
 the Calvinistic system. Only questions of Church constitu- 
 tion, and, before all things, that of patronage, have agitated 
 the Scotch. The sect-system did not originate in the Scotch 
 soil, but was rather dragged in upon it from England. The 
 great secession of the preceding century took place, not on 
 account of doctrines, but by reason of the constitution and 
 position of the civil power. 
 
 A glance at the dogma of the Scotch Church, as it has 
 found expression in the Westminster Confession, and which 
 still passes as its valid confession of faith, enables us to learn 
 what is the chief cause of the Scotch dislike to theology. 
 
 1 " History of his own Time," p. 103. 
 
 ' KOSTLIN in " Der deutschen Zeitschrift fur Christl. Wissenschaft," 
 i. 190. 
 
 * To this time and disposition belongs the only important Exegist the 
 Scotch Church has produced MACKNIGHT who, however, according to 
 the standard of the Westminster Confession, was very heterodox. 
 
 " Confession of Faith," &c., p. 318.
 
 190 THE CALVINISTIC SYSTEM OF FAITH. 
 
 There is, in fact, a solid chain of belief, with which the 
 Calvinistic system, as it is fixed in the Westminster Con- 
 fession, has encircled the minds of men. Ever since the 
 people have been taught to measure the value of a religion 
 according to the amount of confidence it affords, it is but 
 
 O 
 
 natural that the Calvinist should be still more firmly con- 
 vinced of the excellence of his dogma than the Lutheran, 
 since the problem as to which affords the higher degree of 
 tranquillizing confidence is here solved. Man so this system 
 teaches receives, by the hearing of preaching, the soul- 
 saving faith that he is, from all eternity, one of the elect ; 
 and that God will attribute to him, as if he himself had 
 yielded it, the obedience of Christ. This faith, and the un- 
 failing assurance of his election, of his state of grace, or his 
 righteousness, and his future salvation, are never again lost 
 by him, although a transitory doubt or obscurity may intrude 
 upon him. 1 He now knows that he is under the irresistible 
 power of the grace of God ; and that all that he does, or ne- 
 glects doing, is in accordance with God's will, and by God's 
 grace. If he sins, he remains, nevertheless, one of the elect, 
 and irrevocably in a state of grace ; and he knows this will 
 be his state, even though, like David, he commit murder and 
 adultery. By such sins, the certainty of salvation may, in- 
 deed, be shaken, diminished, obscured, says the Confession ; 
 but the seed of God, and the life of faith, are never quite 
 lost to the believer. And since, according to the doctrine of 
 the Confession, he is unfree, and a merely passive instrument 
 of the Divine Will and that the best deed has in it a mix- 
 ture of evil, so that the good in it is the action of God, 
 through man, but the evil man's own addition to it so per- 
 sons can pretty well tranquillize themselves, even concerning 
 sins that are, according to human judgment, heavy and 
 grievous. 2 
 
 1 "The Confession of Faith, &c., of Public Authority in the Church of 
 Scotland." Glasgow, 1756, p. 98. 
 
 * Concerning the practical effects which this system produces, there is 
 an article in the u Quarterly Review," vol. Ixxxix., p. 307, entitled 
 " Puritanism in the Highlands." The writer observes : " It is held that
 
 THE STUDY OF CHRISTIAN MORALS RENOUNCED. 191 
 
 With such a doctrine, it is easily explained, as Kostlin re- 
 marks, why there is so little mention, in their sermons, of the 
 Revelation of the Son of God in the flesh, and the human 
 history of the Saviour ; and that " Scotch theology possesses 
 no system of pure Christian ethics." 1 He adds, further, that 
 in this system the real meaning of Evangelical faith never 
 comes to light. 
 
 What Kostlin here remarks of the Scotch Church, is also 
 shown, elsewhere, as the natural consequence of the Pro- 
 testant doctrine of " Justification." It was not possible to 
 bring a tolerable scientific moral theology into harmony with 
 this doctrine; and, therefore, so long as the mastership of 
 the system built upon " Imputation" lasted, there too was 
 renounced the study of Christian morals. 
 
 This has been already remarked by Staudlin 2 that, in 
 consequence of the Lutheran doctrine of faith, no one, during 
 the whole of the sixteenth century (and up to 1634), in the 
 whole German Evangelical Church, had ever thought of 
 treating " Christian morals" as a special science, or even in 
 their dogmatic system entering into its doctrine in any 
 detail. The first who undertook to do so was Calixtus, but 
 he immediately departed from the Lutheran dogma. The 
 historians of the NetherJand Church, Ypey and Dermout, 
 confirmed this fact with respect to the Calvinistic theo- 
 logy. Theological, Biblical ethics had, neither in the uni- 
 versity lectures nor in literature, any place. Every one 
 feared an inevitable collision with the dogma, and dreaded 
 
 a person of great faith, according to his own account, and of extraordi- 
 nary attainments, as his neighbours believe, in praying and prophesying, 
 and generally of high devotional repute, may indulge in various sins 
 without endangering his everlasting safety, or, of course, weakening his 
 position as a man," (so are called here those deemed especially sacred and 
 pious). I have been assured in Scotland, that the example of David was 
 regarded by the people as particularly consolatory and tranquillizing. The 
 writer of the above-quoted article remarks (p. 325), that the preachers 
 frequently cherish such notions, and according to the Westminster Con- 
 fession they are justified in doing so. 
 
 1 " Deutsche Zeitschrift," i. 187-8. 
 
 2 " Geschichte der Christl. Moral." Gottingen, 1808, p. 235.
 
 192 MODERATISM. 
 
 that he might get into bad odour as " a law-teacher." 1 All 
 the later Protestant moral theologians, therefore men like 
 Baxter, Hammond, Taylor, Maastricht, La Placette, and Ar- 
 nold were decided opponents to the Protestant doctrine of 
 "Justification."" But wherever that doctrine has remained 
 predominant, there also has there been no moral theology. 
 
 The fear of the morally destructive effects of the Calvinistic 
 system, and a perception of the actual consequences following 
 from it, essentially contributed, about the middle of the last 
 century, to create what is called Moderatism a mode of 
 thought corresponding to German "Rationalism"; 2 although 
 here again, as almost always in Scotland, ecclesiastical an- 
 tagonism, between patronage and congregational election, 
 became most prominent. According to their theological 
 tendencies, the most of the Moderatist preachers were " Pe- 
 lagian," or even " Socinian," in their views; but yet they 
 did not usually attack the received doctrine : they endea- 
 voured, by confining their pre<aching to moral subjects only, 
 to avoid it and so made the yoke of the Calvinistic confes- 
 sion light for themselves. The leaders of this school passed 
 for unbelievers amongst the people, and at their divine service 
 scarcely a tenth of the congregation were accustomed to be 
 present. 3 
 
 Against this long-predominant Moderatism arose, in the 
 present century, the reaction of "the Evangelical party," 
 whose spiritual leader was Thomas Chalmers. This party 
 has passed into the Free Church. But the genuine old Dor- 
 drecht Calvinism is now no longer preached by the majority 
 of the clergy of both Churches the State Church and the 
 Free Church. Only among the " reformed " and st United 
 Presbyterian " does it still reign. 4 According to the state- 
 ment of Maurice, the mechanical, fatalistic doctrine of the 
 
 1 " Geschiedenes van de hervonnde Kerk in Nederland." Breda, 1822, 
 ii. 409. 
 
 7 KOSTLIN in " Herzogs Encyklop.," xiii. 720. 
 
 1 See the picture given of them in " Hamilton's Autobiography " in 
 the " Quarterly Review," vol. xcviii., p. 362. 
 
 See the newspaper, the " Union," 7th June, 1861, p. 356.
 
 JUDAICAL OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH. 193 
 
 American, Jonathan Edwards (a doctrine which relegates all 
 human freedom and self-determination to the sole will of 
 God as affecting all things), has gained great influence in 
 Scotland. This influence, according to Maurice, is connected 
 with Materialism, which is very widely spread in that 
 country. That the old Calvinistic faith is, however, lost 
 to the Scotch Church, is, according to his testimony, the 
 view of every intelligent man in the country. 1 In such a 
 state of things a scientific theology in Scotland is not to be 
 thought of. With it the most irreconcileable contradictions 
 would come to light immediately ; and the preachers would 
 forfeit all authority among a people so watchful over all 
 things Connected with the Church. It is only by an entire 
 absence of theology that the three Presbyterian communities 
 can maintain their existence. 
 
 In a Jewish rigidity of the observance of the Sabbath, the 
 Scotch Calvinists endeavour to surpass even their English 
 co-religionists so much so, that even a little walk for recrea- 
 tion on the Sunday is not permissible. And so, on the other 
 hand, there is on that day a much greater consumption of 
 spirituous liquors. In their churches there is no organ, no 
 altar, no cross, no pictures, no light. 2 In God's service no 
 symbol, no liturgical action. Calvinism has nowhere and 
 certainly not in Scotland been able to produce a religious 
 poetry. Of devout hymns that might be sung in church, no 
 one has ever even mentioned them, for a psalm is the only 
 thing that can be sung there. That there had been a defi- 
 ciency of religious compositions suitable for popular perusal 
 was a want already felt in England ; whilst, as regards 
 Scotland, such a deficiency is strikingly apparent. Hence it 
 is that they are so much the more dependent upon the words 
 of their preachers for by them alone are the people pro- 
 vided with religious ideas and feelings. The complete pre- 
 ponderance of the sermon in a divine service, stripped of 
 every liturgical element, the people are well content with, 
 since this passivity of mere hearing and receiving, instead of 
 
 1 " Kingdom of Christ." London, 1842, i. 157-60. 
 
 2 " Hengstenberg's Kirchen-Zeitung," vol. xlix., p. 962. 
 
 O
 
 194 PRESBYTERIAN CARICATURE OF PRAYER. 
 
 the religious activity which is calculated upon in the Catho- 
 lic worship, agrees with their mode of thought. For 
 the same interest of convenience and passivity are the 
 long prayers (commonly lasting for half-an-hour), introduced 
 into every service by the clergyman, and into which he 
 huddles all the notions that occur to him. Ever since there 
 have been Christians, the complete spiritual dependence of 
 the laity upon the clergy and their religious tutorship has 
 never been carried so far as it now is in Scotland. Instead 
 of speaking to God himself, from his own personal position 
 and character, the Scotchman willingly leaves it to the 
 preacher to tell him, for half-an hour together, how he can, 
 or should, pray. This plan is, at least, according to the 
 feeling of all educated persons, so much the more perverse, 
 since the clergyman, in the absolute absence of the confes- 
 sional, has very little precise knowledge of the state of the 
 soul and spiritual wants of the laity. A very animated and 
 well-written work of a celebrated and seriously religious 
 Scotch lawyer, Home, Lord Kames, 1 presents a picture of the 
 endless abuses, absurdities, and blasphemies connected with 
 this practice. The necessity of the long public prayer natu- 
 rally causes this prayer to be frequently nothing more than a 
 sermon a sermon disguised as being addressed to God or 
 it degenerates into empty gossip and hollow phrases ; or the 
 preacher may intrude his own petty passions and prejudices 
 upon his hearers in the form of a prayer. The Duke of 
 Argyle has, in his defence of Scotch Presbyterianism, ad- 
 mitted that it is a great defect of this Church system that 
 the entire devotion of the congregation is dependent 
 upon the will of the preacher. 2 The consequences of such a 
 system have not failed to follow it. The Presbyterian 
 Churches are losing more and more the higher and educated 
 
 o o 
 
 classes of the country. The whole of the nobility, with the 
 exception of two families, have gradually passed to the 
 Episcopal Church, which, as well as the Catholic, is continu- 
 
 1 " A Letter from a Blacksmith to the Ministers and Elders of the 
 Church of Scotland." Dublin, 1757. 
 * " Presbytery Examined." London, 1848, p. 302.
 
 RITUAL POVERTY OF THE SCOTCH CHURCH. 195 
 
 ally increasing. A great number, too, of the educated 
 classes, though they have not formally left the State Church, 
 yet rent seats in the Episcopal Chapel, in order that they 
 may attend on the Sunday to the dignified forms of an 
 Episcopal liturgy, instead of listening to declamation offen- 
 sive to every refined feeling, and phrases (purporting to 
 be prayers) of an uneducated, or half-educated, clerical 
 speaker. 1 
 
 Further, it is to be observed that the unfrequent and 
 undignified celebration of Communion is felt as a repulsive 
 evil. It is converted into a theatrical display-piece of per- 
 formance, in which a long preparation, when several clergy- 
 men speak in turns one after another, is the main-piece of 
 action. The crowding of the guests, the coming and going 
 of those who are to sit at the long tables, whilst bread and 
 wine are handed about in dishes and goblets the numerous 
 lookers-on filling the church ; the noise and confusion that 
 prevail are all circumstances portrayed by Lord Kames in 
 harsh colours. The low notion which the Scotch as well 
 as English Calvinists are accustomed to entertain respecting 
 the purport of Communion compels them to supply the 
 meagreness of the ceremony by high-flown pathos on the 
 part of preachers, in their raging excitement, trying to out- 
 top one another. 
 
 The mode of burial, also, in Scotland, manifests a ritual 
 poverty and disdain of everything symbolical. The Duke of 
 Argyle complains of this. When Wesley was in Scotland 
 he was greatly struck by the contrast between the English 
 and the Scotch mode of interment. When, he said, the 
 coffin was shovelled into the earth without a single word 
 being spoken, it reminded him of the words of Scripture 
 concerning " the ass's burial" of Jehoakim. 2 
 
 The Free Church, the separation of which from the State 
 Church began in the year 1843, and that now comprise 
 one-third of the population, has developed a wonderful 
 
 1 See, upon this subject, an article, " John Knox's Liturgy," in the 
 " Edinburgh Review, 1 ' vol. xcv., p. 477, et seq. 
 
 2 SOUTHEY'S " Life of Wesley," ii. 248. 
 
 02
 
 196 THE SCOTCH EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 
 
 amount of strength and activity. It has, in seventeen years, 
 built above 800 churches, and a corresponding number of 
 parsonages and schools, out of voluntary contributions ; and 
 it has, too, assigned to its preachers a considerable income. 
 The former Secessionists have, for the most part, united 
 among themselves, so that there are now three Presbyterian 
 Churches the State Church, the Free Church, and the 
 United, subsisting by the side of one another. To these are 
 to be added the Independents, who have about 100, although 
 mostly small congregations. In narrower dimensions exist 
 Baptists, Methodists of two descriptions, Glassites, Unita- 
 rians, and Quakers. Lately, there has been rather a widely 
 diffused sect the Morisonians which, in opposition to 
 Calvinism, teaches the universality of the Redemption. 1 
 Thus, then, is Scotland, ecclesiastically the most divided 
 nation in Europe, and in this respect only surpassed by 
 another country. America. 
 
 The Episcopal has, it will be thus seen, favourable 
 prospects in Scotland. Formerly, it and its service passed 
 for nothing better than a " modified idolatry ;" and, in order 
 that they might exterminate it by the sword, the Scotch set 
 up their Covenant. When negotiations were going on for 
 the political union of Scotland with England, the Scotch 
 Church addressed a petition to the Parliament in Edinburgh, 
 declaring it would bring down heavy guilt upon itself and 
 the nation, if it consented that the constitution and cere- 
 monies of the Church of England should obtain a legal foot- 
 ing in England itself; 2 and still less could it, of course, 
 endure the thought of a toleration of that Church on Scottish 
 soil. Upon the news of the death of Queen Anne, in 1714, 
 the Episcopal Chapel in Glasgow was, on the instant, de- 
 stroyed. Since then, this Church has obtained perfect 
 freedom, and has, of late years, by the erection of some good 
 schools, and the college of Glenalmond, as well as by the 
 building of the cathedral of Perth, given signs of its vigour. 
 But lately, however, party spirit, dogmatic contradictions, 
 
 1 " Union," 14th Dec., 1860, p. 188. 
 
 * " Edinburgh Review," vol. xxvi. p. 55.
 
 THE CHURCHES IN HOLLAND. 197 
 
 and discord have broken out in its bosom, so that now, as a 
 periodical recently said, persons in this Church are engaged, 
 with all their means and all their strength, in tearing down 
 what they ought to build up. 1 
 
 Lord Clarendon said in his time (1660) of the Scotch: 
 " that their whole religion consisted in a hatred of Popery." 2 
 That " the Pope is the Antichrist, the Man of Sin", and the 
 Child of Perdition;" and that, consequently, all who attach 
 themselves to him are lost has always been, where genuine 
 Calvinism prevailed, received as an article of faith, and it 
 stands as such in the Westminster Confession. All classes 
 and authorities, ecclesiastical as well as temporal, have, 
 since the victory of the Reformation, always zealously 
 co-operated to destroy the Catholic religion. But in this 
 they have not succeeded. In the year 1700, every priest 
 who returned from banishment was condemned to death ; and 
 old men of seventy years of age, who had ventured to give 
 their religious services to poor Catholic Highlanders, lan- 
 guished away their lives in pestiferous dungeons. 3 The old 
 Church stands, nevertheless ; and it has in recent times 
 namely, through Irish immigration considerably increased, 
 and its churches and chapels have arisen from 87 in the 
 year 1848, up to 183 in the year 1859. 
 
 THE CHURCHES IN HOLLAND. 
 
 The reformed Church in Holland comprehends about 
 one-half of the population. It counted in the year 1856, 
 1,668,443 members. (The total population, in the year 
 1859, amounted to 3,348,747 souls.) After this comes the 
 Catholic Church, with 1,164,142 souls. Then there are the 
 Lutherans, about 600,000 (divided into two sects) ; and then 
 the Mennonites, 38,000; Separatists, 42,000; and 5,000 
 Remonstrants. Thus two-fifths of the population are Catho- 
 
 1 " Ecclesiastic," February, 1860, p. 50. 
 
 2 The Oxford edition has modified this expression into " a great part 
 of their religion." See " Edinburgh Review," vol. xliv. p. 38. 
 
 3 CHAMBERS'S " Domestic Annals of Scotland," iii. 205.
 
 198 THE REFORMED CHURCH. 
 
 lie. Two out of the eleven provinces are almost entirely 
 Catholic, and three almost wholly Protestant. In the mean- 
 time, Calvinism retains the tradition of its former domina- 
 tion. And although the Calvinist dogma, the Dordrecht 
 orthodoxy, has vanished from the minds of the great ma- 
 jority, still the Calvinist antipathy to the Catholic Church 
 has maintained itself so that the two creeds are thus more 
 sharply separated, and more inimically opposed to each other, 
 than is the case in Germany. 
 
 The new organization of the Reformed Church, in the year 
 1816, had (in contradiction to the old Calvinist doctrine) 
 principles introduced by the King, which allowed to the 
 State great influence, and, according to the views of many 
 persons, much too great influence in Church affairs. 
 
 But, by the Constitution of 18.52, the greatest freedom 
 and independence of movement has been secured to the 
 Reformed Church. The chief power rests with the freely- 
 elected Synod, and its decisions are subject to no royal 
 placet. The only thing, almost, that there can be found to 
 object to is, that the Professors of Theology are nomi- 
 nated by the Government, without the co-operation of the 
 Church. 1 
 
 Calvinism, in Holland, has the advantage of being inti- 
 mately interwoven with historical recollections, of which the 
 Netherlanders are especially very proud. The struggle against 
 the Spanish dominion was, at the same time, a struggle for 
 the Protestant cause ; and with the establishment of the 
 Dutch Republic also ensued the establishment of the 
 Reformed Church. 
 
 Holland was, for a long time, the classic land of genuine 
 Calvinism. The struggle between Lutherauism and Cal- 
 vinism in Germany exercised little or no influence upon the 
 internal development of the Reformed Churches; but the 
 ejection of Arminianism, and the decision and fixing of the 
 Calvinist doctrine, as to Grace, Election, and Justification, 
 through that dispute, is to be regarded as the most important 
 
 1 " Expose Historique de Tetat de TEglise ref. des Pays-bas." Amster- 
 dam, 1855, p. 2^.
 
 THE GRONINGER SCHOOL. 190 
 
 event in the whole early history of Reformed Protestantism. 
 The Dordrecht Synod is the culminating point in this his- 
 tory, and it is in the bosom .of the Dutch Church, and with 
 its forces, that those battles were fought and those posses- 
 sions won. 1 
 
 But from this height of Calviuistic renown the Dutch 
 Church has long since descended. In England, Scotland, 
 and North America, there are still adherents to the Five 
 Articles ; but in their native home, the race of Dordrecht 
 confessors among the clergy, if it has not entirely died out, 
 has certainly shrunk up into a very small party. 
 
 Three or four sections may be distinguished amongst the 
 clergy ; and every one of them, in its views of Christianity, 
 widely differs from the others. 
 
 The Groninger school, whose theological head is Hofstede 
 de Groot, was a short time ago the most numerous. It 
 might be named, according to the German designation, 
 " Rationalist," only that the title of Rationalist would pass 
 in Holland as an offensive expression. 2 With this school, 
 Christ is but a mere potential Socrates, Who wisely adapted 
 Himself to existing ideas, and can make no claim to absolute 
 truth in His doctrine. All the chief doctrines of Chris- 
 tianity are, therefore, resolved into the transitory ideas of the 
 time. A Church with a settled doctrine, binding on the 
 clergy, is to this party a horror. 3 
 
 For the present, however, the Leyden school, with Pro- 
 fessor Scholten at its head, is the one which has the greatest 
 preponderance among the clergy, or promises to retain it. 
 With that section most of the younger theologians may be 
 
 1 So lately, MERLE D'AUBIGNE. " Quand est-ce que 1'Eglise de Hol- 
 lande a ete triomphante et glorieuse ? Quand a-t-elle marche a la tete 
 de toutes les eglises de la Chretiente ? C'est lorsqu'il lui fut donne de 
 porter dans les murs de Dordrecht le plus complet, le plus magninque 
 temoinage, qu'ait jamais ete permis aux homines de rendre a la grace 
 de Jesus -Christ." Compare GROEX DE PRINSTERER, "Le Parti Anti- 
 revol. et Confessionnel," p. 18. 
 
 2 Messner's " Kirchen-Zeitung," 1861, p. 163. 
 
 * CHANTEPIE DE LA SAUSSAYE in the German " Zeitschrift fur 
 Christl. Wissenschaft," 1855, p. 200.
 
 200 THE THEOLOGIANS OF UTRECHT. 
 
 reckoned. Many deem its spirit as much more injurious than 
 that of the Groninger theology : because the veiled rational- 
 ism and heathenism of the Leyden school assumes the autho- 
 rity of being a deeper speculative establishment of the Cal- 
 vinistic system of unconditional predestination ; whilst, in 
 point of fact, the whole theology of this same school leads 
 ultimately to a dispersion and dissolution of individual 
 personality Divine as well as human. 
 
 Of the theologians of Utrecht, and their disciples, it is 
 said, to their honour, that if they are not Calvinistically or- 
 thodox, they are more Christianly conservative than the 
 two other schools. The religious party under Groen van 
 Prinsterer, and not represented in the universities, calls itself 
 the "Christian Historical," and personifies the genuine Calvin- 
 ism that is so intimately interwoven with the history of the 
 country. It desires of the civil power that it will maintain 
 by compulsion the old creed ; and of the Church authorities, 
 that they will tolerate no variation from it in preachers ; 
 but at the same time it complains of its weakness, and of 
 the failure of all attempts that have been recently made, and 
 of the falling off of friends, and dispiritingly admits that it 
 is, at all events for the present, impossible to discover a cure 
 for the confusion now prevailing amongst Protestants. 1 What 
 Groen will not, but which others, nevertheless, see clearly 
 enough is, that the dogmatic Calvinism of the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries has in Holland, as elsewhere, died of 
 theology, and that every attempt at its reanimation must 
 begin with the suppression of theology. 
 
 The Netherlands clergy have therefrom made the yoke of 
 their Confessional Declarations as light as possible. The most 
 important announcement on this subject is that which is 
 stated at the conclusion of the General Synod in 1854 : 
 " Since it is impossible, even in the shortest Confession of 
 Faith, to unite all opinions and desires, so the Church allows 
 variations from the symbolical writings, only excepting what 
 is essential, namely, veneration for the Holy Scriptures, and 
 
 1 GROEN, "Le Parti Anti-revol.," p. 108. Compare Preface, p. 1.
 
 PASTORAL FREEDOM. 201 
 
 faith in the Redeemer of sinners. These must be held 
 fast." 1 
 
 With this, then, excellent care has been taken of the free- 
 dom of the pastors to teach as they please ; but the freedom 
 of congregations, on the other hand, not to allow any unbe- 
 lieving or erroneous-believing preacher to be forced upon 
 them, is absolutely illusory ; and in cases occurring within 
 the last few years, in which congregations have preferred a 
 protest against the pastor, the latter has always conquered. 2 
 " The congregations," says Chantepie, " were treated as if 
 they were sheep ; " and this tyranny is complete ! Besides 
 this, the obligation, until recently in force, to preach upon 
 the Heidelberg Catechism has been done away with by the 
 Synod, and so has the last confessional ligature been torn to 
 pieces. 
 
 "At present," says Molenaar, "everyone preaches and 
 teaches what he likes." At the same time the Synod, in its 
 yearly meetings, and the Synodal Commission, speak of " the 
 doctrine of our Church;" whilst the general Synod gives to 
 all questions, concerning the doctrine of the Church and the 
 confession of faith, evasive or equivocatory answers. 3 The 
 unity of the Netherlands Church consists, according to 
 Groen's expression, only in this, that all its preachers are 
 paid out of the same treasury ; and " this chaos," he adds, 
 " should not any longer be called a Church." 4 
 
 Dissatisfaction with the existing Church, its want of a 
 creed, its general falling off from the doctrines of the age of 
 the Reformation, and its entire absence of discipline, have 
 led, since the year 1838, to the formation of a separate 
 Church, under the guidance of the preachers Cock and 
 Scholte. It is scattered in small congregations over the 
 whole country. In the year 1853 its number was estimated 
 
 1 " Berl. protest. Kirchen-Zeitung." 1854, p. 846. 
 
 : CHANTEPIE DE LA SAUSSAYE, " Le Crise relig. en Hollande." 
 Leyden, 1860, p. 67. 
 
 3 "Beknopte Opgaaf van de verschillen Gevoelens." Gravenhage, 
 1856, pp. 88-92. 
 
 4 u Le Parti Anti-revolutionnaire," p. 106.
 
 202 DIVINE SERVICE. 
 
 at 42,000; but even amongst these a division has already 
 taken place, concerning a prime Calvinistic doctrine, upon "the 
 perfect consciousness of one's own faith, as an essential sign 
 of election." 1 Other differences also prevail amongst them. 
 Apart from the "Cockyanys" (Coccianern) as they are 
 called, as well as from the State Church, there exists a little 
 religious community of perhaps thirty, called " Congrega- 
 tions under the Cross." 
 
 In Holland, also, almost the whole of the Divine service 
 consists in exceedingly long sermons, which are very fre- 
 quently read. The Communion is, as in other Calvinist 
 Churches, administered only four times in the year; and the 
 religious instruction of youth is, through the idleness of the 
 preachers, left to "catechism-masters," persons who are also 
 accustomed to carry on a trade. As in Scotland, so is it in 
 the Netherlands, at least in several of the provinces burial 
 is not a religious act, so that cases of death are not even no- 
 tified to the clergyman. 2 The custom of hiring seats in the 
 church has also here had, as in other places, the effect of ex- 
 cluding the poor from the church, but so much the more here 
 because the number of churches is strikingly small. Rot- 
 terdam, for example, with 104,000 inhabitants, has only 
 four churches. If, in these circumstances, a want of reli- 
 gious feeling is manifested, still, on the other hand, Protestant 
 consciousness, on its negative side, is so much the more lively 
 and vigorous. Even the English Bishop Burnet had re- 
 marked it in his time : " The chief thing which the preachers 
 in Holland inculcate upon their people is a detestation 
 against Arminianism. They seem much more anxious about 
 this than about other most important subjects." 3 At present 
 the Arminians have shrunk up into a small, weak group, 
 whilst the great majority of the clergy of the Reformed 
 Church think Arminian, but in some respects go far beyond 
 the old Arminianism. The very numerous Catholics who, 
 after their long depression, have been placed on a level with 
 
 1 REUTER'S " Repertorium," vol. Ixxxvi. p. 147. 
 
 * GOBEL'S " Ref. Kirchen-Zeitung," 1855, p. 266. 
 
 * " History of his own Time," fol. ed., i. 689.
 
 PROSPECTS OF THE REFORMED CHURCH. 203 
 
 the Protestants, are, however, the object of most attacks. 
 Niebuhr had already remarked that au " orthodox " Calviuist, 
 in his conviction of his own personal election (and of the rejec- 
 tion of those of a different opinion), was a most irreconcile- 
 able enemy. " One does not," he says, in the year 1808, '* so 
 much as mention the great poet Vondel, the only poet who 
 does honour to the nation, and, indeed, immortal honour ; but 
 he must not be spoken of, because he had become a Catholic." 1 
 
 Since then this aversion has naturally increased espe- 
 cially since the organization of the Catholic Episcopacy, in 
 the year 1853, which, in the same manner as in England, 
 two years previously, had evoked a storm of indignation, 
 that was sedulously cherished from the pulpits, and before 
 which the ministry had to give way ; and Groen and his 
 followers flattered themselves with a great Protestant 
 revival in the country. Ultimately, however, nothing was 
 effected beyond the formation of five societies, partly to 
 convert the Catholics to Protestantism, and partly to keep 
 them down as much as possible, both as citizens and sub- 
 jects. The religious life of Protestantism has derived no 
 advantage from the great agitation, and the rent in its 
 Church is as wide as it had previously been. 
 
 Thus, then, the opinion entertained concerning the present 
 state and future prospects of the Reformed Church in 
 Holland, must be gloomy and disconsolate enough. Of its 
 1500 preachers, it was a short time since publicly mentioned 
 that 1400 were Unitarians or Socinians. 2 "If the present 
 state of things continues," says the preacher, Chantepie, " it 
 is impossible for the Reformed Church to fulfil its mission 
 (that of being the chief dam against revolutionary principles), 
 for being itself in a state of dissolution, it must leave a free 
 course to decomposing and destructive forces.'" 3 Not less 
 gloomy is the most recent description given of this state of 
 things, which closes with these words : " The death-waters 
 
 1 " Nachgelassene Schriften," p. 289. See his startling description of 
 Dutch fanaticism, p. 266. 
 
 * Messner's " Kirchen-Zeitung," 1860, p. 541. 
 1 " Deutsche Zeitschrift," 1855, p. ^06.
 
 204 PROTESTANT CHURCHES IN FRANCE. 
 
 of Unbelief, Rationalism, Pantheism, and Materialism are in 
 Holland, as in Germany, filtering through, and wasting 
 away those protecting dykes the Family, the State, and the 
 Church. 1 No one knows what advice to offer, nor what aid 
 to give. The disease has its seat even more in the clergy 
 than the people. The bond of a common faith, and of a 
 fixed doctrine, is wanting, and we may sum up the state of 
 affairs in three short sentences : 
 
 1. Without a code of doctrine laid down in authoritative 
 Confessions of Faith, a Church cannot long endure. 
 
 2. The old confessional writings cannot be maintained, 
 
 O * 
 
 and are universally given up. 
 
 3. To make a new Confession of Faith is impossible. 
 
 PROTESTANT CHURCHES IN FRANCE. 
 
 The Reformed, and (according to its origin) Calvinistic 
 Church, in France, enjoys important advantages. In every 
 thing which concerns its doctrine and ecclesiastical life, it 
 moves with the most complete freedom that can be wished 
 for; and it enjoys, too, the prestige of nearly one hundred 
 years' endurance of oppression (down to the time of Louis 
 XVI.), and of a severe and sometimes bloody persecution. 
 By the Revolution of 1789, it was much less injured than the 
 Catholic Church, which, for a long time, did not recover the 
 heavy blows inflicted on it, or rather, it may be said that it 
 is still bleeding from some of the wounds it then received. 
 In comparison with it, Protestantism was treated very for- 
 bearingly at the Revolution, and sometimes favoured as an 
 ally. 
 
 With a community so small, so scattered, and so inun- 
 dated by a great mass of Catholicity, one point has been 
 always vigilantly attended to, namely : that exclusively 
 Protestant ideas, and a sharp contest against all that is 
 Catholic in doctrine and in practice, should be a principle of 
 existence in this Church, which, if not firmly adhered to, the 
 small religion must, inevitably, be absorbed in the greater. 
 
 1 In MESSNER'S " Kirchen-Zeitung," 1861, 16th March.
 
 WANT OF INTERNAL UNITY. 20,5 
 
 That the "French" spirit is a "Catholic" one, is said in 
 France even by Protestants themselves. " The feeling that 
 it is so, prevails in the Evangelical Church of France, 1 ' 
 writes a German correspondent, from Paris ; " it feels itself 
 to be an exception to the general rule." 1 But so much the 
 more certainly might one expect all that is Protestant to 
 gather around its banner, and close together its ranks, not 
 merely maintaining a negative position, but advancing with 
 a positive creed against the Catholic Church. 
 
 The natural consequences of this position are, in so far, 
 not to be mistaken, that among the French Protestants there 
 is not to be found the slightest trace of an approximation 
 towards Catholic doctrine, ideas, institutions, or observances 
 there is not a single French theologian, or preacher, has 
 ever, so far as I know, fallen under the suspicion of having 
 his thoughts turned in the same direction as numbers of the 
 Tractarians and Anglo- Catholics in England. In France, 
 they all are, in this sense, "extremely good and staunch 
 Protestants." The variation in tendencies, and the manifold 
 conflicts within the heart of their own community, have not 
 the slightest effect in preventing them from making war, with 
 all their combined forces, upon their Catholic rivals. To no 
 Protestant, believing in Christ, if he is a preacher, has the 
 thought ever occurred that the believing Catholic stands 
 nearer to him than the unbelieving or rationalistic member 
 of his own Church. 
 
 Internal want of unity, and distraction, among French 
 Protestants are, at the same time, strikingly great ; whilst a 
 common dogmatic position, and a settled doctrine, are here 
 as little to be looked for as in Holland. The causes for this 
 state of things are, for the most part, to be found in the 
 precedent history of this Church. Among all Protestant 
 communities, Calvinistic as well as Lutheran of the English 
 Church we do not here speak the French was the first in 
 which the process of decomposition in the chief Protestant 
 doctrines was completed. Previous even to 1685, and, 
 therefore, before the great Protestant emigration commenced, 
 1 HENGSTEMBERG'S u Kirchen-Zeitung," 1851, p. 866.
 
 206 MODERN FRENCH PROTESTANTS. 
 
 the most important theologians, men like Cameron, Drelin- 
 court, Mestrezat, Daille, Testard, Amyrault, Leblanc de 
 Beaulieu, Jurieu, La Placette, had given up the old doctrine 
 of " Justification," and the Dordrecht Articles (which had 
 been at first accepted by their Church), as untenable ; and, 
 in Holland also, where, after the revocation of the Edict of 
 Nantes, many of them had found an asylum, they con- 
 tributed essentially to the undermining the Calvinism there 
 existing. Thus the old Calvinist tradition of French Protest- 
 antism was broken through towards the end of the seventeenth 
 century, and never has there taken place any re-animation of 
 original Calvinism. The more modern French Protestantism, 
 as it has shaped itself within the last fifty years, has never 
 attempted any dogmatic alliance with the historical past ; and 
 Adolf Monod, who was removed on the complaint of his 
 consistory at Lyons, remained the only one who maintained 
 the permanent validity of the old Confession of La Rochelle. 
 The great majority of the clergy declared, in the year 1849, 
 against this Confession, and would have, in fact, no Confes- 
 sion, as the whole Reformed Church of France has no 
 theology. The works of the older theologians are quite 
 forgotten a new theological literature has not been formed, 
 and the theological writings of German Protestants have 
 only obtained a very small influence. 
 
 Since the year 1819, a "revival" has taken place; but it 
 did not spring up in French soil it was introduced from 
 England and Switzerland, and partly by Methodist mission- 
 aries by these called " the awakened " Methodists, and to 
 whom, in French Switzerland, is given the designation of 
 the " Momiers." The Methodism which has found its way 
 into the French Protestant Church, through the "awaken- 
 ing," is described as being the chief cause of the weakness 
 and wretched state of this Church. It is a dogma-destroy- 
 ing sect. Under the pretext that a Church confession-of- 
 faith is a mere form, which genuine Christianity ought to do 
 without, it has abolished Confessions, it has set aside 
 holidays, it has degraded the Communion into a mere love- 
 feast, and it has cut out a pattern for "a new faith," in
 
 RATIONALISM. 207 
 
 accordance with the history of each person's individual con- 
 version. Methodism undermines all the bonds of political ag 
 well as social life in the community. 1 Such are the accusa- 
 tions which the friends of French Protestantism are found 
 to prefer against " the Evangelical party," as it likes to call 
 itself. 
 
 Since then the French Reformers have fallen into two 
 unequal divisions: those of "the believers," or "the 
 awakened," and the unbelieving, or the "indifferent." The 
 preachers are educated in some one of the three theological 
 schools at Geneva, Strasburg, and Montauban ; of these, 
 the two first are chiefly Rationalists, and the latter is so 
 mixed that almost every professor represents a different 
 opinion. 
 
 There is, however, an older and a younger Rationalism in 
 France, to be distinguished from one another. The older, 
 whose representative may be taken to be Athanasius 
 Coquerel in Paris, leaves to the Holy Scriptures the import- 
 ance of being a Divine revelation, but breaks down or denies 
 particular dogmas, and, before all things, will allow no 
 settled, binding doctrine to be established. It will either not 
 meddle with decided dogmas, or it places them altogether 
 within the territory of individual selection. The negation 
 of all authority is, with it, the essence of Protestantism. 
 The more modern Rationalism is, on the other hand, essen- 
 tially the historic-critical of the German school ; or, as the 
 believing Protestan,ts say " the destructive which has 
 obtained its entrance into France through the theological 
 faculty of Strasburg." This particular division of Rational- 
 ism is represented by the periodical published by Colani and 
 Scherer, and is the only real theological periodical of French 
 Protestantism. It is stated that in general a sceptical 
 tendency is gaining more and more adherents among the 
 younger clergy. 2 Even Grandpierre waa compelled to con- 
 fess, before the Berlin Assembly, that the Rationalistic or 
 
 1 PRESSEL, " Zustande des Protestantismus in Frankreich." Tubingen, 
 1848, p. 66, et seq. 
 
 2 MESSNER'S " Kirchen-Zeitung," 1860, p. 48.
 
 208 WANT OF ANY COMMON DOCTRINE. 
 
 latitudinarian element prevailed above the orthodox, and 
 that most of the pastors and their congregations are going to 
 sleep. 1 
 
 In the circle of " the awakened " a dissidence has gradu- 
 ally grown up, and especially since 1848. This separa- 
 tion of a number of preachers with their congregations has 
 not had any origin in the relations that exist between the 
 State Church and the power of the State. Freedom with 
 respect to the State is certainly not wanting to the French 
 Reformed Church. Its freedom is rather more complete 
 than that of the Scotch Church. The ground of separation 
 lay in the dogmatic inclifferentism or latitudinarianism of the 
 great majority of clergy and laymen. This came to light in 
 a very striking manner, when the Protestants, immediately 
 after the February Revolution of 1848, met together in a 
 Synod, without the assent, and also without any prohibition 
 from the government. They there found that a community 
 which desired to lay claim to the name of a Church, must, 
 before all things, possess a common doctrine, or be able to 
 show a document of Confession of Faith. At the same time, 
 the result of the debate was that the whole assembly ac- 
 knowledged the impossibility of putting forth a Confession, 
 and were obliged to come to the humiliating admission that 
 their Church had, in fact, no common doctrine any more."* 
 The old confessional declarations were abandoned, and the 
 putting forth of a new form was evaded with the phrase 
 u that they would not diminish the liberty of the children 
 of God by setting up any other authority than that of God's 
 own words." 
 
 This appeared to several preachers and laymen, amongst 
 whom the Count Gasparin was distinguished, as an intolera- 
 ble state of things, and they determined to leave the State 
 Church, and to erect a "Free Evangelical" Church. Three 
 and twenty small congregations now form " the Union of the 
 
 1 " Verhandlung der Versammlung Evangelischer Christen." Berlin, 
 1857, p. 123. 
 
 2 See the detailed report in HEXGSTEXBERG'S " K.-Z.," 1849, p. 98, 
 et seq-
 
 UNION OF THE EVANGELICAL CHURCH. 209 
 
 Evangelical Church of France." 1 These dissidents, who are, 
 altogether, about three thousand, or a little more, are sup- 
 plied with pecuniary means from England and Switzerland. 
 They have nothing in common with one another but a dislike 
 to the State Church, and a belief which assumes various 
 colours and forms; and they are in so far inclined towards the 
 Baptists, that they allow children to be left unchristened at 
 the will of the parents, whilst declared Baptists are willingly 
 received amongst them. It stands with this " Union " very 
 much as with the Evangelical Alliance. They are kept 
 together although an organization comprehending within it 
 each individual does not substantially exist yet they are 
 united, not by what is positive, nor by one common Confes- 
 sion, but by that which is negative. Since, however, the 
 State bears the cost of the Reform Church, and pays the 
 clergy of the State Church, the Secession which is limited to 
 foreign resources is very weak in its supplies, as English and 
 Swiss donors care much more for having their money laid 
 out in the purchase of Catholic proselytes than in the forma- 
 tion of Dissenting congregations. 
 
 It has almost excited astonishment that Adolf Monod, 
 who, according to Vinet, is the most important man belong- 
 ing to French Protestantism, 2 should have declared, notwith- 
 standing his Calvinism, the intention of remaining in the 
 Established Church. He has, indeed, animadverted severely 
 on the " organized chaos " of this Church, in which, under 
 the pretext of toleration, and freedom of thinking, not only 
 the obligation, but even the very existence, of a positive 
 doctrine is denied. 3 
 
 By the new Constitution which Napoleon III. gave to the 
 Protestant Church of the Empire, the Reformers obtained 
 their wished-for Presbyterian Council, and the Consistories 
 emanating from it at the same time, however, a Central 
 
 1 They are enumerated in the " Annuaire Protestant." Paris, 1858, p. 
 107. 
 
 2 That is, if we omit the statesman, M. Guizot. 
 
 3 See the pamphlet, " Pourquoi je demeure dans Teglise etablie." 
 Paris, 1849. 
 
 P
 
 210 UNSETTLED STATE OF PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 Council as the chief authority was established, that which 
 was not desired by the majority. Again, since then, as 
 formerly, a desire has arisen for a General Synod, from which 
 they promise themselves great things. But the influential 
 Protestants of Paris are exerting themselves to prevent the 
 calling of a Synod ; for, they say, the Consistories already 
 disagree, 1 and in a General Assembly discord would at once 
 flame out amongst them ; and all that would be done would 
 be to present to Catholics the scandalous spectacle of a 
 multiplicity and variety in Protestant opinions, whilst not a 
 single important question would obtain a satisfactory deter- 
 mination by an imposing majority. 
 
 It is natural that such circumstances should provoke the 
 bitterest complaints from seriously disposed men. In the 
 most recent times it has been said, " That the present state 
 of things has become intolerable 2 that there exists no 
 authority which might watch over clergymen, so that they 
 should not preach unchristian doctrines." It is admitted, 
 "That the community of the Reformers in France, in its 
 entire want of a Confession of Faith, and of every kind of 
 discipline, is, in fact, no Church, but only 'an Institution for 
 the edification of non-Catholic Christians, founded by the first 
 Napoleon.' " "The Church," says an organ of still-believing 
 Protestants, 3 u is on the path to individualism it is all 
 breaking and crumbling up into the opinions and views of 
 individuals." Every Consistory ordains preachers as it 
 pleases, 4 and the person to be ordained is not even obliged to 
 signify his agreement with the doctrines of the Church, for 
 the Church has no doctrines ; but he presents to the Con- 
 sistory a Confession drawn up by himself, and so, if the 
 authorities approve of this Confession, he is ordained." Of 
 the Consistories themselves Link had heard that only one 
 fourth of them were Christian, since wherever there was an 
 
 1 LINK, p. 14. 
 
 2 MESSNER'S "Kirchen-Zeitung," 1860, p. 48. See also HENGSTEX- 
 BERO'S "Kirch.-Ztg.," 1851, p. 984. 
 
 ' The u Esperance," edited by GRANDPIERRE. 
 
 4 LINK, " Kirkliche Skizzen aus dein Evangelischen Frankreich." 
 Gottingen, 1855, p. 22.
 
 A CHURCH WITHOUT CONFESSION OR DISCIPLINE. 211 
 
 unbelieving pastor, the elders all joined him. 1 And every 
 Consistory forms a Church of its own, completely indepen- 
 dent of others it is, in fact, " keeping house " for itself. 2 
 
 Thus, then, it may be seen that State pay and the negation 
 of Catholicity are the strongest bands that hold together the 
 Reformed Church in France. This Church has no doctrine, 
 no confession, no theology, no discipline ; and its divine 
 service is a cold performance, limited to a sermon, to some 
 prelections by a clerk, and a psalm. 3 No one can be excluded 
 from it. No one can specify what are the principles by which 
 it is governed, or how it governs itself. A German observer 
 of these circumstances remarks concerning them : " It is, 
 alas ! but too true the reproach which the enemies of our 
 Church are incessantly making with respect to it, viz., that 
 there is nothing active in it but the spirit of dissension, and 
 of individual caprice ; and no other links than those of Pro- 
 
 1 At the " Alliance" meeting in Berlin, in 1857, the preacher Grand- 
 pierre, of Paris, endeavoured to give the most favourable possible repre- 
 sentation, and he declared, " One may certainly maintain that of the 
 thousand Protestant pastors in France, of which there are 600 Reformed, 
 300 Lutherans, 100 Independents, at least from 500 to 600 were 
 orthodox" (the words are, of course, to be taken in the sense of the 
 Alliance). But the official (and by the Protestant authorities themselves 
 published) " Annuaire" of the year 1858, contained a very different state- 
 ment from the above. According to this authority there are 530 Reformed, 
 253 Lutherans, and about 23 Independent preachers altogether 806 
 preachers. According to this may be judged whether the official statistics 
 are correct. The last census gives the following numbers of the popula- 
 tion: 480,507 Reformed, 267,825 Lutherans, making altogether 748,332 
 Protestants. KOLB (" Handbuch der vergl. Statistik;" 2 Edit., p. 51) 
 thinks that this statement is, by more than one-half, too small, and "is 
 inclined" to give the numbers as 1,300,000 Reformed, and 700,000 
 Lutherans. That would be, on the average, more than 2,000 souls to 
 each preacher, whilst in France it is notorious that a great number of 
 the congregations do not, at the utmost, count more than from 200 to 
 800 members. The " Annuaire," whose publisher, from the completeness 
 of its statistical notices, must be well informed as to the number of his 
 co-religionists, is silent, and therefore confirms the accuracy of the 
 Government returns. 
 
 * PRESSEL, p. 36. 
 
 3 KIENLEN, in " Herzogs Encyclopadie," iv. 561. 
 
 P2
 
 212 SWISS PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 test and Negation cement together this mass of 'malcon- 
 tents.' ' n Since then two other phenomena have occurred, 
 which indicate the continuation of the process of decom- 
 position. The Darbyite sect, which rejects every eccle- 
 siastical office, and every remnant of Church order, and be- 
 lieves in nothing but the private edification of the individual, 
 or of a fe\v, has found entrance among the French Pro- 
 testants. In the South, and in Cevennes as Gelzer had 
 already perceived a fragmentary sectarian spirit had gained 
 the upper hand. Quakers, Wesleyans, " Inspired," or the so- 
 called " Convertites," or " Strict Predestinarians," and other 
 sects, had found followers. In the congregational "con- 
 genies," for example, near Nismes, there were reckoned, a 
 few years since, six sects. " If," said a German reporter, 
 " we look steadily at the matter, as regards the future of the 
 Church, the aspect of the French Protestant Church is such 
 that it is as difficult to obtain a clear idea of it, as it is not 
 to allow every hope respecting it to be depressed. 2 
 
 THE PROTESTANT CHURCHES IN SWITZERLAND. 
 
 In Switzerland the Protestant population stands in about 
 the same relation to the Catholic as in the Netherlands. To 
 about one million of Catholics there are about one million 
 and a half of Protestants (in the year 1850, 1,417,916). 
 Lutheranism is here unknown. The whole of Protestant 
 Switzerland is " reformed" it is, or was at least, Calvinist ; 
 its confession of faith, and standard of doctrine, were of the 
 Helvetic Confession of the Heidelberg Catechism, the Dor- 
 drecht Decisions, and the Consensus-formula altogether 
 genuine Calvinist documents. Berne, with 403,000; Zurich, 
 with 243,000; Vaud, with 192,000 Protestants, 3 must, when 
 attention is devoted to ecclesiastical circumstances, come 
 most into consideration. With the advantage of having 
 given existence to the second chief form of Protestantism 
 
 1 PRESSEL, p. 35. 
 
 2 " Protestantische Briefe aus Siidfrankreich und Italien." Zurich, 
 1852, p. 51. 
 
 1 According to the calculation for 1850, in FIXSLER'S " Kirch. Statistik 
 der. ref. Schweiz." Zurich, 1854, p. 1.
 
 STATE DOMINATION. 213 
 
 of having shaped it out, and afforded it a dwelling-place, 
 Switzerland ranks next to Germany as the classic ground 
 and home of Protestantism. Berne and Zurich are, in 
 respect to religion, as important as Wittenberg. From the 
 plague of princely domination, which is so frequently to be 
 regarded as the chief source of ecclesiastical corruption, the 
 Swiss Church has, of course, remained free. It has had, in 
 its political relations, only to do with republican, and, for- 
 merly, with aristocratic authorities chiefly. Notwithstanding 
 the similarity of doctrine, no attempt has ever been made to 
 establish a collective Protestant Church in Switzerland. The 
 clergy and the people felt no impulse to pass, in Church 
 affairs, beyond the cantonal frontier limits, and the several 
 governments did not like to have their ecclesiastical sove- 
 reignty diminished. 
 
 As elsewhere, so too in Switzerland, the Reformation 
 placed the new Church under the control of the civil power. 
 The Government seated themselves in the chairs of the 
 Bishops. Zwinglius himself had given the administration of 
 the Church to the Council of Zurich. In Berne the State 
 domination over the Church was completely carried out. It 
 was regarded as a branch of the public service; and the 
 Bernese senators decided upon doctrine and rites, and deter- 
 mined theological disputes, according to their own good 
 pleasure, even though they did previously have the advice 
 of theologians. Of a defined legal position of the Church 
 towards the State there was no question j 1 and so early as 
 the year 1837, the Professor Zyro, in Berne, made the 
 accusation against the State : " That it had temporalized, 
 and almost annihilated, the Church ; and that the clergy 
 had become the servants of the rich and the powerful. 2 
 
 Thus, domination over the Church was inherited by the 
 new governments that arose out of the storms of the year of 
 revolutions. Frequently, under the influence of radicalism, 
 so powerful in Switzerland, they maintained, in the most 
 
 1 ROMANO, in " Gelzers Mon.-Blattern," v. 90. 
 
 4 "Die Evangelisch ref. Kirche," besonders im Kanton Bern., 1837, 
 pp. 81-82.
 
 214 DECLINE OF CALVINISM IN GENEVA. 
 
 favourable circumstances, an attitude of indifference towards 
 the Church, which they treated as a police institution. 
 
 Geneva, the old metropolis of Calvinism, would now be 
 scarcely recognized by Calvin himself. It is becoming more 
 and more a Catholic city. 1 " The faith of our fathers," said, 
 lately, Merle d'Aubigne, "now counts but a small group of 
 adherents amongst us." Calvin's Church, with its definite 
 doctrine and constitution, exists no more : it fell in the 
 political revolutions of 1841 and 1846; and the new one is 
 governed by a lay consistory, elected by an absolute majority 
 of all Protestants. Confessions of Faith are abolished, 2 and 
 the Church "grounds its belief on the Bible, and allows to 
 every one the right of free inquiry." 3 Among the clergy 
 " prevails the most absolute confusion with respect to doc- 
 trine." 4 Under the influence of Methodism, which has found 
 its way hence from England, Geneva has established, since 
 1816, an "Evangelical Sect," and out of this a "Free 
 Church," which rejoices in the consciousness of being a little 
 band of " the elect," in the midst of a universal decadence. 
 Still more serious have been the proceedings in the Canton 
 de Vaud. Here, where the Government has always been, 
 since the Reformation, and through it, in possession of a 
 complete domination over the Church, the majority of the 
 clergy, when power passed into democratic hands, found the 
 yoke quite too oppressive ; and especially so when the State 
 Council, at one and the same moment, dispossessed forty- 
 three preachers. Encouraged by Vinet, 180 clergymen, out 
 of about 250, left the State Church. They were replaced 
 by others, and the secessionists erected a "Free Church," 
 which is inimically regarded by the population, and in twenty 
 years has only obtained about 3,000 members, divided into 
 forty little congregations. 
 
 1 Of the 83,845 inhabitants of the Canton of Geneva, there are now 
 42,355 Catholics, and 42,266 Protestants. In the year 1850 there were 
 64,146 inhabitants, of whom 34,412 were Protestants, and 29,764 
 Catholics. * MESSNER'S " K.-Ztg.," 1861, p. 202. 
 
 * GENF'S " Kirkliche und Christliche Zustande," in u Der Deutschen 
 Zeitschrift," i. 248. Ibid., i. 253.
 
 ABOLITION OF CONFESSIONS. 215 
 
 The Heidelberg Catechism, with its eighty questions, has 
 always been so carefully inculcated upon the Bernese people, 
 that, according to the testimony of Romang, the pastor, 
 " There is scarcely anywhere so decidedly an anti-Catholic 
 people as the Bernese;" 1 and so much the easier was it, 
 therefore, in the year 1847, to inflame the agitation against 
 the Catholic " Sonderbund" into a religious war. The object 
 was attained. The Sonderbund has been annihilated ; but 
 the re-action had not been well calculated upon. It struck 
 their own Church. Romang describes the immediate con- 
 sequences : " Zeller's call ; the increased indifference of the 
 people towards religion ; the falling off in attendance upon 
 the churches ; the impotency of the clergy, without corporate 
 strength or authority, and whose main thought is to provide 
 for themselves and their families; and then, the great evil, 
 beyond all others the entire want of an ecclesiastical 
 authority, which formerly its Governments, and they only, 
 exercised, but which the present Democratic Government 
 neither can claim, nor has claimed." 
 
 Adherents to the Calvinistic doctrine no longer exist 
 among the clergy of German Switzerland ; and even amongst 
 the French they form, at the most, nothing more than a little 
 clique. Of Confessional writings, or of a doctrine in accord- 
 ance with them, there is no longer a word said. A Swiss 
 theologian boastingly declares that " even believers now 
 ask very little about a confession of faith, and seldom 
 trouble themselves concerning the institutes of the Church." 2 
 In the Cantons of Zurich, Glarus, St. Gall, Aargau, Geneva, 
 Vaud, Thurgau, Appenzell, Basle, and Neuenburg, there is 
 not a single old Protestant creed any longer in force. In 
 the Canton of Vaud the abolition of the Helvetic Confession, 
 in 1839, was the inevitable consequence of a decision, by 
 which it was shown that only 9,000 citizens wished to retain it, 
 whilst 12,000 desired its abolition. In Berne, the Grisons, 
 and Schaft'hausen, the clergy are under an obligation to 
 regulate themselves according to the principles, or funda- 
 
 1 GELZER'S "M.-B1.," v. 194. 
 
 2 GUDER, in Gelzer's " Monats-Blattern," vi. 121.
 
 216 MALADIES OF THE SWISS PROTESTANT CHURCH. 
 
 mental doctrine, contained in the Helvetic Confession ; and 
 by it their freedom of teaching is very little limited. In St. 
 Gall they promise to preach according to the Bible, in the 
 spirit of the Reformed Church. It is, however, only in the 
 city of Basle that the obligation is really acted upon. The 
 two theological faculties in Zurich and Berne follow chiefly a 
 creedless and destructive tendency. The school at Basle 
 alone possesses, and still teaches, a positive theology ; but it 
 is, according to the estimate of it in Wette's and Hagen- 
 bach's writings, nothing better than an " accommodating 
 theology." 
 
 The position of the Swiss Protestant Church is worse 
 than that of other countries. It suffers from two severe 
 maladies from Radicalism in the people, and from the un- 
 belief, the spiritual unsteadfastness and shattered condition 
 of the preachers. Among the clergy the influence of German 
 literature and theology, and a decomposing process of Church 
 doctrine, with its consequences, have become complete, so 
 that every preacher is accustomed to preach what pleases 
 himself, or what may be pleasing to his congregation. The 
 more ancient Nationalism is no longer in possession of 
 authority; 1 and as to old positive Protestantism, it can 
 only find a place for itself amongst " a knot of the congre- 
 gation." 2 The majority of the clergy naturally keep to what 
 had been taught to themselves in Berne, or Zurich, or Basle. 
 In the canton of Berne most of the clergy and of the Church 
 authorities have openly taken part with the unbelieving 
 Faculty. In the synod and other assemblies the believing 
 clergy generally find themselves in a minority. 3 On the 
 other hand, Radicalism, which, for thirty years past, had 
 sometimes by starts, through revolutions, and sometimes 
 silently and gradually, by the diffusion of its destructive 
 principles, obtained the mastery, has, beyond all other 
 things, used and exercised its power in laying waste the 
 
 1 PFEIFFER, " Ueber die Zukunft der evangelischen Kirche in der 
 Schweiz." St. Gall, 1854, p. 21. 
 
 2 " Gemeindlein in der Gemeinde." Ibid., p. 23. 
 
 3 HENGSTEKBEHG'S u Kirch-Ztg.," 1856, pp. 598-599.
 
 REPORT OF THE BERNE SYNOD. 217 
 
 Church territory. It has made itself felt in the desolation 
 of Churches, in the alienation of schools, in the extinction of 
 the influence formerly possessed by the clergy. Unbelief 
 has penetrated so deeply amongst the population, that, ac- 
 cording to the report of the elders of a congregation in the 
 town of Berne, " of every ten householders there is scarcely 
 to be met one who now believes in God and Christ, or makes 
 any use of the Scriptures." 1 "It is only a Church with a 
 Catholic organization (unless by some extraordinary descent 
 of the Holy Ghost J that could," says the preacher Glider, 
 " maintain itself against the attacks which Radicalism and 
 a Radical Democracy have made upon it since they entered 
 the lists to encounter it upon a soil that was already rotten." 2 
 In the general report of the Berne Synod of the year 
 1854, it is said : "We cannot any longer conceal from our- 
 selves that some great thing is wanting to our public Divine 
 service to meet the indispensable requirements of the present 
 generation." To recognise "this great something which is 
 wanting," there is no need, as the Report considers, of " an- 
 other new Pentecost." It suffices to look steadily at the 
 picture which another Swiss preacher has drawn of Divine 
 service in that country. " Our worship," he says, " is that 
 of a mere teaching school our churches are lecture-halls, 
 with naked walls, and destitute of a sanctuary ; and these 
 churches are constantly closed, with the exception of a few 
 hours on the Sundays; and yet they are the only public 
 memorials still left us of our religion ! Preaching is, in fine, 
 
 O O / ' 
 
 the one thing, and everything in our Divine service. The 
 rest has been abbreviated as much as possible, and limited to 
 a few verses of a hymn and some formal prayers. It is from 
 the pulpit only that the clergyman can speak before or to 
 his congregation. There he remains during the whole of the 
 Divine service ; and the congregation are always sitting or 
 standing, but never kneeling : they have nothing to do but 
 to listen, and allow themselves to be talked to." 3 
 
 1 GELZER'S "Mon.-Bl.," iv. 149. 2 GELZER'S "Mon.-Bl.," iv. 124. 
 3 VOGELIN, u Welche Veranderungen und Verbesserungen sollten in 
 unserm Cultus vorgenommen werden ?" Frauenfeld, 1837, p. 34, et seq.
 
 218 CONFESSIONS OF THE CLERGY. 
 
 This picture is completed by another of the same class 
 and country. " The clergy," he says, " are mostly mere 
 orators in the pulpit, and not shepherds in the midst of their 
 congregation. The weekly Divine service is dying out. In 
 many districts not one-eighth, and sometimes not a tenth of 
 the population any longer go to Church." 1 It must be ad- 
 mitted that for some time back it has been with the Church 
 and religion "all down hill," (" bergab"). And yet, so early 
 as the year 1837, a distinguished theologian and public 
 teacher pronounced upon the clergy of his country this judg- 
 ment : " The clergy appear to present in themselves the 
 image of our Protestant Church, the image of a predominant, 
 one-sided, selfish capacity, which only rejoices in itself, will 
 alone know itself, and solely seeks for what is its own self- 
 interest," &c.' 2 
 
 When the Swiss clergy in their meetings have expressed 
 their opinions respecting the state of their Church, they 
 have done so in a tone not alone disconsolate, but also 
 accusatory against the Church itself. Thus Glider confesses, 
 at the Paris Assembly of the Evangelical Alliance in the 
 year 1856: " Our religious position is very humiliating, and 
 very well suited to urge us to repentance. 3 The pastor 
 Meyer declares in his Report made at the meeting of " the 
 Preachers' Society," at St. Gall, in 1859: "The tendency of 
 the time is no longer towards the Church, but to pass by 
 the Church; and the fault of this lies on the Church, and 
 upon its own contradictory conduct. To-day, for example, 
 it contends against the Baptists, and to-morrovv it will offer 
 them its hand in the ' Alliance.' The Protestant Church 
 is so great, and the Protestant spirit is so small." 4 
 
 In the year 1849, Professor Ebrard, who had been engaged 
 several years in Switzerland, wrote concerning this country: 
 " The state of the Church in Switzerland is a melancholy 
 one; it is a Cassaro-Popedom of the sovereign people, who 
 
 1 GELZEK'S " Monats-Blatter," iv. 1GO. 
 
 2 ZYKO, "Die Kirche im Canton Bern.," p. 102. 
 
 3 " Conference de Chretiens Evang." Paris, 1856, p. 300. 
 
 4 HEXGSTEJJBERG'S " Kirchen-Zeitung," 1859, p. 917.
 
 PROTESTANTISM IN AMERICA. 219 
 
 will have their religion made just what pleases them. In 
 the Vaudois there are oppression and persecution of the Free 
 Church a total corruption of the State-Preaching Esta- 
 blishment. In the other cantons, as a young Christian friend 
 lately wrote to me, "there are merely two trifling things 
 wanting to the Free Church flocks and shepherds ; of dogs 
 and wolves there is a superfluity." 1 
 
 The position of the clergy of Protestant Switzerland, 
 French as well as German, is, in such a state of affairs, not 
 enviable. To religious indifference and the materialistic 
 tendency of mind in the people, is added the plague of sects. 
 New Baptists, New Believers, or Bohmists, Antonians, for 
 whom there is no law and no sin any more, Mormonites, 
 Irvingites, Darby ites have found entrance; and yet the 
 character of the people, and the prevailing tendency, is not 
 favourable to sects. It is so much the worse for the clergy, 
 that in some cantons the clergy hold their appointment only 
 during pleasure; or they must, after a few years, subject 
 themselves to a new election; so that, like the Dissenting 
 preachers, they are wholly dependent on the favour of the 
 more influential members of the congregation. There are also 
 complaints of a continual deterioration in their worldly 
 position, which is so bad, that lately in the daily papers the 
 question was discussed whether it was proper that clergy- 
 men's daughters should be publicly advertised for as house- 
 maids. 2 
 
 PROTESTANT DENOMINATIONS IN THE UNITED 
 STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
 No State or National Church, and nevertheless a general 
 profession of Christianity. Such is the first fact that strikes 
 us with reference to religion in the Eastern States of North 
 America. No one would in that country venture openly 
 to proclaim himself an infidel. It belongs, among the higher 
 and middle classes, to the tone of good society, and to the de- 
 
 1 SCHAFF'S " Deutscher Kirchenfreund." Mercersburg, 1849, p. 272. 
 s ' Protestantische Kirchen-Zeitung," 1856, p. 138.
 
 220 ADHERENTS OF THE "BIG CHURCH." 
 
 corous conduct of life, to be a Christian. There does not, 
 therefore or there did not till very lately exist such a thing 
 as a literature of Atheism, Pantheism, or Materialism. A 
 religious atmosphere is diffused over the whole country, from 
 which no one can venture to withdraw himself; and this ma- 
 nifests itself especially in the strict observance of the Sun- 
 day, in the extraordinary number of churches' and meeting- 
 houses, and in a diligent attendance at them ; in the ener- 
 getic, emulous activity of the various religious parties, in 
 their efforts for missions, and in the number of religious 
 periodicals. Irreligion, or contempt of religion, is there only 
 displayed by the Germans, and contributes much to the con- 
 temptuous manner in which the Anglo-American looks down 
 upon Germans. 
 
 In the West, indeed, over which the great stream of emi- 
 gration from Europe and the Eastern States is pouring itself 
 in a full flood, the case is quite different. There are, in the 
 West, regions where nine-tenths of the population belong to 
 no Church at all, who are not even christened, and do not 
 get their children baptized or instructed in the Christian re- 
 ligion. 2 Many there will answer to the question, as to what 
 Church they belong to, by saying, "I belong to the big 
 Church," that is to say, " I, as a free American, believe as 
 much or as little as I like ; and I can get on very well my- 
 self with my Bible, and do not need the crutches of any re- 
 ligious society, nor the sectarian coloured glasses through, 
 which they compel their readers to read it." For, as a rule, 
 every American holds the Bible in respect, and in the West, 
 also, the Germans are the only prophets of unbelief. The 
 name of the "big Church" is indeed Legion, for, in a popu- 
 lation of twenty-nine millions, the number of recognisable 
 Christians, who, by taking part in the Communion, show 
 themselves to be really members of a Church, can be esti- 
 mated at the utmost at not more than five millions. 3 
 
 1 Which, indeed, according to LOHEK, all look like private chapels. 
 
 * RAUSCHENBUSCH, u Die Nacht des Westens." Barmen, 1847, p. 45. 
 
 * SCHAFF'S " Bericht in den Verhandlungen der Versammlung- 
 Evang." Christen, in Berlin, 1857, p. 234.
 
 CONSEQUENCES OF THE VOLUNTARY PRINCIPLE. 221 
 
 Each of the larger sects is divided, namely, into two classes 
 into the majority, who outwardly profess to belong to it 
 or, as it is said there " stand under its influence," and who 
 attend divine service regularly, or tolerably so and into the 
 minority, who are really full members. If we subtract from 
 these the Catholics, of 2,400,000 souls, there remain about 
 2,600,000 Protestants, of about seventy sects and denomina- 
 tions, who make full use of the means of religion offered by 
 their respective sects. 1 
 
 According to this there are about twenty-four millions, a 
 part of whom are entirely without religion, and a part who 
 attend the meetings of a sect regularly or occasionally. Of 
 these, many are not christened, and all naturally refrain from 
 Communion, which they may do much the more easily 
 that the views of Zwinglius respecting it prevail over the 
 whole of Protestant America. It has been calculated, indeed, 
 that there is one preacher for every thousand persons, but 
 the proportion is quite differently arranged ; most of the 
 preachers have very small congregations; 1239 congrega- 
 tions of Old Presbyterians have not above fifty members 
 each 1907 between 50 and 100, and only 736 above 100. 
 Of the Congregationalists, 696 have fifty, 1219 up to 100, 
 and 750 above 100, and that in the great towns. 2 
 
 The consequence of this is, great poverty of the preachers 
 and their families; and the complaint that the clergy are 
 worse paid in America than in any other country, cannot 
 excite any surprise. How great is the number of those who 
 keep aloof from every religious exercise may be gathered 
 from the fact, that in all the churches of New York only 
 205,580 persons find room, and 638,131 are excluded. 3 The 
 most moderate estimate is, that above the half of all the 
 poorer people in America belong to no religious community. 4 
 
 1 The author has corrected this statement He mentions, in a note to his 
 Introduction, that, misled by an estimate in SCHAFF'S book upon " North 
 America," he had calculated the church-going members of the different 
 Protestant sects much below what they must be ; and is, upon reflection, 
 disposed to double the number which he had, at first, supposed them 
 to be. 2 KRAUSE'S u Kirchen-Zeitung," 1856, p. 430. 
 
 3 MESSNER'S " Kirchen-Zeitung," 1861, p. 238. 
 
 4 MARSHALL'S " Notes on the Episcopal Polity," London, 1844, p. 501.
 
 22 WANT OF A PEOPLE'S CHURCH. 
 
 These are the consequences of "the voluntary principle;" thus 
 does the want of a National Church avenge itself. This is and 
 must be the result of the rule of the sectarian system ; for if 
 millions receive the impression that they may choose their 
 Church and their religion freely, out of a variegated crowd 
 of denominations, some will allow their choice to be deter- 
 mined by some one accidental circumstance. The majority, 
 however, will put an end to the painful condition of uncertain 
 hesitation by indifferent neutrality, and tranquillize their 
 conscience with the reflection that among so many assumed 
 brides there is really no lawful spouse ; that they are, in fact, 
 all only concubines, who can make no real claim to the fidel- 
 ity and devotion of a free man. 1 
 
 The state of Christianity in America is an awful and serious 
 warning, and will in future become still more so. The 
 want of a people's Church which receives everyone in his 
 infancy, incorporates him with itself by baptism, and draws 
 him into one common life-giving atmosphere, is a want that 
 cannot be supplied by anything el^e. The condition which 
 Europe would not like to realise for herself she has transplanted 
 to America; for America has become the rendezvous of all 
 the sects and divisions of Protestant Europe. 
 
 One of the worst consequences of this want is seen in the 
 American school system, from which every kind of religious 
 instruction is excluded. The Bible may be used as a reading 
 
 1 Thus H. SEYMOUR TREMENHEERE, in his " Notes on Public Subjects 
 made during a Tour in the United States" (London, 1852, p. 51), relates, 
 on the authority of the Protestant clergyman, Edson, at Lowell : ' The 
 young people who stream into Lowell, as workers from the neighbouring 
 States, are usually without the slightest knowledge of Christian doc- 
 trine, and utterly indifferent as to what sect they shall belong to, since they 
 think all religions really pretty much alike. In other respects they are gene- 
 rally well instructed, though very lax in their ideas of morals and duty. 
 Among the children who had received some religious instruction, Edson 
 found that there was seldom any point inculcated as resting on authority ; 
 but that all doctrines were treated rather as the results of individual 
 views, and to a great extent left to the child to decide. It is evident that 
 the Americans have a faculty for logic." Edson adds, however, that this 
 want of all authority in the education of children is now universally 
 acknowledged to be a great evil.
 
 GODLESS SYSTEM OF EDUCATION. 223, 
 
 book, but no word of explanation added to it by the teacher 
 and no prayer be uttered. 1 If Sectarianism had brought 
 on America no other curse than such a school system, which 
 accustoms the youth of thecountryto regard lifeand knowledge 
 on the one side, and religion on the other, as two completely 
 separate and independent territories such teaching must suf- 
 fice to render it one of the greatest calamities of the New World. 
 The bitter discovery is now being made in America, that an 
 education destitute of a Christian spirit is not merely defec- 
 tive ; it is positively injurious, and trains up men to make 
 them cold, calculating scoundrels. 2 The Sunday schools that 
 have been introduced are no sufficient substitutes for the ab- 
 sence of Christian parish schools. May Europe be terrified 
 by the melancholy fruits that this system has borne in Ame- 
 rica, and which it will at a future time bring forth yet more 
 abundantly, by following in the same path. 
 
 The separation of Church and State was really effected by 
 the unbelieving Jefferson and his followers, who coincided 
 with his views ; and it was effected by a man who flattered 
 himself that in the course of another generation all America 
 would be Unitarian. By this separation it is forbidden to 
 the Government and its officers to interfere in any way in 
 the affairs of religious communities. 
 
 They have gone further, however. The constitution pro- 
 
 1 Religious-minded Americans express the greatest dissatisfaction and 
 indignation at this godless system of education. The '-Mercersburg 
 Review" calls it " Our ten-times helpless, wretched, and ruinous Common 
 School system" (v., p. 41). A work by COLWEIX on the subject, u The 
 Position of Christianity in the United States" (Philadelphia, 1854, p. 
 98) says. " The exclusion of Christianity from the public education of 
 this country is a suicidal arrangement the worst enemy of humanity 
 could think of nothing more destructive to the Republican institutions 
 of the country," &c., &c. The same arrangement, as it is well known, 
 exists in Holland, and is there also most bitterly complained of; for 
 example, by the Baron v. Lynden, at the meeting of the Evangelical 
 Alliance at Berlin, 1857. As long, however, as in both countries the 
 same cause, namely, excessive Church dissensions exists, complaints and 
 mutual recriminations will remain fruitless. 
 
 * See the energetic words of an American theological periodical, the 
 Presbyterian " Bibliotheca Sacra,'' 1851, p. 763.
 
 224 SEPARATION OF CHUKCH AND STATE. 
 
 vides, that no profession of religious faith shall be made by 
 any candidate for a public office ;* that the Congress shall 
 make no law respecting the protection of any religion, 2 or to 
 prohibit the free exercise of any. The whole document 
 ignores the existence of Christianity. Story, the American 
 Blackstone, states it as his opinion, in his Commentary, that 
 it is doubtless the duty of every government to cherish and 
 encourage Christianity by all means ; but that by those re- 
 gulations it was intended to prevent all rivalry between 
 Christian sects, and the rise of a national Church which 
 should turn the patronage of the Government to the ex- 
 clusive benefit of its hierarchy. 3 On the other hand, in in- 
 dividual States for instance in Pennsylvania the Bible 
 and the Sabbath are placed formally under the protection of 
 the law, and people may be brought before a magistrate for 
 using blasphemous expressions. In Massachusetts it has 
 even been decided by a court of justice that, according to the 
 laws, the murder of an unbeliever (an infidel) was no crime. 4 
 
 All are of the religious parties and communities of England 
 that, since the seventeenth century, have taken root here 
 partly to escape oppression at home, and partly in the natural 
 progress of colonisation. As the Anglo-Saxon race is the 
 prevailing one, so is also the Anglo-Saxon religious system, 
 the product of the long mutual struggle and contest be- 
 tween Calvinism and Episcopalianism between the Associa- 
 tion Church and the State Church; and it is the preponderating 
 element which has extended its influence over the other im- 
 migrant nationalities, and the forms of faith and church dis- 
 cipline they brought with them. One only the Catholic 
 Church has kept itself aloof from all such influence, in so 
 far as it might have suffered any change from it. 
 
 All Churches, or religious communities, have, therefore, 
 complete equal rights. Every person can join any sect he 
 pleases, or belong to none, or found a new sect for himself. 
 
 1 " Mercersburg Review," iii. 329. 
 
 2 u Respecting an establishment of Religion " 
 
 3 " Mercersburg Review," iii. 331. 
 
 4 " Atlantiische Studien," iii. 65.
 
 COMPETITION OF SECTS. 225 - 
 
 As in politics, in trade, and in all other occupations, so also 
 in the domain of religion, the freest competition prevails, and 
 produces energetic action and elasticity of Church organism, 
 combined, however, with an indecorous grasping at, and 
 hunting after, proselytes, which forcibly contrasts with the 
 passive tranquillity and stagnation of State Church bodies. 
 For their practical skill in spreading these nets, and drawing 
 on the masses, the Methodists appear to excel all others ; but 
 so much the more nre the others obliged to concentrate their 
 forces, keep their followers together, and endeavour to procure 
 new proselytes. The mere prospect of being supported in 
 case of falling into distress, brings in troops of converts. 
 The art of getting money for religious purposes is here care- 
 fully cultivated ; and for their talent in making money out of 
 everything, and therefore also out of religion, the Americans 
 certainly surpass all other nations. By exercising a kind of 
 moral pressure that gives no offence, and leaves the appear- 
 ance of voluntary action, they know how to incite crowds of 
 people to bestow religious contributions these, too, being 
 persons who, if left to themselves, would give nothing. Their 
 success in this way is truly extraordinary. 
 
 Upon everything that is Christianly is laid a blessing, 
 which, in its integrity and entirety, never is utterly lost, and 
 never can be perverted into a curse. No matter how defec- 
 tive may be its form, nor with what manifold errors disfigured, 
 nor how much by human passion and perversity deformed 
 and degraded, still that which is Christian will accomplish an 
 incalculable amount of good. Tocqueville has eloquently re- 
 marked how much America owes to the serious sense of 
 religion, and the Church discipline, which the Puritans 
 brought with them from England and naturalized in their 
 new home. This was the merit of the three great Puritan 
 parties Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Baptists 
 which, towards the end of the last century, had the spiritual 
 control of North America. Since then the Methodists are to 
 be added to the others ; and as they have addressed themselves 
 to the lowest and most forlorn of the community, have attained 
 considerable success. These four chief forms of American 
 
 Q
 
 226 AMERICAN IDEA OF SECTARIANISM. 
 
 Protestantism and beside them the Episcopal Church, which 
 has, in the most recent time, greatly increased in strength 
 are, accordingly, the main supports of the religious feeling 
 which still exists among native Americans. Those chief 
 parties themselves are, indeed, split up into a greater number 
 of sects, though certain common features and tendencies have 
 remained among them. The swarm of other sects, however 
 (a short time ago a list, amounting to above seventy names, 
 was made out of those in New York alone 1 ), possesses small 
 positive influence at least among the higher and middle 
 classes whilst it must be considered as weighing heavily in 
 the scale, when its effect is to weaken faith in one firm 
 Christian truth, and to aid in the generation and nourishment 
 of sceptical indifferentism. 
 
 The prevalent opinion in America is not unfavourable to 
 sectarianism on the contrary, it is regarded rather as an 
 advantage. The idea of a Church, of belonging to a 
 Church, or the duty of belonging to a Church, does not 
 exist for the American. He knows that he is one of a sect, 
 a member of a denomination, which does not exist any- 
 where else in the whole world unless perhaps in England 
 or Scotland. As a rule, he entertains the firm conviction 
 that the Anglo-Saxon race is the chosen one of modern 
 times the conservator of true religion, appointed by God. 
 Of the past history of Christianity, if he ever thinks of it all, 
 he has the idea that there have always existed & great num- 
 ber of sects, a variegated assortment of ecclesiastical bodies ; 
 and that, therefore, a Church established by Christ either 
 never existed, or has long since been dispersed into various 
 sects. He thinks, therefore, naturally, that, in the absence 
 of the whole still unbroken vessel, we must content ourselves 
 with fragments ; and that one of these pieces is not much 
 better or much worse than another, but that every particle 
 has still something of the original vase left in it ; or 
 Christianity is supposed to be like a forest, in which many 
 different kinds of trees stand near to one another, and receive 
 alike light and life. 
 
 1 " Darmstadter K.-Zeitung," 1857, p. 1150.
 
 CONDEMNATION OF THE SYSTEM. 227 
 
 According to the prevailing view, therefore, the govern- 
 ment ought not to favour one religious Confession and dis- 
 courage another ; it must maintain an equally neutral and 
 indifferent attitude with reference to all religious com- 
 munities, as long as they do and teach nothing contrary to 
 the laws of the country. 
 
 In the eyes of politicians, advocates, and literary men, the 
 chief advantage of the present state of affairs consists in this, 
 that " the sects, by their mutual jealousy, keep one another 
 in check," as the " New York Observer" remarks. It ap- 
 pears to them a great gain that there is in America no 
 National Church, and no religious authority. True religious 
 freedom to which belongs, before all things, the freedom to 
 do altogether without religion is, they think, best secured 
 by the existence of many different sects. 
 
 In the meantime, there are still Bible readers in the country, 
 and they happen sometimes to hit upon those passages in 
 which Christ speaks so clearly and energetically of the one 
 visible Church, and of the unity of his disciples ; and the conse- 
 quence is 1 that the formal justification of the sectarian system, 
 such as used to be promulgated in former years, is now 
 seldom heard. On the contrary, the most distinguished 
 theologians and Christians agree in their condemnation of 
 the sectarian system, and in the opinion that it is a disease 
 which all ought to be anxious to cure. The sectarian 
 system, says one of the best of American periodicals, is, in 
 its very innermost nature, a horror. The whole world knows 
 that the relation of our sects to each other is much more one 
 of rivalry, opposition, and jealosuy than of brotherly love 
 and harmonious co-operation. It was said of the primitive 
 Christians, " See how they love one another ;" but of the 
 modern American sects it might be said, " See how they hate 
 one another." 2 And the worst is, that even those who con- 
 demn this disunion, are compelled by circumstances, and by 
 
 1 SCHAFF'S " Deutscher Kirchenfreund fur die Amerikanisch-deutsclien 
 Kirchen." Mercersburg, 1848, p. 141-47. 
 
 2 " Mercersburg Review," v. 584. 
 
 Q2
 
 228 DENOMINATIONAL DIVISIONS. 
 
 the law of self-preservation, to identify themselves more or 
 less with the denominational and sectarian spirit. 
 
 " All depends upon sect there," says a German observer, 
 "and a preacher can only make way as a sectarian. The 
 enlargement of one's own sect is the grand business to which 
 every other must give way. 1 A man will pay 500 dollars a 
 year for the maintenance of his sect, which consists of five 
 members and a preacher." 2 A travelling preacher, who has 
 been converted in the Methodist fashion, will preach to the 
 congregations in his circuit, against ether preachers, who have 
 not been converted in the same fashion. 3 Even the peace- 
 loving Quakers, who continue united in England, are in Ame- 
 rica split up into parties. It seems as if in this country, of 
 the freest political movement, men found it indispensable to 
 have their religious feelings compressed into the tightest 
 possible sectarian stays and as if they inhaled the spirit of re- 
 ligious dispute in the very air. Scarcely has a German congre- 
 gation been formed among a body of newProtestant emigrants, 
 than they begin to wrangle and quarrel among themselves. 4 
 
 The conviction has forced itself even on Protestant clergy- 
 men of America, that " the land of freedom " is, in fact, the 
 most intolerant country of the world that it is the spirit of 
 intolerance that has multiplied divisions like a plague of 
 locusts. 5 The religious history of our country, says Colton, 
 " is characterised by a constant boasting of religious free- 
 dom, and an untiring effort to crush it." 
 
 A solid scientific theology is impossible for America in its 
 present state. Every theologian, or every one who might 
 have a vocation for the cultivation of theology, belongs to 
 some special sect, and finds himself more or less subject to 
 the tyranny, or at least to the influence, of his denomination. 
 His sect is a kind of make-shift hovel, hammered together, by 
 narrow-minded men, out of fragments of doctrine, and it will 
 afford him neither space, nor light, nor air for a theological 
 
 1 BUTTNER " Die Vereinigten Staaten,'' i. 247-346. 
 * BUTTNER, i. 283. * BUTTXER, i. 341. 4 BUTTJTER, i. 357. 
 
 4 COLTON'S " Thoughts on the Religious State of the Country," pp. 
 204-5.
 
 ASSERTIONS OF BIBLICAL PURISM. 229 
 
 flight. Nevin, the only living American theologian of any 
 importance, confesses that American theology, with all its 
 pretentious and pious-sounding phrases, is, for the most part, 
 mere school-boy pedantry compared with the German. 1 
 The only man, besides Nevin, who had in him the material 
 and the vocation to make an eminent theologian, was 
 
 O / 
 
 William Ellery Channing, a preacher of Boston. But his 
 profound aversion to the Calvinistic system, that " libel on 
 his Heavenly Father," as he called it, and the destructive 
 effects of which he saw everywhere around him, filled him 
 (who had had no opportunity of becoming acquainted with a 
 better theology) with a hatred to the theology of his own 
 time, and made him a Unitarian. 2 
 
 A work on the religious parties of America, which appeared 
 in 1844 (and was considerably amplified in 1848), gives an 
 outline of each of the sects, drawn up by one of themselves. 3 
 It appears from these, that almost all, however narrow may 
 be the enclosure within which they have hedged themselves, 
 however deplorably small their fraction of Christianity, still 
 each declares that the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but 
 the Bible, is the source and standard of its doctrine and 
 institutions. Every one boasts of having kept conscien- 
 tiously to the New Testament, and carefully endeavoured to 
 puff" away from its garment every particle of Church tradition. 
 This Biblical purism, then, whose first axiom is the absolute 
 clearness and transparency of the Scriptures, and that can 
 quote chapter and verse for every article of its sectarian 
 faith, has already produced in America more than fifty 
 different sects ! And since, almost every year, one or more 
 new "Churches" arise, their partisans always know how 
 to point precisely to this or that Bible text, which makes it 
 impossible for conscientious Christians to join any one of 
 the fifty or sixty already existing " Churches," and renders it 
 
 1 " Mercersburg Review," ii. 165. 
 
 2 See the expressions used in the 2nd vol. of " Memoirs of W. E. 
 Channing," and particularly pp. 134-135. London, 1850. 
 
 * D. RUPP, " Original History of the Religious Denominations." 
 Harrisburg, 1848, 2nd edition.
 
 230 THE BIGHT OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT. 
 
 imperatively necessary to found a new one. Creeds, sym- 
 bolic books, are either entirely rejected, since with the Bible 
 they are superfluous, and they do not well agree with it, as the 
 "Campbell Baptists" say; or they must, as the Congrega- 
 tionalists declare, be themselves measured by the Bible. 1 
 Several of the modern sects proclaim that they have been 
 founded for the express purpose of re-establishing the 
 original unity of the Church, an object which can only be 
 attained by raising the Bible to be the sole standard. Each 
 one of the sister sects had, indeed, proposed to keep closely 
 to the Bible, but had not, it is said, remained true to its 
 principles. The new one alone is the one that is to do so in 
 earnest. As often as a new party branches off from the old ? 
 the separation takes place according to their assurance ; 
 because the old sect, notwithstanding its exclusive devotion 
 to the Bible, has submitted to unbiblical " traditions," and so 
 has afforded an opportunity for inaccurate interpretations. 
 
 We find, therefore, in so far, an agreement among the Ame- 
 rican sects, that each one starts with the same proposition as 
 to the all-sufficiency of the words of the Bible, and the denial 
 of any ecclesiastical authority and continuity. Each one has 
 inscribed upon its banner the motto, " The open Bible, and 
 the sovereignty of private judgment." The Bible this is 
 the universal theory is perfectly clear to every human being 
 endowed with common understanding; special studies and 
 previous knowledge are not necessary ; a person reads, and 
 he may and must believe that the sense he finds is the 
 only true one, and that he has perceived it by help of the 
 Holy Ghost. This right of private judgment is declared to 
 be the Palladium of the Gospel, the only alternative if we 
 do not wish to submit to an infallible authority. 2 In reality, 
 however, no single one of these sects permits the individual 
 to make use of this right. Every sect has its own system, 
 and compels the Bible text to express its views ; every one of 
 them rejects from its bosom at least, according to theory 
 any member who should prefer his own judgment on a passage 
 
 1 RCPP, p. 224, 281. 
 
 2 See, for instance, " Cumberland Presbyterians." RUPP, p. 512.
 
 NEGLECT OF SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGT. 231 
 
 of the Bible, to the interpretation accepted by the community 
 to which he belongs. 
 
 Several of the American sects maintain that they have 
 separated themselves from the older denomination, to escape 
 the " scourge of a human Confession of Faith." In fact, 
 however, these sects are all prisons of the mind ; every one 
 has its own mostly very meagre and narrow-minded tradi- 
 tion and observances. 
 
 A sect is, by its nature, the instinctive enemy of every 
 scientific theology. It is conscious of being short-lived, of 
 having no connecting current with the great river-stream of 
 the Church, which has been pouring down through centuries 
 of time ; and the sect is, therefore, filled with aversion to the 
 entire ecclesiastical past. Thus, for instance, the Baptists 
 of six principles say, " A true member of their community 
 does not trouble himself as to whether its doctrines are found 
 to have existed in the various ages of the Church : it is 
 sufficient for him that Christ has announced them." 1 The 
 chief sect of Baptists even takes a pride in not troubling 
 itself about the ancient doctrines of the Church. With 
 respect to ecclesiastical tradition, the sects are accustomed 
 to keep to these principles : that a tradition is so much the 
 more worthless as it is older and more generally diffused and 
 worth so much the more as it is younger, and most peculiar to 
 their sect. The brief past of their own sectarian life, with its 
 inventions and arrangements of yesterday, becomes thencefor- 
 ward a chain that binds every one under penalty of expulsion. 
 
 Another feature common to the more modern sects is, 
 rejection of infant baptism. Some, like the Baptists of the 
 Seventh Day, have discovered that the New Testament con- 
 tains nothing about a transference of the Sabbath to the 
 Sunday, and, therefore, regard the observance of the 
 Saturday as a Sabbath as absolutely necessary. 2 They and 
 others see, also, in " the foot-washing," a sacrament appointed 
 by Christ. Further, the sacraments are, with almost all 
 American sects, not vehicles or operative means of grace, 
 and pledges of what God bestows on us; but they are 
 1 RUPP, p. 88. 2 RUPP, p. 121.
 
 232 UNANIMITY IN ONE ARTICLE OF FAITH. 
 
 lowered into symbols of what passes in man, or they are 
 mere signs, intended to remind men of a certain event, or to 
 awaken in them a certain feeling. Germanism (that is 
 German theology) and Popery are in general the two powers 
 especially dreaded, and alike hated, by the American sects. 1 
 
 About twelve sects profess to be established, not merely 
 on the basis of the Bible, but also on that of the Westminster 
 Confession so that this Confession, although the most com- 
 plete and theologically definite among the Calvinistic creeds 
 one, too, that far excels, for instance, the Augsburg Con- 
 fession, in point of clearness and plain speaking, has neverthe- 
 less not been able to prevent a number of subdivisions taking 
 place, even within the narrow circle of American Calvinism. 
 
 In one article there is still very general unanimity. " Jus- 
 tification by Faith alone" has been inscribed on the banner 
 of all the " Evangelical " sects. Thus, the Campbellites, for 
 instance, declare that the one great condition of admission 
 to their community is a "perfect trust in the merits of 
 Christ alone for justification." Their sect has been estab- 
 lished on the two fundamental doctrines of the Reformation 
 rejection of all tradition, and a reliance on faith alone. 2 
 With this solifidianism, by which the righteousness of Christ 
 is placed quite externally to the account of believers, another 
 proposition is connected, extremely important to sectarian life, 
 and on which rests the whole theory of " Revivals." The 
 man who is justified by mere faith, and the imputation of 
 the righteousness of Christ, is conscious of this fact with 
 infallible certainty. He has an " experience " of his conver- 
 sion, or of being taken into a state of grace, and can point 
 out the precise moment of his passage from death to life. 
 The Americans have, therefore, arranged their "conversions" 
 in a very business-like manner. Several preachers and laymen 
 enter into an association, and begin to operate upon an 
 assembly of persons, who desire to be converted. By long- 
 continued exciting preaching, by stormy addresses to indi- 
 viduals, by hymns with lively rattling airs, by threats, with 
 dreadful descriptions of the torments of hell, by entreaties, 
 
 1 " Mercersburg Review," i. 517. 2 RUPP, p. 225.
 
 MACHINERY OF REVIVALS. 233 
 
 supplications, and passionate apostrophes, men and women are 
 so agitated and wrought upon that they are eventually broken 
 down. The mental and bodily exhaustion to which men, and 
 especially women, are reduced by such means, produces a 
 passive state, in which they feel everything they are desired 
 to feel. Attacks of bodily illness, involuntary exclamations, 
 pass for pledges of grace, and certain signs of victory over 
 " the old man." The state of complete relaxation and 
 weakness which naturally follows these stormy emotions 
 and spasmodic convulsions is considered as " peace of mind 
 from assurance of salvation." When any one has been so far 
 worked upon a? to be induced to seat himself on the " peniten- 
 tial bench," the matter is decided ; he has yielded himself up 
 to grace, and immediately after that he must, according to the 
 prescribed rule, feel himself completely and wonderfully 
 refreshed and relieved ; and he is then entered as a convert, 
 and as a member of the society in the lists of the sect. The 
 " penitential bench " is the sacrament at the revivals the 
 infallible means of new birth. As the whole machinery is 
 really a strictly logical application of the old Protestant 
 doctrine of justification, all the "evangelical" communities 
 even the German Lutherans and Calvinists have intro- 
 duced " Revivals ;" and they are regarded in America as the 
 most important and beneficial religious discovery of modern 
 times. Besides the town revivals, there are also the Camp- 
 meetings, specially set on foot, by the Methodists, as the great 
 lever of American religion. Even the sects of a Socinian 
 character, which deny the Trinity and the Godhead of Jesus 
 Christ such as the Campbellites make use of this plan of 
 revivals with the greatest success, 1 and have, by means of 
 
 1 FLAVEL S. MINES, " A Presbyterian Clergyman looking for the 
 Church." New York, 1855, p. 81. The Rev. J. Marsden, Methodist 
 missionary, who had attended several of the American camp meetings, 
 and who expresses his strong approval of them, gives the following 
 evidence as to the results produced by " a powerful spirit of prayer and 
 exhortation" : u I have not unfrequently seen three or four persons 
 lying on the ground, crying for mercy, or motionless, without any 
 apparent signs of life, except pulsation." MARSDEN'S " Narrative of a 
 Mission to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick," quoted in EVANS'S " Sketch of 
 the Denominations of the Christian World." London, 1827, pp. 211, 212.
 
 234 BAPTISTS. 
 
 them, considerably increased their numbers during the last 
 thirty years though it is true that the congregations 
 speedily got together by revivals are apt to melt away again 
 just as rapidly as they were collected ; and troops of those 
 who have been so regenerated, are liable, in a very short 
 time, to forget all about their regeneration. 
 
 Two circumstances have contributed powerfully to the 
 importance of " Revivals " in America : first, the character of 
 the Americans themselves, which, under the influence of the 
 climate of the country, and the monotony of lives entirely 
 devoted to business and money-getting, requires, from time to 
 time, some excitement, and seeks it if not in gaming or 
 drink in religion ;* secondly, the meagre, cold, Puritanical 
 service, which, abolishing all that is liturgical or symbolical, 
 consists merely in preaching, and long prayers, spoken by 
 the minister, and affords so much the more ready entrance and 
 favourable reception for a theatrical method of conversion, 
 producing literally the most striking effects, and overpowering 
 the strongest nerves. 
 
 If we observe the present state of the chief religious 
 parties of America, we shall find that, next to the Methodists, 
 the Baptists, the youngest of the great communities, 2 now 
 subdivided into seven sects, are the most numerous of all the 
 Protestant denominations of America. Only the Methodists 
 can dispute with them this precedence. From the year 1792 
 to 1852, their churches had risen from 1000 to 9584; and in 
 1856, they numbered 1,322,469 communicating members. 
 They have no representation, no organization, and no con- 
 fessions. According to their theory, all church government 
 and church offices are an evil. Every congregation is a 
 complete independent body. The particular Baptist sects 
 are separated from each other by very strong differences of 
 doctrine. The American Baptist, or Socinian Campbellite, 
 has, with the exception of his practice in baptism, little in 
 common with a Calvinist Baptist. 
 
 1 OTTO, " Nordwestliche Bilder." Schwerin, 1854, p. 22. 
 
 The first Baptist congregation was formed in Xew York in 1762. 
 See GORRIE'S " Churches and Sects of the United States." New York, 
 I860, p. 134.
 
 PRESBYTERIANS. 235 
 
 The fact that the Baptists form so numerous Indeed the 
 most numerous of all religious parties of North America, 
 deserves much attention. They would be still more numerous, 
 if it were not that the rites of Baptism and the Lord's Sup- 
 per, in their sacramental signification, are regarded by the 
 whole Calvinistically-disposed world as such subordinate 
 matters, that the question as to their original form appears to 
 many a matter of such indifference that no one needs trouble 
 himself much about it. The Baptists are, in fact, from the 
 Protestant point of view, unassailable, since they have the 
 Bible text in favour of the practice of baptism by " immer- 
 sion ;" whilst the authority of the Church and her testimony 
 will be recognised neither by the one party nor the other. 1 
 
 More important, in a spiritual point of view, is the influence 
 of the Presbyterians, who, with the Congregationalists, are 
 the descendants and heirs of the old Puritans, " the Pilgrim 
 Fathers," the founders of New England. They are the 
 originators and curators of American theology, as far as it 
 can be said to exist. They carried the most genuine Calvin- 
 ism with them from their English home, and for a long time 
 clung firmly to a system that had cost them so many sacri- 
 fices. Their preachers were inexhaustible in their way of 
 working out their theory of Predestination, and in descriptions 
 of the damnation to which God had pre-ordained the majority 
 of little children. Fatalism and Antinomianism bore their 
 fruits in the moral and intellectual decline of their congrega- 
 tions. Edwards endeavoured to prop up Calvinism by means 
 of Locke's philosophy ; but Dwight, Lyman, Beecher, and 
 Barnes have, in modern times, broken down the sway of the 
 Calvinistic doctrine and the Westminster Confession. Here- 
 
 1 Not even a Baptist translation of the Bible can therefore be used by the 
 other parties. An English missionary of the Congregationalists writes 
 from Calcutta: " The Baptists take the first place in translations into 
 the Bengalee. We here mostly make use of the translation of Yates 
 (Baptist), but since the Baptist Society, whose property the translation 
 is, insist on translating fiairT&uv, only by l to immerse,' 'to dip under,' 
 all friends of Infant Baptism, as well as the Calcutta Bible Society, feel 
 the want of a new translation." REUTER'S " Repertoriuin," vol. liii., 
 p. 70. This is saying, in fact, " We must translate the Bible falsely, in 
 order that the heathens, to be converted, may not discover our weak points."
 
 236 COXGREGATIONALISTS. 
 
 upon there followed, in 1838, a complete division. Barnes, and 
 500 preachers, with about 60,000 laymen, were ejected by the 
 General Assembly on account of heterodoxy ; and they formed 
 immediately the Presbyterian Church of the " New School." 1 
 
 The genuine Puritans or Congregation alists, who are found 
 principally in New England, have undergone much alteration 
 in America. The old organic connexion, by which the indi- 
 vidual congregations were subordinate to a superior assembly 
 a Convocation or Association has been dissolved. Their 
 Church has, in consequence of Unitarian and Universalist 
 movements, become more democratic. There is no common 
 symbol any more, but each congregation has its own. The 
 clergyman is merely the dependent servant of the congrega- 
 tion, called and elected by them. 2 The Presbyterians have 
 followed an opposite course of development. With them the 
 subordination of the congregation to the elders, Presbyteries, 
 and Synods has been confirmed and increased and the 
 result is that the two religious communities, which had been 
 previously approaching at many points, are now mutually 
 repugnant to one another. 
 
 The whole bearing of the Puritanical sects, with their 
 "Revivals," has had the effect of leading to numerous secessions 
 among the clergy, and especially among those of the Pres- 
 byterian parties, who are more theologically instructed than 
 the Baptists and Methodists, the latter being generally very 
 ignorant persons. Within a few years up to 1855 300 
 Presbyterian clergymen have gone over to the Episcopalian 
 Church, which rejects Revivals, resists Calvinism, and allows 
 to individuals the liberty at least to inculcate notions respect- 
 ing justification and grace in an anti-Calvinistic sense. 3 
 
 One of these clergymen, Colton, formerly the panegyrist 
 of Revivals, 4 in which he saw "a new Dispensation, des- 
 tined to be diffused over the whole world," has gradually, in 
 
 1 See " History of the Division of the Presbyterian Churches, by a Com- 
 mittee of the Synod," &c. New York, 1855. 
 
 a KRAUSK'S " Kirch. -Zeitung," 1856, p. 129. 
 
 * MINKS, " Looking for the Church," p. 11. 
 
 4 In his Essay, "History and Character of American Revivals." 
 London, 1832.
 
 PROTESTANTISM IN THE CONFESSIONAL. 237 
 
 consequence of the experience he has had of them, been 
 brought to the decided rejection of the whole institution. 
 " The mind," he says, " is enslaved by them, a false con- 
 science is created and encouraged, and the whole intellectual 
 and moral character of the people destroyed." ' 
 
 There is still more clear and emphatic evidence concerning 
 the root of all this evil. What Protestant theologians of 
 former times, Lutherans as well as the Reformed, report con- 
 cerning the destructive consequences of the Justification 
 doctrine, as it was moulded by the Reformation, is now 
 confirmed in America, where the doctrine is still in high 
 repute, and proclaimed from innumerable pulpits. The 
 writings of American theologians contain remarkable con- 
 fessions concerning it. The preacher Flavel S. Mines says 
 that " After a long and careful examination of the matter, 
 it is his conviction that the doctrine of Justification by 
 Faith, as it is preached, separate from sanctity of life, and 
 consisting merely in a feeling, a reflective act of the soul 
 (the certainty of being in a state of grace), is the most 
 soul-destroying heresy of the age. 2 Nevin, the most 
 thorough and profound of all living American theologians, 
 maintains also that the doctrine leads, in America, to fearful 
 delusions, and does indescribable mischief. 3 
 
 The general depreciation of the Sacraments, and the Cal- 
 vinistic dogma of " Election," have had the effect of inducing 
 the Presbyterians and Congregationalisms very frequently to 
 leave their children unbaptized. The parents consider it 
 unnecessary to get them baptized and the preachers on 
 their side will frequently, on account of the religious position 
 of the parents, not admit the children to baptism ; and since, 
 also, the Baptists of all denominations reject Infant Baptism, 
 
 1 COLTON'S " Thoughts on the Religions State of the Country." New 
 York, 1836, p. 178. 
 
 * " Looking for the Church," p. 492. 
 
 3 " Mercersburg Review," iv. 615. Some years later (1858, " Mercers- 
 burg Review," x. 395) the same theologian remarks: u That in its cus- 
 tomary Puritanical acceptation, this doctrine of Justification by Faith has 
 been turned into a fiction which contradicts the Apostolic teaching, and 
 gives to the Christian religion a form altogether different."
 
 238 SECTARIAN LAXITY OF OPINION. 
 
 many thousands grow up, and many thousands of Presby- 
 terians and Baptists die unbaptized. 1 
 
 In the history of Sects which are not sunk into an inert 
 state of vegetation, it is common to find them proceeding by 
 fits and starts from one extreme to the other : and it happens 
 inevitably that the emanations of mere caprice, groping in the 
 dark or of individual narrow-mindedness have to serve as 
 substitutes for the necessary results of organic institutions. 
 Thus it has happened that the two main branches of the 
 American Puritans the Presbyterians and Congrega- 
 tionalists being dissatisfied with their Westminster Confes- 
 sion, have introduced into their various congregations or 
 Synods a number of whimsical or extravagant Confessions of 
 Faith so that, according to the statement of the preacher, 
 Colton, some hundreds of these formulas may be found 
 among the Presbyterians, and you can hardly go from one 
 town to another without coming upon a new creed, notwith- 
 standing the similarity of the sect. 2 Colton, who filled the 
 most influential offices in the Presbyterian Church, relates 
 that he himself has organized above fifteen Churches, and 
 introduced into each of them a Confession of Faith drawn up 
 by himself, but which had to be modified every time, accord- 
 ing to the degree of his knowledge and the momentary 
 character of his views. 
 
 Thus in the Puritan communities there prevails the most 
 extreme laxity of opinion, combined with isolated, and 
 mostly fruitless, attempts to establish an obligatory or- 
 thodoxy. To the old disputes and differences of the 
 Puritans, new ones have now been added. These are 
 Hopkinsonians, and followers of the " JS'ew Light," " Mode- 
 
 1 " Mercersburg Review," vol. viii. 34-3o ; vol. x., p. 41. The same 
 periodical maintains (vol. vii., 202) that at present baptism is denied to 
 the children of one half of the professed Christians of America, and 
 thought slightingly of by the great majority. FLAVEL S. MIXES (p. 
 CO) calculates, in the Presbyterian publication, the "Princeton Review," 
 that in the last twenty years two thirds of the children of this denomina- 
 tion, namely 413,298, remained unbaptized. 
 
 2 " Thoughts on the Religious State of the Country." New York, 
 1836, p. 63.
 
 UNITARIANS AND UNIVEKSALISTS. 239 
 
 rate " and " Strict" Calvinists, " Destructionists and Ke- 
 storationists," dealers of original sin, like Taylor and 
 Park; " Pre-existents," like Edward Beecher, who place 
 the Fall of Man in a former state of existence. The " re- 
 jection of original sin" has even become a prevailing 
 theory in New England, that is, in the six North-Eastern 
 States, which are the oldest of the Union, and the original 
 home of American Puritanism. 1 
 
 In consequence of a process of doctrinal decomposition, 
 there arose in America, towards the end of the last century, 
 as there had previously arisen in England, without any 
 foreign influence, congregations of Unitarians. It was the 
 rude and mechanical Calvinistic conception of the Atone- 
 ment theory, the rending asunder of the Trinity, implied by 
 that conception, and the opposing of the Divine Persons, 
 Who, according to that same conception, militated against 
 one another, like parties in a law-suit ; it was this distortion 
 and disfigurement of the Central Doctrine of Christianity 
 that, by a natural reaction, made Unitarians of the Puritan 
 theologians and preachers. In the State of Massachusetts, 
 and in Boston especially, those pulpits from which had 
 preached the oracles of American Calvinism, are now occu- 
 pied by clergymen who deny the Trinity, and reject the 
 Divine Nature of the Son. 
 
 In the meantime, Unitarianism in America has already 
 entered its stage of decay. The preachers of the sect have 
 renounced Christianity and adopted Pantheistic views, as 
 the most gifted among them Theodore Parker did in the 
 year 1859 and partly they have gone over to the Episcopal 
 Church. 2 Gorrie reckons that in the year 1850 there were 
 244 Unitarian preachers, and about 30,000 members. 3 
 
 Very close to the Unitarians stand the Universalists, who 
 in 1840 had only 83 preachers, but, in 1855, 700 preachers, 
 with about 1,100 congregations. Their doctrine of the 
 ultimate salvation of all men has led many of them to a 
 
 1 " Mercersburg Review," viii. 219. 
 
 * MF.SSSER'S " Kirch. -Zeitung," 1860, p. 96. 
 
 8 " Churches and Sects," p. 132.
 
 240 METHODISTS. 
 
 Rationalistic rejection of all Christian mysteries. This sect 
 also, however, is already going to decay. 
 
 It is in the religious world as in the world of vegetation. 
 Those plants which most readily propagate themselves 
 spread most rapidly and shoot up most luxuriantly are 
 neither the healthiest nor precisely those that are most 
 welcome to the gardener. In America it is especially the 
 Methodists and Baptists who have spread most easily, and 
 can boast of the most prodigious progress. This they owe 
 to the skill with which they have made religion palpable and 
 palatable, so that everyone can appropriate it easily, and get 
 on well with it and also that the doctrine and practice can 
 be mastered in the shortest possible time, and then dis- 
 tributed from the pulpit. 
 
 But it is also to their zeal and unwearied activity that 
 these two great communities owe their success. Among all 
 sects the Methodists have in America developed the most 
 comprehensive activity, and within ninety years have spread 
 to an extent of which there are not many examples in his- 
 tory. They have indeed become divided amongst them- 
 selves. The most distinguished party is the Episcopal 
 Methodist Church ; but even in this the slavery question 
 has produced a breach -namely, between the Northern and 
 Southern Methodists and has led to a long law-suit concern- 
 
 O 
 
 ing the partition of Church property. The term *' Episcopal" 
 is not to be taken literally; but Wesley did for America 
 what he could not do in England : he ordained an Anglican 
 clergyman Thomas Coke to be a Superintendent ; and 
 since then his followers have had superintendents, who 
 allow themselves to be called " Bishops." The laity are 
 excluded from all share in the government of the society the 
 Conference rules alone ; the congregations are not allowed to 
 choose their preachers who are appointed for them, and 
 that only for a few years. 
 
 The greater part of the Methodist preachers are utterly 
 destitute of scientific culture ; and real Biblical knowledge is 
 not to be thought of amongst them. 1 They are amply pro- 
 
 1 See RAUSCHEKBUSCH'S " Die Nacht des Westens." Barmen, 1847, 
 p. 22.
 
 METHODISTIC MEANS OF EDIFICATION. 241 
 
 vicled for if they have a good number of texts at command. 
 Many have been previously mechanics, and as they happened 
 to show some fluency of speech, were first, after a short 
 training, made "exhorters," and then appointed to be 
 preachers. After this, frequent class and prayer meetings 
 leave them no time for Bible studies. The end they aim at 
 is not the tranquil instruction and harmonious education of 
 men to a Christian life violent excitement and agitation 
 are the means best suited to attain the purpose which the 
 sect seeks for and is desirous to attain. 1 In their divine 
 services, the Methodists, as their preacher Rauschenbusch 
 reports, 2 frequently make so much noise, partly during the 
 sermon, but still more during the prayers, since they not 
 unfrequently all pray aloud together, one outscreaming the 
 other, that it is not possible to hear the sermon or prayer 
 uttered from the pulpit. 
 
 The constant changes of the preachers the travelling 
 preachers the hymns sung to the wildest popular tunes 
 the mutual communication of "heart experiences," so de- 
 structive to humility and truthfulness the alternation of 
 religious emotions, dependent on purely physical states and 
 corporeal affections the artificial groaning produced by a 
 half-sensuous, half-moral epidemic this entire apparatus of 
 means invented by the Methodists, and copied by other 
 sects, even by Germans, is supposed to produce in a few 
 hours results for which a year's sedulous religious exercises 
 and self-instruction would otherwise be required. All this 
 evokes a sort of intoxication of mind, that for the moment 
 appears to satisfy it, but afterwards leaves it so much the 
 more void and famished; and so all such violent excite- 
 ment and enthusiasm is not unfrequently followed by the 
 dreariest indifference. Many of those t( converted " fall off 
 
 1 Christian knowledge is to the Methodists mostly a very subordinate 
 matter superfluous, if not dangerous. The religious instruction of the 
 young is regulated and, indeed, why should it not be so, since it is 
 what takes place on "the bench of sorrow" that the salvation of the 
 soul depends ? A vague, confused emotion is the pledge of election ! 
 HENGSTEXBERG, " Kirch.-Zeitung," 1847, p. 328. 
 
 2 " Die Nacht des Westens," p. 43. 
 
 E
 
 242 THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 
 
 again very soon, and avoid a religion which has occasioned 
 them such bitter, delusions. A false confidence in this 
 method, nevertheless, goes so far, that among Methodists the 
 whole religious education of children is often neglected, in 
 
 o - ' 
 
 the expectation that a " Revival," a " Camp-meeting," and a 
 few hours probation on the stool of repentance, will, all at 
 once, make amends for the neglect of years. 1 
 
 The theology of America is expressed by the form and 
 character of the churches, the number of which has been 
 increased enormously by the growth of the population and 
 the rivalship of the various sects. The European standard 
 must not be applied to these buildings. The feeling of 
 religious veneration for a consecrated spot does not seem to 
 exist ; and many of the churches bear a much stronger 
 resemblance to a theatre than to a Gothic Cathedral. As a 
 matter of course, they have no altars, for an altar would be 
 an abomination in the eyes of a Protestant American; he 
 likes a building in which a pompous theatrical rostrum 
 for the spiritual "orator" occupies the place of the altar, 
 and in which every possible provision is made for the comfort 
 of the audience. Many of the city churches look like 
 elegant reception-rooms of fashionable ladies. 2 
 
 The Episcopal Church is here, as well as in England, the 
 Church of " good society," and is perhaps so much the more 
 agreeable to its highly respectable members, that they have 
 the church all to themselves, and need not fear the intrusion 
 of the poor and lowly. Even the educated German, if he 
 cares about a Church at all, usually keeps to this, 3 and does not 
 trouble himself about either the Lutheran or the Calvinist sects; 
 whilst, on the contrary, the English immigrants, though they 
 have been at home members of the State Church, generally 
 in America join one of the Puritan or Methodist sects. 4 The 
 American Episcopal Church, departing from the practice 
 of the Mother Establishment, has introduced a Lay Repre- 
 
 1 SCHAFF, "America," p. 129. 
 
 * See the description in " Mercersburg Review," iv. 214. 
 
 3 HKXGSTENBEKG, " Kirch. -Zeitung," 1847, p. 340. 
 
 4 CASWALL, " The Western World Revisited." Oxford, 1854, p. 296.
 
 GERMAN LUTHERANS. 243 
 
 eentation. But the deep chasm between the Evangelicals 
 and the Arminian High Church people, which here as well as 
 in the mother country divides the Bishops into two parties 
 with very dissimilar views, renders every vigorous co-opera- 
 tion in this Church impossible. In any other denomination 
 such a contrast would have led to open separation and the 
 formation of a new community ; and whenever either the 
 one or the other comes to be in earnest in its views it must 
 end in a like result. 
 
 In England many people look with longing and envy 
 towards the daughter of the Anglican State Church, whose 
 
 O O ' 
 
 lot it is to be free from the oppressive yoke of Government 
 supremacy ; and Bishop Wilberforce wrote its history in this 
 sense a few years since : " the mother was to rejoice in the 
 consciousness of having brought forth a daughter happier 
 than herself." One of the American bishops, however, 
 remarks that " the laity have, in all church affairs (according 
 to the laws there), an overpowering influence, which is still 
 further increased by the dependence of the clergy on the 
 voluntary contributions of the laity." 1 And this lay yoke, 
 as he says, " fell the more severely on the Church, as the 
 laymen are altogether irresponsible in the exercise of their 
 ecclesiastical functions, and can be judged by no tribunal, 
 even on account of heresy and schism." 
 
 By the side of, and after the Anglo-Saxon race, the Ger- 
 mans form the most important nationality in North America, 
 and the numerous Protestants of this nation have managed 
 their church affairs quite according to their own pleasure. 
 Before all others, the German Lutherans in America have, 
 for a long time, awakened great attention and sympathy. 
 There namely, where Lutheranism, completely free from 
 political tutorship and dominion, has been fully able to 
 develop itself it was hoped its church-constructive power 
 
 1 SILLIMANIVES, "The Trials of a Mind ;" London, 1854, p. 143. The 
 author has become a Catholic. PUSEY also says, in u The Councils of 
 the Church" (London, 1858, p. 24), " The introduction of lay representa- 
 tives into the American Church was an unfortunate example, set in bad 
 times. 
 
 R2
 
 244 GERMAN REFORMED COMMUNITY. 
 
 would have shown itself in the production of a united Free 
 German Church. 13ut this hope has proved to be utterly 
 vain. The great majority of the Lutherans have renounced 
 both the language and the Lutheran doctrine, and become 
 partly Zwinglian, partly Methodistic, and have thrown aside 
 the old confession of faith. American Lutheranism is, in fact, 
 in one word, autochthonic, and a plant very different from 
 the German religious form of that name. Even the preachers 
 and congregations that have desired to retain the Lutheranism 
 they brought from Germany have not been able to effect any 
 union. It is precisely among these that the clergy are 
 exposed to the most painfully vigilant watching on the part 
 of the members of the congregation who desire to govern 
 them. They are tutored, worried, hemmed in, and oppressed 
 by all parties, and at the same time miserably paid. 1 No 
 Church authority has ever been organized, and the congre- 
 gations are almost all independent. " Every Church," says 
 our German informant, " is cleft by hostile divisions ; none 
 are in a healthy state none stable, candid, faithful, and 
 impartial, in their tendency. The individual has to seek his 
 path painfully through a thorny field there is no one to 
 show him the way." How every town where German Pro- 
 testants amount but to a few hundreds is immediately 
 possessed by the demon of Church discord, and cannot in 
 any wise attain to the formation of a united congregation, 
 has been strikingly described by the Preacher 13iittner. 2 
 Many of these German congregations are only " disorderly 
 rationalist communities," who engage a preacher as they would 
 a servant, and exclude him from the council of the Church." 3 
 The German Reformed community is regarded by the 
 true American Calvinist as an heretical sect ; " it is almost 
 Arminian," they say; " and, since Nevin and his companions 
 have arisen within its bosom, also Romanizing." 4 
 
 * O 
 
 1 HENGSTENBERG'S " Kirch.-Ztg.," 1847, p. 300. See also REUTER'S 
 tl Repertoire," vol. Ixxiv. p. 93. 
 
 * " Die Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika ;" Hamburg, 1844, and 
 " Briefe aus und iiber Jsordamerika." Dresden, 1845. 
 
 1 SCHAFF, p. 99. 
 
 4 Thus the Presbyterian BLAKEY, in his " Philosophy of Sectarianism ;"
 
 DEPENDENT CONDITION OF THE CLERGY. 245 
 
 Through, the whole extent of German Protestantism the 
 slavish dependence of the preachers on the congregations is 
 felt as one of the worst results of the prevailing Church 
 system. The feeling of this dependence has been, indeed, 
 from the beginning, stronger in the mind of the preachers 
 than in that of his auditory. The consciousness weighs upon 
 him that he has no high mission, no office sustained and 
 guaranteed by an ancient and sublime institution. He is but 
 a delegate, who only dares to proclaim to his hearers that which 
 they had previously determined should be preached. 
 
 Schaff, in his report to the Berlin Alliance Assembly, in 
 whicli the most rose-coloured representation possible of the 
 state of circumstances in America was expected, animadverted 
 on the fact of the unbecoming dependence of the clergy upon 
 their congregations. " The Americans," he says, 1 " expect 
 a clergyman to do his duty, and, without fear of man, or 
 anxiety to please, lay before them the whole counsel of godli- 
 ness, and point as sharply and specially to human depravity, 
 and to the consolatory promises that have been made to it " 
 that is to say, that, in America, as elsewhere, wherever the 
 doctrines of the Reformation are still in authority, the con- 
 gregation like their preachers to relieve them of moral 
 responsibility, by preaching the three connected doctrines of 
 absolute Divine Election, of total depravity and complete 
 moral impotency, and of Free Grace by mere Imputation. To 
 do this, there is not the slightest occasion for the minister to 
 be fearless ; on the contrary, he would show much more 
 freedom from the fear of man if he preached the opposite 
 old Church doctrine. 
 
 The fact, to which every stranger bears witness, that there 
 are in no civilized country so few people having opinions of 
 their own, and the courage to express those opinions, as in 
 America, must be extremely unfavourable to the mental 
 
 London, 1854, p. 55. The book is instructive, for the knowledge of 
 American Sectarianism it displays ; but still more attractive, from the 
 light that the author lets fall on his own community, the Presbyterian 
 Church, than from what he says as regards others. 
 1 " Amerika." Berlin, 1854, p. 63.
 
 246 PREACHER VISITATION SOCIETY. 
 
 freedom of their preachers. A well-informed and sharp- 
 sighted observer has remarked, lately, li that, in everything 
 not political, a tyrannically-ruling majority works upon all 
 minds, and levels and crushes down all varieties, till they 
 all resemble one another, as do the rounded pebbles in a 
 brook." 1 It is known how this tyranny of public opinion 
 has operated in the question of race ; the whole Protestant 
 clergy have yielded to the prevalent aversion of every com- 
 munity of whites to the coloured population ; and in New 
 Orleans, for example, the Catholic Churches arc the only 
 places in which white and coloured people pray by the side of 
 one another. 2 
 
 All Protestant theologians, whose writings I have seen, 
 complain of the want of independence in the preachers, of 
 their general deficiency in moral courage, and the oppressive 
 yoke that the congregations have fastened upon them. 
 Channing, Colton, Mines, often recur to the subject. 3 They 
 describe the preachers as the victims of a tyranny exercised 
 frequently by the low and ignorant, and that to an extent 
 such as has never hitherto been known. As a rule, the con- 
 fidence and presumption with which the representatives of the 
 congregation bear themselves towards their preachers, stand 
 in an inverse ratio to their amount of mental culture. 4 Every 
 idea that passes beyond their narrow sphere of theological 
 vision renders the orthodoxy of their preacher doubtful to 
 them. They are liberal with their exhortations and remon- 
 strances, which they bestow upon him ex officio. A few 
 years ago there was, in New England, a regular Preacher 
 Visitation Society, of self-appointed laymen, who travelled 
 from place to place, made inquiries concerning clergymen, 
 and bestowed counsel, censure, or warning as they thought 
 fit. It is quite consistent with this state of things that the 
 congregations often only engage their preachers for a time, 
 
 > "Skizzen aus Nordamerika." " Allg.-Ztg.," June, 1861, p. 2646. 
 * " Christian Remembrancer," 1860, il 79. 
 
 3 For example, CHANNING'S " Works," v. 317 ; COLTON, 138 ; MIXES, 
 291. 
 
 4 See the vivid description in HEXGSTKNBERG'S u Kirch.-Ztg.," xx. 
 132.
 
 PltOTESTANT AXTI-CATHOLIC TACTICS. 247 
 
 and with the reserve of a certain notice in case of dismissal. 1 
 It is not surprising, therefore, that clergymen are met with 
 every day, who have renounced voluntarily, or on compulsion, 
 the office of preacher, and now carry on some secular occu- 
 pation. 
 
 The orthodox Churches, says the reformed preacher, 
 Biittner (lie includes all Calvinist, Lutheran, and German 
 Reformed Denominations under this head), however hostile 
 they may be to one another, as soon as ever the word 
 " Roman Catholic " is pronounced, forget their mutual differ- 
 ences and hostilities, and stand against the Roman Catholics 
 like a wall. Should a religious war ever break out in the 
 United States, which is not improbable, for there is combus- 
 tible material enough in readiness, the question will not be 
 asked, " Are you a Presbyterian, or a Methodist, or a Baptist 
 a Lutheran, a Calvinist, or a Congregationalist but, 
 simply, Are you a Protestant or a Catholic ?" 2 
 
 Sehaffhas described how the polemical contest is carried 
 on, by the whole Protestant press of America, 3 against the 
 Catholic Church: it is, he says, by fabricated lies, by gross 
 calumnies, by the ignoring or falsification of history. This 
 cannot excite surprise, if we consider the breadth and depth 
 of the chasm that divides all these sects, but especially the 
 puritanical, from the Church, and if we are able to realise 
 the contrast of their position. " Whilst," writes a German 
 Protestant, from America, "all the Protestant denomina- 
 tions are weakened by perpetual new divisions, and mostly 
 at bitter enmity with one another, the Catholic Church, as 
 one man one organism, animated by one soul, pursuing, with 
 firm, clear consciousness, one object advances without noise, 
 without even, until lately, uttering one word of defence 
 against accusations and hostile attacks, but persevering 
 with iron consistency, and from year to year gaining new 
 ground." 4 
 
 1 " Atlantische Studien," ii. 130. 
 
 * " Kirchliche Viertel-Jahresschrift." Berlin, 1845, i. 130. 
 
 * " Kirchenfreund," Sept. 1852. 
 
 4 HENGSTENBERG'S " Kirch.-Zeitung," 1847, 341.
 
 248 RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF NORTH AMERICA. 
 
 The whole existing condition of North America, in a 
 religious point of vrew, is calculated to awaken great anxiety 
 among all thinking men in the country. " The great 
 majority of the rising generation is without any positive 
 religion," said the before-mentioned preacher, Edson ; " all 
 the instruction they receive consists in, perhaps, some lessons 
 of natural religion ; and I greatly fear that we are advancing 
 by certain, and by no means slow steps, in the direction of 
 complete absence of religion and moral ruin." 1 In the whole 
 daily press there prevails worthless radicalism, and, for some 
 time past, unveiled irreligion. 2 The total want of a sentiment 
 of veneration, is, as the American theologians mournfully 
 confess, a predominant feature of the national character. 3 
 The entire spirit in which the religious press is carried on is 
 a disgrace to the cause of Christianity. 4 " The number of 
 professing Christians," says a Baptist preacher, " is diminish- 
 ing in all our sects." The Churches are stationary from 
 want of preachers, and the conduct of professing Christians 
 is generally such that it would be almost an affront to a man 
 of honour to suppose him willing to be converted, and to 
 become as " one of them. 1 ' If the present decline continues, 
 in the course of twenty or thirty years "the candlestick" will 
 be removed from its place. The Church makes no proselytes, 
 and has no influence upon the masses. 5 
 
 In an American periodical, " The Evangelist," it was 
 lately maintained that, even in the Free States of the Union, 
 the present time was more favourable to Catholicity than 
 had been any period for centuries past ; but this certainly 
 must not be understood with respect to the prevailing state 
 
 1 TREMENHEERE, p. 53. 
 
 2 See the article, " Signs of the Times," in the " Mercersburg Review," 
 vii. 290. 
 
 * COLTON, " Genius and Mission of the Protestant Episcopal Church." 
 London, 1853, p. 260. 
 
 4 lt Mercersburg Review," vii. 293. It is scarcely possible to say any- 
 thing worse of the character of the religious press of America than what 
 we find in this periodical. 
 
 s See the work of the American HECKER, " Aspirations of Nature." 
 New York, 1857.
 
 RELIGIOUS ASPIRATIONS. 249 
 
 of mind in North America, which is decidedly hostile to the 
 Catholic religion. 1 It is natural, however, that many persons 
 should feel oppressed and imprisoned within the narrow 
 boundaries of sectarianism ; that they should be dissatisfied 
 with the poor and meagre remnants of Christian faith there 
 offered to them, and sigh for a harmonious and inwardly 
 connected system of Christian faith and life; that, before 
 all things, they should desire to be relieved from the torment 
 of a dreary subjectivity, and an unauthorised conventional 
 interpretation of the Bible. To what results this tendency 
 will lead in the future, time must determine. 
 
 KRAUSE'S " Kirch. -Zeitung," 1858, p. 551.
 
 250 
 
 THE LUTHERAN CHURCH IN SCANDINAVIAN 
 COUNTRIES. 
 
 THE Wittenberg doctrine was, on the whole, introduced 
 into the North by violence ; by the will of monarchs, with the 
 assistance of nobles, longing to gain possession of Church 
 property; and against the wishes of the people. The people 
 were, in fact, systematically cheated out of their religion, as 
 in Sweden ; and partly they were kept in profound ignorance 
 so much so that in Denmark, at the end of the sixteenth 
 century, not one in twenty knew how to read. In Norway, 
 Christian III. had degraded the people beneath a twofold 
 yoke that of the Danish nobles, and of the new Danish 
 religion ; whilst, for the real religious culture of the people, 
 nothing whatever was effected. This state of things lasted 
 till the eighteenth century. Catechetical instruction was 
 not given ; the sermons were unintelligible to the multitude, 
 who were unprepared for them ; " and there reigned in the 
 land an almost heathen blindness." 1 In a petition pre- 
 sented by the Norwegian bishops, in the year 1714, to 
 King Frederick IV., they felt compelled to make the 
 avowal : " If some few children of God are excepted, there 
 
 1 Thus Bishop PONTOPPIDAX describes the total neglect and increas- 
 ing barbarism of the people down to the year 1714, in his " Pastoral 
 Letter." translated into German by Schonfeldt. Rostock, 1756, pp. 
 129-30.
 
 THE CHURCH IN DENMARK. 251 
 
 is no other difference between us and our heathen ancestors 
 than that we bear the name of Christians." 1 
 
 In Denmark, by means of the Reformation, the king had 
 become, as chief bishop, the complete master of the Church. 
 In the royal law of 1665, it is declared boldly, without the 
 least circumvention, or mitigation of the fact, "that the king, 
 as supreme judge and ruler upon earth, possesses unlimited 
 power over the Church and religion, as well as over the 
 State." 2 One only condition was made with him by the 
 patent of 1648 he was not to tolerate the exercise of any 
 other religion than the Lutheran. The kings governed the 
 Church through their chancellors, and subsequently by the 
 College of Chancery, which, with its judicial business, the care 
 of the poor, and other functions, had also to administer 
 the affairs of the Church. As to the nine or ten bishops of 
 the country who had nothing but the same name in 
 common with bishops of the Catholic Church they, with the 
 Lutherans, of course, must abandon every idea of episcopal 
 succession and transmitted authority, and were nothing more 
 than government .officers of the royal chief bishop. The 
 Danish history, since the Reformation, contains no mention of 
 any attempt or effort at ecclesiastical independence, or of any 
 movement indicating life in the Church. All remained 
 dumb and subservient, and the rulers, in thankful acknow- 
 ledgment of that pliant subjection which they owed to the 
 Lutheran spirit, carefully suppressed the slightest departure 
 from the Lutheran dogma, and the doctrinal type of the 
 theological faculty of Wittenberg. In the only university of 
 the country, that of Copenhagen, there was "scarcely more than 
 a scanty training establishment for the Church service," 3 and it 
 took care to provide a theology acceptable to the Court ; whilst 
 the disputes and divisions occasioned by Pietism were decided 
 and put down by Royal Rescripts and Cabinet commands. 4 
 
 1 HENGSTENBERG'S " Kirchen-Zeitung," 1843, p. 536. 
 
 2 ENGELSTOFT, in "Herzog's Encyclopedia," iii. 610. 
 
 * See a detailed description in BRUX'S and HOFFXER'S " Neues Reper- 
 torium," v. 101. 
 
 * The measureless ignorance of the theologians educated at Copenhagen,
 
 252 ITS UNSETTLED STATE. 
 
 By the new Fundamental Law of 1849, which has given 
 an overwhelming democratic character to the Danish Govern- 
 ment, the Lutheran Church is called " the Danish National 
 Church," and the religious character of the Government is 
 renounced, since full freedom of doctrine and worship is 
 granted ; and indeed liberty had been carried to such an extent 
 lately as to do away with the obligation to baptism. The 
 old dependence of the Church on the State has, however, 
 remained. The King, the only man in all Denmark who is 
 obliged to be a Lutheran, is still Supreme Bishop ; it is not, 
 however, the King personally, but the constitutional Minister 
 of Divine Worship who rules the Church ; and how much 
 stability is afforded by this mode of government may be 
 known from the fact that Denmark has had since 1848 five 
 and forty such ministers ! Of a regulated constitution of 
 the Danish Church there can be no question ; at times it 
 finds itself, as Bishop Martensen observes, " in a floating 
 medium state that can scarcely be called any form or order 
 at all." 1 Its constitution is for the present only a " subject 
 of consideration." Three different views are at present put 
 forward. Some wish for an ecclesiastico-political position for 
 the bishops, after the fashion of the English Church. The 
 supremacy of the Ministers and of the Diet over spiritual 
 affairs would then remain. Others wish for a Church repre- 
 sentation by clergy and laity in synods, on the basis of uni- 
 versal suffrage. All thoughtful persons, however, are alarmed 
 at the idea of universal suffrage in church affairs. The ma- 
 jority are of opinion that the Church should get on as well 
 as it can for the present in its provisional state, without a 
 constitution, since affairs are at " the moment too unsettled, 
 and people's views not sufficiently clear." 2 It must be a bad 
 case if the existing state is preferred to any attempt to form 
 
 to which must be added their moral stagnation, corresponded but too 
 well with the dreadfully slavish condition of the rural population, and the 
 petty pedantry and stupidity of the cities." Thus speaks the Danish 
 reporter. u Repert.," p. 103. 
 
 1 The " Yerfassungsfrage der Danischen Volkskirche." Kiel, 1852, 
 p. 7. 
 
 1 " Deutsche Zeitschrift fur Christl. Wiss.," 1859, p. 88.
 
 DIVISION OF THE DANISH CLERGY. 253 
 
 a constitution a state in which the Church is dependent on 
 a Diet, whose members not only do not belong to the Lu- 
 theran community, but in general are not even professed 
 Christians. That a change in the position of the Church is 
 felt more and more as a necessity, has been maintained by 
 the preacher Kalkar von Gladsaxe, of Copenhagen, in the 
 Berlin Alliance Assembly. 1 " Christ," he adds, in an apolo- 
 getic tone, " is not so openly rejected as in other places, but 
 there is very little spiritual life in Denmark." 
 
 Under the influence of Rationalism, which made its 
 way hither from Germany since the end of the last century, 
 not only the people of the higher and middle classes but 
 even the clergy in masses, became unbelievers. The 
 candidates for the pastoral office made some hypocritical 
 pretences to orthodoxy, but in the sermon preached immedi- 
 ately on ordination, and under the eyes of their bishops, 
 they showed themselves decided Naturalists. 2 According to 
 Danish accounts, the great majority of the clergy have fallen 
 as completely into the infidel new theological views as their 
 Lutheran brethren, the clergy of Germany ; they have only 
 hovered between mere frivolous unbelief, and Rationalism 
 that assumes somewhat more of a scientific character. 
 
 At present, and for a considerable time past, the Danish 
 clergy have been divided into two great parties the Ra- 
 tionalist unbelieving, whose teacher and leader was Professor 
 Clausen, and the followers of Grundtvig. The persevering 
 struggle of this man (Grundtvig) against Rationalism, has 
 led him to a theory, that the German Lutherans, on their 
 side, designate as "in its inmost core anti-reforming and 
 anti-Lutheran ! " 3 Whilst Protestantism in America wholly 
 rejects the Apostles' Creed, or casts it aside as valueless, 
 Grundtvig regarding it as a clear and firm confession of 
 
 o/ o o 
 
 faith, and a manifest witness of the faith of the primitive 
 Church, desires, in the same way as Lessing and Delbriick, 
 to place it above the Bible, disfigured as that is by 
 the caprice of private subjective interpretation. He 
 
 1 " Verhandlungen," &c., p. 534. 2 BRUN'S " Repert.," v. 105. 
 
 * RUDELBACH, in " Die Zeitschrift fur Luth. Theol.," 1857, p. 7.
 
 254 ECCLESIASTICAL STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 and his party have, however, become more and more estranged 
 from Lutheranism, and urge the complete abolition of State 
 Supremacy and parochial connexion, and desire that every 
 one should be at liberty to join whatever preacher, this or 
 that, no matter which, but the one that he finds best suits 
 him. The main point is, however, that the whole Grundtvig 
 school is inclined to break with German Protestantism, or in 
 some measure has already broken away from it. They will 
 have nothing to do with German Protestant theology, nor 
 with German confessions of faith. Rudelbach has ascribed 
 this tendency to a fanatical hatred against everything Ger- 
 man; but Grundtvig's whole course of thought for many 
 years proves that the real cause lies much deeper, and that 
 it springs from a mode of thought nearly akin to that of the 
 English Tractarians. 
 
 For three hundred years was Denmark in its spiritual and 
 religious affairs entirely dependent on the German theology 
 and literature, and every movement made in it was but a 
 feeble echo of German movements and German productions. 
 But orthodox Protestantism, as it exists at present in Ger- 
 many, has no existence in Denmark any longer. " Orthodox 
 preaching," says Petersen, " occurs in Denmark only spo- 
 radically." l 
 
 A Danish clergyman who in the Darmstadt Allgemeine 
 Kirchenzeitung has written a description of the ecclesiastical 
 condition of his country gives, indeed, a very bad account 
 of it; but then he explains and adds his opinion, that "the 
 Lord has not altogether forsaken the Church of Denmark." 
 " Many laymen," he says, " have been awakened," and, in 
 confirmation of his statement, mentions that "a smith has 
 been converted from the evil of his ways, and is now travel- 
 ling about the country " that " a farmer has established a 
 home mission society" and that "a baker is labouring for 
 the freedom of the Church, and a more active spiritual life." 2 
 Of what the clergy are doing he says nothing. 
 
 It would be difficult, in fact, to paint a more deplorable 
 picture of the state of any religious system. The people in 
 
 1 RUDELBACH, p. 106. 2 " Jahrgang," 1855, p. 1473, et seq.
 
 THE CHURCH IN SCIILESWIG. 255^ 
 
 the cities withdraw so commonly from Divine service, that 
 in Copenhagen, out of 150,000 inhabitants, there are only 
 6,000 regular churchgoers. 1 In other cities the case seems 
 still worse than in Copenhagen. 2 In Altona one single 
 church is found sufficient for 45,000 inhabitants. The 
 Church, chained to a Government now in the hands of a 
 thorough democratically-constituted assembly, is in any im- 
 portant question altogether helpless. The Church itself is 
 split into parties, and has no spiritual or moral authority 
 upon which to lean ; and the people, without guide or shep- 
 herd, have to seek for religious aliment among Baptists and 
 Methodists, or to fall in the wilderness of barbarism. 
 
 In Schleswig, also, the churches stand empty, both in the 
 parts of the country where German is spoken and where 
 Danish is the prevailing language. One chief cause of this 
 is said to be the character of the Danish clergy. "The 
 Danish clergy," says the Schleswig preacher, Petersen, " ino- 
 culate the country with Danish levelling doctrines, Danish 
 infidelity, and Danish immorality. The chief evil is not the 
 oppressive enactments concerning the German language, but 
 the irreligion that has been transplanted from Denmark to 
 Schleswig, and the demoralisation that has accompanied it. 
 Among the Danish clergy religious and moral conduct is the 
 exception, not the rule." 3 
 
 The Danish ill-treatment of the Church in Schleswig is, 
 as it is now acknowledged, and bitterly complained of, a con- 
 sequence of the Episcopal power having been placed by the 
 Reformation in the hands of the sovereign. All Church ar- 
 rangements even those which concern its most inward life 
 have long been made on the sole authority of the Govern- 
 ment. In the year 1834, even the administration of the 
 Church affairs was taken from the Upper Consistory, and 
 transferred to the Schlesvvig-Holstein Government. 4 
 
 1 KRAUSE'S " Kirch.-Ztg.," 1859, p. 968. 
 s " Allg. Lit.-Ztg.," 1841, ii. 491. 
 
 " Erlebnisse eines Schleswig'schen Predigers." Frankfort, 1856, p. 
 337. 
 
 4 SCHRADER, " Die Kirchenverfassungsfrage." Altona, 1849, p. 174.
 
 256 THE STATE CHURCH IN SWEDEN. 
 
 The Lutheran State Church of Sweden has been, from 
 the beginning, even more than that of Denmark, entirely 
 dependent in its theological relations upon Germany. The 
 small number of theological writings that Sweden possesses 
 are nearly all nothing more than translations from the 
 German. The theological Rationalism of Germany has 
 indeed seldom found entrance into Sweden; the clergy had, 
 at the end of the last and the beginning of the present cen- 
 tury, almost ceased to occupy themselves with theology ; 
 and when a celebrated Swedish theologian of the present 
 time, Wieselgren, remarked, " our Church constitution and 
 legislation only hold together on paper, for all has been 
 detached and loosened by Rationalism," he must have used the 
 word " Rationalism" only in the sense of " practical indiffer- 
 entism." 
 
 In England, a short time since, a glance was cast at the 
 Swedish Church, in the hope of finding a certain kindred 
 feeling and ecclesiastical sympathy with the state of the 
 English Church and the efforts of Anglo-Catholics. But 
 this hope has, upon closer inquiry, proved to be illusory. It 
 was discovered that the Swedish Episcopacy had, precisely 
 as little as the Danish, a claim to Apostolic Succession ; that 
 the Swedish Bishops were very far from regarding and 
 estimating their office in the sense of the old Church that 
 they were, in fact, Lutheran superintendents, and nothing 
 more ! The Swedish Church is simply a Lutheran one, a 
 community from which every Catholic idea has been cleansed 
 out ; completely devoid of what an Anglican would regard as 
 a " Church spirit." l 
 
 At the same time, however, the Swedish cannot be refused 
 the testimony of being " the most perfectly organised Pro- 
 testant community in Europe," 2 and in its love for Luther it 
 perhaps exceeds even the old Lutherans of Germany itself. 3 
 
 On the other hand, the preacher Trottet maintains that the 
 country of Gustavus Adolphus is the least Protestant of all 
 countries into which the Reformation has found admittance. 
 
 1 " Christian Remembrancer," xiii. 425. 
 
 * u Chr. Rem.," xiii. 435. 
 
 * " Hubers Janus." Berlin, 1845, i. 232.
 
 STATE CONTROL OVER THE CHURCH. 257 
 
 As a follower of Vinet, he turns away from the history of the 
 Reformation, and all the new ecclesiastical conditions founded 
 on it, and places the essence of Protestantism in "the freedom 
 of religious life and the unshackled movements of the Church." 
 The Swedish Church, therefore, in which religion and politics 
 are so closely interwoven, could not but appear to him ex- 
 ceedingly unprotestant. 
 
 The king is in Sweden the ft chief superintendent and 
 earthly lord of the Church ;" he unites in himself the highest 
 spiritual and temporal power of the kingdom, and exercises 
 his authority over the Church through the Royal Chancery, 
 whose superior officer is the Minister for Foreign Affairs. 1 
 The Diet also shares with the king the control of the Church ; 
 and ecclesiastical affairs are discussed by its members. Thus 
 this singular state of things has followed, that while the 
 clergy possess completely the position of a privileged class, 
 and through their representation in the Diet exercise great 
 political influence, the Church itself remains in slavish de- 
 pendence upon the State. 2 The king has even the power 
 to demand from the Consistory letters of divorce for married 
 couples who may desire to separate, and that for other causes 
 than a violation of the marriage vow. 3 The occupations of 
 the clergy are mostly of a secular character they are the 
 best financiers and men of business in Sweden, and " capable 
 of everything except their spiritual duties." 4 The Church 
 affairs are generally left to the curates. The sermons are 
 read, as, it is said, the people themselves do not desire 
 extempore preaching; and after the sermon the clergyman 
 has often to act as beadle or crier, and make from his pulpit 
 the most trivial announcements for half an hour together. 
 When in an assembly of Bishops the abolition of this repul- 
 sive and troublesome custom was recently proposed, they 
 almost all declared themselves to its retention, for the reason 
 
 1 KLIPPEL, in u Herzog's Encyclopadie," vol. xiv. p. 83. 
 1 TROTTET, "Prediger in Stockholm," in GELZER'S " Monatsblattern," 
 xi. 140. 
 
 3 " Kirchliche Vierteljahrsschrift." Berlin, 1845, iv. 149. 
 
 4 LIEBETRUT, HEXGSTENBERG'S "K.-Ztg.," vol. xxxiv., p. 119. 
 
 8
 
 258 CONDITION OF THE SWEDISH CLERGY. 
 
 that if it were not for these announcements, they would often 
 have only old women and children as their auditors. 1 The 
 examinations carried on by preachers from house to house, 
 which formerly enabled a clergyman to judge individually 
 of the religious knowledge of his congregation, have declined 
 in most districts into a mere mode of filling up tax-lists and 
 making a census of the population. 2 German observers 
 report an almost incredible ignorance 6f the clergy, even up 
 to the highest; and it is a thing unheard of that any one 
 appointed by a patron to a cure should be rejected, let him 
 be ever so rude and uneducated. 3 His ignorance causes him 
 no difficulty or embarrassment in his office ; for if he can but 
 merely read and write, he satisfies all demands that can be 
 made upon him. He has fulfilled his duties if, besides the 
 performance of the Church formalities and ceremonies, of 
 which more have been retained in Sweden than elsewhere, 
 he can on Sundays read out a written sermon. If to this 
 we add that the vice of brandy drinking, 4 constantly on the 
 increase in Sweden, has reached even the clergy, the state of 
 things there will be tolerably intelligible. On the whole, it 
 may nevertheless be said that the clerical body enjoys in no 
 other Protestant country at the present day such important 
 privileges, such great and manifold influence, as it does in 
 Sweden. To this influence is to be ascribed the severity of 
 the proceedings there against the "awakened"' and the 
 "readers," as well as obstinate resistance to all reforms. Accord- 
 ing to Liebetrut's remark, a Swede who should touch on 
 the existing abuses would be scouted on all sides as a Sama- 
 ritan, who cared more for "life" than for "doctrine" a blind 
 zealot concerning things for which there was no help. 5 
 
 Liebetrut and other writers are accustomed to give the 
 Swedish Church and clergy the credit of orthodox Luther- 
 anism, but they say there reigns a dead orthodoxy. " The 
 
 1 LIEBETRUT, xxxiv. 172. 
 
 "Kirchl. Vierteljahrsschrift," 1845, iv. 149. 
 
 LIEBETRUT, 163. 
 
 4 See hereupon " Allg.-Ztg.," 1847, p. 5475. 
 
 HENGSTENBERG'S " Kirch. -Ztg.," vol. xxxviii., p. 148.
 
 "DEFUNCT ORTHODOXY." 259 
 
 Swedish Church," says Liebetrut, "is a Church desolate! 
 dead! lying under the anathema of God. The Church 
 unity is the unity and peace of the churchyard." l And in 
 the same tone the Swedish preacher, Cervin Steenhoff, says, 
 "It is now the time of the humiliation of the Church! she 
 is dead! all has become contentious, desolate, and void!" 2 
 
 Sweden is now (besides Norway) the only country in 
 Europe where tire genuine Lutheran doctrine reigns in the 
 pulpit. To this the profound ignorance of the majority 
 of the clergy found no obstacle; for the customary forms 
 and catchwords of the system can be taken up and used 
 by any one readily enough. " Nothing is easier here," says 
 Trottet, "than to become suspected of heresy;" and, ac- 
 cording to him, this state of the Church in Sweden is one 
 of the chief causes of the moral corruption that prevails 
 in that country. A destructive formalism has gained the 
 upper hand; religious indifference has, by degrees, under- 
 mined the strictness of manners formerly existing, and public 
 opinion authorizes and protects, in many cases, the most 
 revolting immoralities. 3 
 
 "Defunct orthodoxy" is just now one of the favourite 
 phrases in Sweden, and in Germany also ; for the bad reli- 
 gious condition of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 
 is often laid to its charge. But there is a great mistake in 
 saying this. The Lutheran orthodoxy was not dead in 
 Germany on the contrary, as long as it existed it was 
 extremely lively, and for two centuries (1550-1750) it 
 maintained a struggle against Calvinism; then against Arndt 
 and his followers ; then against Calixtus and the Helmstadt 
 
 ' O 
 
 school ; then against Spener, Pietism and the Halle school ; 
 and most vigorously and successfully did it defend itself 
 against all attempts to enfeeble it, until at length Rationalism 
 became master both of it and orthodoxy, its rivals and 
 built its hut upon their ruins. What is in Germany consi- 
 dered the effect of " defunct orthodoxy," was much more the 
 
 1 HENGSTENBERG'S " Kirch.-Ztg.," vol. xxxiv., 172-151. 
 
 2 KLIEFOTH'S " Kirch. -Zeitschrift," 1856, p. 713, &c. 
 8 GELZER'S " Mon. -Blatter," xi. 143. 
 
 82
 
 260 MAINTENANCE OF ORTHODOXY. 
 
 natural and inevitable psychological and ecclesiological con- 
 sequence of the Lutheran system itself; and of which the 
 historical proof may easily be given. 
 
 If mention is made of this "defunct orthodoxy" in Sweden, 
 it should be remembered that it is nothing new in that 
 country, but has been its normal state since the Reformation. 
 The Swedish State Church has remained, down to the pre- 
 sent time, in sole undisturbed possession, and has not 
 tolerated the smallest deviation from the strictest Luther- 
 anism. Serious theological controversies do not occur in 
 Swedish history, with the exception of the liturgical dispute 
 occasioned by the efforts of King John to return towards 
 Catholicity; and the Swedish clergy have had no need of 
 theological knowledge to defend themselves against strange 
 doctrines. When Gustavus Vasa desired to convert the 
 inhabitants of Helsingland to Lutheranism, he did not send 
 to them distributors of Swedish Bibles, or preachers of the 
 new doctrine, but he wrote to them, " that if they did not 
 forthwith become Lutherans, he would have a hole made in 
 the ice on the Deele Lake, and they should all be drowned." 1 
 Thus it has been ever. The sword, the dungeon, exile, or 
 in modern times pecuniary fines, have been the approved 
 methods of preventing religious disputes, or of settling them 
 if they had already broken out. And this appeared so much 
 the more necessary, since, as the celebrated Atterbom re- 
 marks, " the state of public instruction, and the education of 
 the clergy, were far below what they had been in the imme- 
 diately preceding papal epoch." 2 Charles IX. and Gustavus 
 Adolphus adopted, with obstinate Catholics, the simple 
 method of cutting their heads off; and when, at the end of 
 the seventeenth and the beginning of the following century, 
 several Swedes Ulstadius, Peter Schafer, Ulhagius, and 
 Erik Molin, became perplexed with the Lutheran main doc- 
 
 1 This fact is mentioned in the periodical called the " Frey," issued by 
 the Professor of Upsala. It occurs in an article on Wieselgren's work 
 concerning Gustavus Vasa. The article has been translated in the "Annales 
 dela Philosophie Chret.," published by Bonnetty. Paris, 1848, vol. xvii. 
 p. 282. * The same, p, 291.
 
 ABSENCE OF RELIGIOUS LIFE. 261 
 
 trine of " Imputation," and spoke of the necessity of " good 
 works," Moliu was banished Ulstadius condemned to the 
 house of correction for his life (and remained there for thirty 
 years) and Schafer and Ulhagius were condemned to 
 death ! ' And in accordance with the same principle were the 
 "Awakened," or " Readers," treated thirty years ago. 
 
 It seems to be difficult to assign the precise cause why, 
 for a long time past, religious life has so much departed 
 from Sweden, and all spiritual action has become so 
 mechanical. Foreign German influence is not the cause ; 
 but the observer cannot fail to be immediately struck with 
 the effects produced by the great secularizing of the clerical 
 orders, as well as by their want of due culture and prepara- 
 tion. A brief training for a few months is deemed sufficient to 
 qualify a man to assume the pastoral office, and any one may 
 pass with the greatest ease from any employment or trade 
 at once into the ranks of the clergy a position rendered 
 attractive by social distinctions and good emoluments ; nay, 
 he may even become a bishop, without possessing so much 
 as a smattering of theological culture. 2 This was done by the 
 poet Tegner, and also by a Professor of Botany. The care 
 of providing for wives and children, and the quantity of civil 
 business devolving upon the clergy, does the rest. It 
 appears almost enigmatical that a people that has produced 
 a Linnseus, Berzelius, Geijer, and Atterbom that has a 
 richly-endowed Church and two universities a Church, too, 
 which, like other Protestant Churches, has raised the postu- 
 late of general Bible investigation into a religious principle 
 it is truly enigmatical that such a people should have done 
 nothing at all in theology. The former Professor of 
 Theology, afterwards Bishop Reuterdahl says : " Theolo- 
 gical instruction could hardly be less organized than it is in 
 
 1 "Nordische Sammlungen," 1755, vol. i., pp. 44-51. See also the 
 Berlin " Allg. Kirchen-Ztg." 1849, p. 752. The sentence of death, pro- 
 nounced by the Spiritual Court at Abo, was commuted by the secular 
 authorities into imprisonment. 
 
 2 See the examples adduced by Liebetrut in HENGSTENBERG, vol. 
 xxxiv. p. 163.
 
 262 SECESSION OF THE " READERS." 
 
 Sweden. Ignorance, the love of gain and want of under- 
 standing in the clergy, are the causes why so many people 
 in every parish think they can do without the Church." 1 
 The Swedes need only look over to Denmark, and its now 
 wholly Rationalistic clergy, to see the consequences of the 
 neglect of theological studies. They have only the choice 
 of retaining their Lutheran orthodoxy and renouncing 
 theology or of admitting theology at the cost of the 
 former. It was natural that, in a country where the power 
 of the State had maintained with such severity the old penal 
 laws concerning religion ; where the clergy are so enslaved 
 that the secular authorities dictate Church penances, and 
 when these have been performed the pastor must at once 
 absolve every offender it was natural that under these 
 circumstances they should renounce theology, and prefer 
 remaining good Lutherans. Symbolic orthodoxy and scien- 
 tific theology can no more subsist peacefully together in 
 Sweden than in other Protestant countries. Since their 
 great quarrel in a preceding century, no attempt at recon- 
 ciliation has ever succeeded, and each party of the married 
 pair has sued for, obtained, 'and is prepared to present to its 
 ci-devant partner a deed of separation ! 
 
 The only movement that for many years has taken place 
 in the stagnant waters of the Swedish Church, has been that 
 made by the " Readers," who were in fact, at first, nothing 
 more than zealous Lutherans. Their motto was, "Justi- 
 fication by Faith alone," and the non-freedom of man's 
 will ; and they separated themselves from the Church 
 because the clergy did not preach to them this favourite 
 doctrine either with sufficient distinctness or often enough. 2 
 When the Lutheran State Church attempted to cru^h these 
 poor people under the whole weight of a brutal police- 
 despotism, hundreds allowed themselves to be brought to 
 ruin rather than submit, or they emigrated, and fled into the 
 deserts of Lapland. When the " Readers" had already 
 
 1 See the extracts from his writings in HENGSTENBERG'S " K.-Ztg.," 
 vol xxxviii., p. 151. 
 
 3 ' Neue Preuss.-Zeitung," 18th Decemb., 1856.
 
 THE CHURCH IN NORWAY. 263 
 
 begun to administer baptism and the communion by one of 
 their own number, they betook themselves to the English 
 and American Baptist Missionaries, and got themselves bap- 
 tized anew. In the year 1853, the utter inefficiency of 
 dealing with sectarians by the infliction of punishments was 
 acknowledged. In despite of all such penal measures, the 
 sects of Baptists had been continually increasing in the once 
 purely Lutheran Sweden ; and the " awakening" of which 
 we hear so much in the reports from Sweden, consists chiefly 
 in the progress made over the whole country by the Anglo- 
 American sects the irreconcileable enemies of Lutheranisin 
 and the preachers sent out by the Independents, Baptists, 
 and Methodists. 
 
 The condition of the Swedish Church, in its relation to 
 the State, is to be again met with in Norway with this 
 difference only, that, inconsequence of the former connection 
 with Denmark, the dependence of the clergy is still greater 
 than in Sweden. Here, also, the power over the Church is 
 in the hands of the civil authorities. The sovereign rules 
 the Church through the Minister of Public Worship, and the 
 clergy are not represented at the Storthing; for which 
 reason it was found possible in the year 1844 to introduce 
 religious freedom into Norway, which it was not in Sweden. 
 The desire for a more independent position of the Church is 
 frequently expressed here, especially among the clergy. 
 
 Norway had, formerly, through the connection with Den- 
 mark (which was broken in 1813), been inoculated with 
 Bationalism. It made rapid progress, and most of the 
 pulpits were soon in possession of unspiritual Rationalists, 
 who preached dry moral lectures, or treatises on political 
 economy. 1 
 
 When the rustic, Nielsen Hauge, by his sermons and 
 writings, succeeded in awakening a great number of people 
 of the lower class to a feeling opposed to the infidelity of 
 the preachers, he had to atone for it by an enormous fine 
 and ten years imprisonment from the consequences of which 
 
 1 Thus says the report on the state of the Church of Norway in 
 HENGSTEXBERG'S "K.-Ztg.," vol. xxxiii., p. 566.
 
 264 DECAY OF CHURCH DISCIPLINE. 
 
 he died, in 1824 ;* but his followers, the Haugeans, were 
 treated with indulgence. The people endeavoured to find in 
 the sermons of lay preachers a compensation for what they 
 failed ,to receive in the Church. At present, among the 
 younger generation of the clergy, a return to Lutheran ortho- 
 doxy is perceptible ; but it is said this tendency has no 
 support in the religious feelings of the people. 2 
 
 On the whole, the latest German writer on the subject 
 describes the state of the Church as wretched, as one which 
 affords abundance of weapons for the attacks of invading 
 sectarians. 3 In the rural districts of both Sweden and 
 Norway, the weekly divine services have fallen off univer- 
 sally. 4 As to Confession, nothing remains of it but " the 
 Absolution," which here, as in Denmark, is given to every one 
 without any previous recapitulation of his sins ; without the 
 applicant having even to answer a single question with a "yes " 
 or " no." In like manner, the visitation of the sick is no 
 longer practised. The complete decay of Church discipline 
 is here also complained of. There is said (by the same 
 German observer) to be but a small circle of religiously 
 awakened people, opposed to a great mass which is lax and 
 thoughtless. There also the pews of the higher classes and 
 official persons frequently stand empty. 5 The laity in 
 general complain of their preachers their worldly-minded- 
 ness their neglect of all care for souls. The clergy plead, 
 in their defence, that they are overwhelmed with worldly 
 business, 6 and al<o the size of their parishes their own 
 farming and family cares ; and the great distance from them 
 and each other of most of the members of their congregation. 
 
 The reference to this last-mentioned circumstance brings 
 us to a feature common to the whole Protestant North I 
 mean the disproportion of the number of preachers to the 
 
 1 FORESTER'S "Norway," 1848 and 1849. London, 1856, p. 308. 
 
 2 KRAUSE'S "K.-Ztg.," 1859, p. 639*. 
 
 8 HENGSTENBERG'S "K.-Ztg.," vol. Ixiii., pp. 769-781. 
 
 4 SARWEY, in his " Theological Studies and Criticisms," 1849, ii. 774. 
 
 5 HENGSTENBKRG'S " K.-Z.," vol. Ixii., p. 499. 
 
 6 SARWEY, " Theol. Studien und Kritiken," ii. 780.
 
 INADEQUATE SUPPLY OF CLERGYMEN. 265 
 
 population, and the spiritual incapacity of the Church con- 
 sequent on this disproportion. In Norway, there are only 
 485 clergymen to 1,500,000 souls; on an average, there 
 are about 3,600 persons to every parish ; and, notwithstand- 
 ing the enormous extent of the parishes, several of them 
 as many as five are often united in the hands of one 
 pastor, in order that he, with his wife and children, may 
 enjoy a more abundant income. Even the English visitor, 
 Forester, expresses his astonishment at this pluralism on a 
 large scale, and the neglect of the people for the benefit of 
 rich priests' families. 1 There are many parishes of from 
 6000 to 12,000 inhabitants, and these scattered over immense 
 districts, who have but one preacher, and but very rarely 
 two. 2 Thus, Holstein has, for 544,419 almost exclusively 
 Lutheran inhabitants, only 192 preachers, two or three of 
 whom also belong to one and the same Church. 3 In all the 
 Scandinavian countries taken together, the Protestant Church 
 is, on the whole, very badly served; that is to say, the 
 number of churches and preachers is quite inadequate, so' 
 that immense masses of persons have it not in their power 
 to attend any religious service. In the Duchy of Schleswig, 
 not a few livings have been abolished since the Reformation, 
 because the clergyman, with his wife and children, found the 
 income too small; so that there are parishes of 13,000 people, 
 dispersed over a vast breadth of country, with only two 
 preachers. In the same way, in Farther Pomerania, in 1850, 
 thirty formerly independent parishes, with as many churches, 
 with a population of 15,000, had, through combination with 
 other districts, disappeared. 4 In all these Scandinavian 
 countries, there are innumerable persons who have never in 
 their lives entered the House of God. 5 In the Russian 
 countries, especially in the Baltic provinces, the Lutherans, 
 whose number in 1854 was 1,834,224, had 192 preachers; 
 
 1 " Norway," p. 309. 
 
 "Darmst. Allg. Kireh.-Ztg.," 1856, p. 1650. 
 
 3 MESSNER'S "K.-Ztg.," 1861, p. 282. 
 
 4 MOSER'S " Kirchenblatt.," 1856, p. 188. 
 * " Darmst. Allg. K.-Ztg.," 1856, p. 1650.
 
 266 SPIRITUAL DESTITUTION. 
 
 so that there was one for every 4394 souls. 1 Thus the 
 people have to suffer, because clergymen deem it to be 
 right, proper, and necessary that they should have and 
 provide for wives and children ! 
 
 1 REUTER'S " Repert.," vol. xciv., p. 168.
 
 267 
 
 THE PROTESTANT CHURCHES IN GERMANY. 
 
 GERMANY is the birth-place of the Reformation. Within the 
 mind of a German man, and that man the greatest of his age, did 
 the Protestant doctrine spring up. Before the superiority and 
 creative energy of that one mind did the aspiring, active 
 portion of the nation humbly and trustingly bend the knee! 
 In him in that union of strength and intellect they 
 recognised their master ; they lived in his thoughts he 
 appeared to them as the hero in whom the nation, with all 
 its characteristics, was incorporated. They admired him ; 
 they gave themselves over to him because they perceived 
 in him their country's most potential, powerful self; because 
 it was their feelings that he expressed more clearly, more 
 eloquently, and with greater power than they would them- 
 selves have been able to give utterance to them. Thus has 
 Luther's name become for Germany not merely the name of 
 a distinguished man he is himself the very core and kernel 
 of a period of national life the centre of a new circle of 
 ideas the most condensed expression of that religious and 
 ethical mode of thought peculiar to the German mind, and 
 from whose mighty influence even those who resisted it 
 could not themselves wholly withdraw. Luther's writings 
 have long ceased to be popularly read ; and are only now 
 consulted by the learned for historical purposes; but the 
 image of his personality is still vivid. His name, his heroic
 
 268 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY. 
 
 figure, still work with an enchanter's power upon the high 
 and low ; and from the magic of his name the Protestant 
 doctrine still derives a portion of its vital power. In other 
 countries, people feel an aversion to adopt the name of the 
 originator of a predominant creed ; but in Germany and in 
 Sweden there are still thousands who are proud to call them- 
 selves " Lutherans." 
 
 Although Protestant Germany forms the smaller portion 
 of the nation, yet this smaller portion is both politically and 
 intellectually the stronger. Politically stronger, for the 
 German dynasties are chiefly Protestant, and what is very 
 important in Germany the administration, even in Catholic 
 districts, is mostly entrusted to Protestant officials, who are 
 zealous for their religion. It is intellectually stronger, for 
 the great majority of the high schools are wholly, or chiefly, 
 in Protestant hands ; and the entire body of literature, which 
 has formed fora hundred years the mental aliment of the 
 higher and middle classes, is, in its widest sense, Protestant 
 that is to say, it has arisen out of the great rupture with the 
 whole past history of Christianity, which the Reformation, in 
 conjunction with the humanism so hostile to the Church 
 had brought about, and which two centuries and a half have 
 rendered permanent. Ever since Lessing extended the 
 Protestant view of the development of Christianity, and of 
 the Church, to the earliest ages, it has applied to the 
 Apostolic times the same standard of motive and cha- 
 racter by which Protestantism has learned to measure the 
 following centuries. By the theory long prevalent (though 
 not always entertained with a full consciousness of its effects, 
 and mingled with much obscurity), viz: that the Christian 
 Church, on the whole, was a failure, and had brought more 
 mischief and falsehood than truth and blessing to the human 
 race, the whole history of Christian nations and states had 
 been rendered soulless and trivial. What had been left by 
 the Reformation, in place of the old Church edifice, could not 
 possibly claim the sympathy and veneration of the educated 
 classes. It is now generally acknowledged, even by believing 
 Protestants, that the whole state of the Church, and of the
 
 LUTHER ANISM AND THEOLOGY. 269 
 
 Protestant theology of that time, had "estranged from 
 Christianity many of the noblest and most gifted men of the 
 nation;" and thus was formed that atmosphere of infidelity, of 
 contempt of all that was Christian, and in which heathenism, 
 or Islamism, appeared more human, more invigorating, and 
 more poetical than the gloomy Galilean doctrine of self- 
 abnegation and sanctification. 
 
 Gervinus has said, in his rough, reckless manner, " We 
 still stand, on the average, much at the same point as Goethe 
 and Schiller, Voss and Jean Paul, Winkelmann and Wieland, 
 Forster and Lichtenberg all of whom ' released themselves 
 from the bonds of dogmatic Christianity.'" 1 Sixteen years 
 have passed since then, and these words are just as true now 
 as they were at that period. Aversion to Christianity, as 
 soon as it attempts to assert itself in life or in science, is still 
 general amongst educated persons, and it opposes itself at 
 every step, as an obstacle, to orthodox Protestantism, as well 
 as to the Catholic Church ; only that the latter is for several 
 reasons and especially because of its firmer organisation 
 and greater power of resistance more energetic, active, and 
 universal. A campaign against the Catholic Church will 
 unite all that is Protestant, positive and negative, and troops 
 of the most heterogeneous combatants, under one banner, and 
 bring about a transitory reconciliation among them. The 
 events in Germany and Switzerland, from 1845 to 1847, and 
 lately again in Baden and Wiirtemberg, have proved this. 
 
 In other Protestant countries the internal want of harmony 
 between the Protestant system and theological science, has 
 mostly led, as we have seen, to the decay or ruin of the 
 Litter. In Germany, however, the theological impulse, united 
 to the general intellectual current in the country, has always 
 been too strong and irresistible. Lutheran orthodoxy has 
 not indeed been able to extinguish it, but it has for nearly 
 two hundred years reduced theology to the condition of a 
 subservient handmaiden; and even though it be but a mutilated 
 theology, deprived of its two eyes Bible study and Church 
 history and limited to dogmatic and polemic discussion. 
 1 " Die Mission der Deutschkatholiken." Heidelberg, 1845.
 
 270 VICTORY OF THEOLOGICAL RATIONALISM. 
 
 After Pietism had inflicted some severe wounds on ortho- 
 doxy, theology roused itself to the struggle for its emanci- 
 pation ; and then was the former mistress soon overthrown, 
 and did not long survive. 
 
 This invasion and complete victory won by theological 
 Rationalism in Germany, almost without a battle, is a re- 
 markable and unique event in history, and one of which the 
 causes have not yet been sufficiently explained. By the long 
 contest with the Helmstadt school, and subsequently with 
 that of Spener, and Pietism, Lutheran theology had been 
 internally and logically developed, but at the same time the 
 logical and moral antinomianism to which it led became 
 
 o 
 
 obvious to the most purblind sight. Towards the middle of 
 the eighteenth century came also the influence of the new 
 Biblical and historical studies. As long as the rule of the 
 Lutheran system maintained itself consistently within the 
 Concordien formula, the study of the Bible was, of course, 
 intentionally neglected. It evidently shrank from the inevi- 
 table conflict with the symbolic books. Professor Heinrich 
 Majus, of Giessen, 1 when he entered on his office, mentioned 
 with censure that with very few, if any, of the universities 
 of Germany, the interpretation of the " Holy Scriptures was 
 made an object of earnest study." Spener gives the same 
 testimony, and lately Tholuck and Liicke 2 have again alluded 
 to the fact that, through the whole seventeenth century, Exe- 
 gesis had fallen completely into disuse and disfavour. In 
 the year 1742, also, Bengel complains, in the preface to his 
 " Gnomon," that " the manifold misuse nay, malicious con- 
 tempt of Scripture, had risen to the highest point, even 
 among those who thought themselves to be philosophical and 
 very spiritual persons." As soon as the study of the Bible 
 had come again into fashion, partly through means of Ben- 
 gel himself, and partly as a reaction against the Pietistic 
 movement, the dissolution of the. Lutheran doctrine began. 
 
 / O 
 
 The tone of historical criticism, and especially the concep- 
 tion of Church History in Germany, contributed greatly to 
 
 1 " Praxis Pietatis, sive Synopsis Theologias Moralis." Gissas, 1697, 
 Pref. " Deutsche Zeitschrift," 1854, p. 178.
 
 
 PROTESTANT CONCEPTION OF CHURCH HISTORY. 271 
 
 this dissolution. The idea that the whole course of develop- 
 ment of Christianity, from the time of the Apostles, had 
 been a continual and ever-increasing malformation, until at 
 last, at the Reformation, this utterly distorted and ruined re- 
 ligion was awakened to new life, had been the prevailing 
 notion since the sixteenth century. In this sense were all 
 histories taught and written. A man who deserves to be 
 
 o 
 
 called the most profound and acute theologian, of the first 
 period of Rationalism, describes this state of opinion : 
 
 " Among Protestants, Church History is nothing else than 
 the historical proof of the necessity of a Church Reforma- 
 tion, and of a perpetual increase of corruption, both in doc- 
 trine and life. According to the Protestants, the Church 
 had been at least, since the eighth century a sink of ig- 
 norance and corruption. All the heads of the Church had 
 been dreadfully false teachers, and the Church itself a com- 
 plete madhouse." He then remarks : " The extreme care 
 with which, on the Protestant side, every fact has been col- 
 lected which could be made to afford the smallest testimony 
 for the former prevalence of corruption in the Church the 
 injustice with which all former chiefs and heads of the Church 
 have been represented as tyrants, and all the members of it 
 as mere heathens and the carelessness with which the good 
 that has always been present in the Church, notwithstanding 
 the great abuses that had crept into it, is overlooked ; this 
 defect in Church History, as treated by Protestants, has 
 been eagerly employed by the enemies of Christianity for 
 their own purposes. 1 
 
 Tollner quotes an expression of Frederick II. 2 in one of 
 his writings, in which the monarch states the customary 
 Protestant account of Church History, namely, " that it was a 
 great drama performed by rogues and hypocrites, at the ex- 
 pense of the deluded masses ;" and such histories he supposes 
 
 1 TOLLXER'S u Kurze Vermischte Aufsatze." Frankfort, a. d. Oder, 
 1769, ii. 87, et seq. 
 
 2 The Preface to " Abrege de 1'Histoire Ecclesiastique de Fleury." 
 BERNE. Berlin, 1767. The book is by De Prades. That the Preface 
 w.is written by the King, Tollner probably did not know.
 
 r 272 DEFECTS OF LUTHERAN ORTHODOXY. 
 
 had been the real cause of the King's contempt for Christi- 
 anity. 
 
 This manner of regarding the history of Christianity 
 completely coincided with the reigning mode of thought and 
 literature of the time, and through it was developed that 
 spiritual revolt from Christianity which was completed in 
 Germany by the simultaneous and reciprocal action of the 
 clergy and the educated classes upon one another. The 
 theology of the Reformers and their followers established 
 the notion that God had withdrawn Himself from the Church 
 after the demise of the Apostles that He had resigned His 
 place to Satan, who thenceforward had undertaken the 
 office which, according to the promises in the Gospel, the 
 Holy Ghost should have fulfilled and so established a dia- 
 bolical millennium, which continued until the appearance of 
 Luther. 1 When faith in the infallible truth of the symbolic 
 books became in a few years extinct, 2 in consequence of the 
 new Biblical studies when, after the accession of Frede- 
 rick II., Lutheran orthodoxy lost more and more the protec- 
 tion of the ecclesiastical power of the State when the Theo- 
 logians began more and more mercilessly to expose the de- 
 fects and contradictions of the Lutheran reformation doc- 
 trine, 3 then all the supports of religious feeling at once were 
 tumbled down and prostrated. The entire education of the 
 people, the ideas they had imbibed with their mother's milk, 
 all was calculated to make them regard the whole history of 
 Christianity before the Reformation as a churchyard covered 
 with decayed and sunken tombstones, and with mouldering 
 bones, and where ghostly shadows alone were wandering. 
 
 1 See also SEMLER'S " Lebenbeschreibung," ii. 156, concerning the 
 part in Church history assigned to the devil by the Protestant world. 
 
 * " In the year 1770 there existed not a single theologian in a Protestant 
 university who would approve any work that did not confine itself 
 within the systematic formulae." SACK'S " Lebensbeschreibung," i. 252. 
 What a change must have taken place in fifteen years ! 
 
 1 It is especially in TOLLNER'S writings (which, on dogmatic subjects, 
 are far more important than those of Semler) that the decomposing pro- 
 cess going on in Protestant theology and the Genesis of Rationalism may 
 be perceived.
 
 PROGRESS OF "RATIONAL" CHRISTIANITY. 273 
 
 With the faith in the Divine Guidance of the Church fell 
 also all faith in its divine origin. The root was judged by 
 the stem ; the beginning judged by the subsequent career 
 judged and condemned ! 
 
 And thus, then, there remained for the men who held office 
 under, and got their bread by Christianity, nothing else to 
 fall back upon but that aggregate of empty, unsupported 
 notions concerning God, morality, and immortality, to which 
 the name of Rationalism has been given. 
 
 So much the more certain and powerful became the effect 
 produced by the writings of Semler, Lessing, Reirnarus ; by 
 the prestige of the example of Frederick II. ; and by the 
 philosophy of Imrnanuel Kant. In the course of a few years 
 the whole class of German Protestant preachers and the 
 theologians at the universities the first amongst them had 
 fallen off from the old positive faith. The entire of the new 
 generation of clergy grew up in Rationalism ; and stone after 
 stone was taken from the Temple, and carried away by its 
 own priests. From the pulpits even of village churches the 
 new " Rational" Christianity was preached ; whilst only a 
 few remote congregations remained in undisturbed possession 
 of the old faith ;' and in the cities the preachers were often 
 Rationalists before the best educated among the middle classes 
 had fallen victims to that wide-spread Deistical enlightenment, 
 which had been so carefully cherished by the new and flourish- 
 ing literature of Germany. A Mecklenburg preacher repeats 
 what he has heard from the lips of an old clergyman : " That 
 the rapidity with which the mockery of infidelity was effacing 
 from language and manners the old forms of faith in that 
 country, bordered upon the marvellous." 2 
 
 In France, about the same time, frivolous infidelity had 
 seized on the higher ranks of society, but the clergy re- 
 mained, on the whole, untouched by it ; and even amid the 
 
 1 Thus it is said in the New Dorpat " Zeitschrift Theol.," i., 588: " In 
 many out-of-the-way districts of Westphalia, the Rhine country, and 
 Western Schleswig, there are parishes that have never been touched by 
 the Rationalist poison." 
 
 4 RHEINWALD'S " Repert," viii. 259.
 
 274 PRINCELY EPISCOPAL SUPREMACY. 
 
 storms of the Revolution, it was only a comparatively small 
 number of priests that became apostates. The great ma- 
 jority remained, even under the most fearful persecutions, 
 true to their faith. In Protestant Germany, on the contrary, 
 it was theology especially which completed the work of 
 destruction it was the clerical class that introduced to con- 
 gregations, both in town and country, their open or veiled 
 Naturalism, and brought on that defection of the masses 
 from Christianity before which men now stand wringing their 
 hands and knowing not what to do. 
 
 Rationalism has not, on the whole, had any great influence 
 on the relations of Church and State, or on the constitution 
 of the Church. The Reformation had already here done all 
 that was essential. Germany Wittenberg, is the true birth- 
 place of princely episcopal supremacy and territorialism. 
 The princes received the supreme power from the hands of 
 theologians, not " although" but " because" they were princes. 
 It was their right and their duty, they were told, to under- 
 take the government of the Church, as a branch and an 
 efflux of their political sovereignty. When a man now living 
 says, " Let the name of Episcopacy (of the prince) be left, as 
 a memorial of the disgrace of the Church until she shall re- 
 pent and do penance," he expresses a thought that was 
 totally foreign to the first and second generation of German 
 Protestants which is still foreign to the majority of preachers 
 and Consistorial Councils, even though many laymen may be 
 of the same way of thinking as Hommel. 1 
 
 Since the Princes and Estates of the Empire in Ger- 
 many have come into possession, to an unlimited extent, of 
 Protestant ecclesiastical power, there have arisen in Germany 
 as many Churches as there are principalities or territories. 
 The attempt to establish a united German Protestant, Lu- 
 theran, or Calvinistic Reformed Church was never made. 
 Every one was content with the existing state of things; 
 that in every little territory there should be a different 
 Evangelical Church ; and that this crowd of Churches should 
 
 1 HOMMEL, u Die wahre Gestalt der Bayerischen Landeskirche,'' 
 1850, p. 26.
 
 STATE-DEPENDENCE OF THE CHURCHES. 275 
 
 have no one point of union except antagonism to the Catholic 
 Church. At the Diets the Corpus Evangelicorum formed a 
 kind of representative body ; and there was, on the whole, 
 much similarity of doctrine, although the individual Churches 
 had their own symbolic books, and very various liturgies. 
 And thus there was, in fact, only an aggregate of National 
 Churches. Before the dissolution of the German Em- 
 pire, the number of independent separate Churches was 
 much greater. " Germany," says Ernest Solomon Cyprian, 1 
 " has, with its isolated Evangelical Churches, if we reckon 
 the free Equestrian order (the Ritterscliaft), more than a 
 thousand independent rulers ; for each one can do with his 
 own congregation all that the Pope can do in the Roman See. 
 Who can expect that so many masters, of such various tem- 
 peraments and inclinations, and exposed to such different 
 temptations to sin and disorder, can ever be brought to har- 
 monious agreement ?" This state of things, Cyprian thinks, 
 both explains and palliates the numerous faults and abomina- 
 tions of the German Church system. The Church (he says) 
 is only answerable for her doctrine, and that, fortunately, 
 is everywhere good, sound Lutheranism ! 
 
 There are now in Germany about thirty-eight Protestant 
 Churches, each of which is independent of the other, and has 
 its own organization ; and since in each of the States the 
 Church has been degraded into a mere branch of the Admi- 
 nistration has been inserted as a wheel in the great State 
 machine it has come to pass that all the threads of ecclesias- 
 tical government come together, and are united in the hands 
 of a single Government official, the Minister of Public Wor- 
 ship. Thus, in Saxony, for instance, it depends entirely on 
 the judgment of their Minister what amount of attention he 
 will pay to the recommendation of the Consistory of the 
 country in Church affairs; 2 and, as a matter of fact, the 
 destinies of the Saxon Church are wholly within his grasp. 
 
 1 Preface to GROSCH, "Xothw. Vertheidigung der Evangelischen 
 Kirche," 1745. p. 33. 
 
 7 See hereupon LEHMAXN, " Zur Frage der Xeugestaltung der evang. 
 luth. Kirche Sachsens." Dresden, 1861, p. 6. 
 
 T 2
 
 276 THE "UNION."" 
 
 The case is the same in Hanover ; the Minister acts in 
 Church affairs without asking the advice or opinion of the 
 Consistory, and the Consistory has really nothing more to do 
 than to execute the commands of the Minister. 1 
 
 If in some countries the institution of Synods has been 
 added to that of the Consistory and Monarchial Episcopacy, 
 it has imparted no especial dignity to the Constitutional 
 structure ; for the Synods are chiefly composed of theologians 
 and preachers, and the lay element is very sparsely repre- 
 sented in them ; whilst the decrees of Synods and of the 
 Church government united, have proved impotent when op- 
 posed to the resistance of the laity in Bavaria, Baden, and 
 the Palatinate. 
 
 The " Union" which was begun in Prussia, and imitated else- 
 where, has, since 1817, amalgamated the Lutheran and Cal- 
 vinist Reformed Churches, and given an essentially different 
 form to German Protestantism. The new Church thus 
 formed was to take the name of the "Evangelical Church ;" 
 and it was the Prussian Government especially which in- 
 sisted upon the introduction of this name, because " Pro- 
 testant" was a party name, and did not sound so well as 
 "Evangelical." 2 The members of the united Church have, 
 therefore, ceased to be Lutherans or Calvinists, and have 
 become " Evangelicals." The names of " Lutheran " and 
 "Protestant" were to be omitted wherever it was possible; 
 and lately the Consistory of the Province of Pomerania has 
 declared that the general term "Evangelical" does not any 
 longer signify what it did in 1818. It has already passed into 
 State documents as, for example, into that of the Constitu- 
 tion of 1850. It does not there specially designate " the 
 union," but is a collective term to express opposition to Ca- 
 tholicism. In official notifications the term "Evangelical" 
 
 O 
 
 is, therefore, not to be discontinued. 3 
 
 1 REUTER'S u Repert.," vol. Ixiv., p. 277. 
 
 1 See HAUPT'S u Hanbuch iiber die Religions-Angelegenheiten im K. 
 Preussen," 1822, ii. 160. KAMPZ, ' Aunalen," 1821, p. 341. 
 
 * See WILSIXG, u Die reformirte Kirche in Deutschland." Altona, 
 1853, p. 123.
 
 CONDITION OF THE GERMAN LUTHERAN CHURCH. 277 
 
 In consequence of this " Union," then, there are now, theo- 
 logically considered, three Churches, instead of the former 
 two, in Germany the Lutheran, the Reformed, and the 
 United or Evangelical. Genuine Calvinism, for which the 
 Dordrecht decisions serve as a standard, has almost died 
 out in Germany ; for there is said to be left only one congre- 
 gation professing it. With the other, not united congrega- 
 tions, "Reformed" generally means nothing more than that 
 the Lutheran doctrine of the Communion is rejected. On 
 the other hand, the old Lutheran Church has also vanished 
 from the German soil. The name can but be claimed by the 
 31,000 Prussian Lutherans who have remained as a separate 
 body ; but these are not recognised by the Lutherans of 
 Saxony and elsewhere as true disciples of Luther on the 
 contrary, they are reproached with having made important 
 and objectionable variations from his doctrine. The former 
 Lutheran congregations, which have joined the Union, can, 
 however, scarcely be called Lutheran any longer, for the mode 
 of celebrating the Communion has been accommodated to that 
 of the " Reformed," or " United," and it is upon this point 
 that the most decisive and distinguishing mark of a Church 
 union lies. There are also certain ceremonies and institu- 
 tions in which Lutheranism formerly differed from Calvinism 
 these have been abandoned, as well as, and before all 
 others, that of private confession. When, therefore, Stahl 
 complains (as he did lately), of a threatened approaching 
 absorption of the Lutheran Church into that of the Union, 1 
 it may be answered that in Germany the German Lutheran 
 Church now only exists in the wishes and yearnings of some 
 few theologians, pastors, and jurists, and by no means is a 
 reality or concrete church establishment. There is only the 
 difference of " more " or "less" between the united and non- 
 united churches. 
 
 The " Union" was the personal act of the King of Prussia, 
 
 effected by him under the influence of his dynastic interests, 
 
 and with the view of producing an ecclesiastical reconciliation 
 
 between the Royal House of Prussia (which, since 1613, had 
 
 1 " Die lutherische Kirche und die Union." Preface, p. viii.
 
 278 OBJECT OF THE " UNION." 
 
 renounced Lutheranism and adhered to the doctrine of 
 Calvin) and the preponderating Lutheran population of the 
 country. An Agenda, the work of the king himself, was to 
 serve as the chief cement of the Union ; but it struck upon 
 greater difficulties than the Union itself, as the introduction 
 of liturgical elements into the sefvice was regarded as a dan- 
 gerous approximation to the practice of the Catholic Church. 
 On the whole, " the Union " was accepted with marvellous 
 ease and promptitude by both preachers and congregations ; 
 people were pretty well agreed that the doctrines in which 
 they differed were of no special importance, and might be 
 properly left alone. It was the question of fees for con- 
 fessions, and not upon any difference of doctrine, that 
 made Schleiermacher, for a short time, fear that the work of 
 peace would be wrecked. It was considered, too, that a 
 united Church would be stronger and much more respectable 
 as opposed to Catholicity. 
 
 Throughout Protestant Germany the disposition of the 
 preachers and their congregations was alike favourable to the 
 "Union;" and it was established speedily, and without the 
 smallest resistance, in Nassau, the Bavarian Rhine provinces, 
 Baden, Anhalt, and Wiirtemberg; and if such was not also the 
 case in Saxony, Hanover, Mecklenburg, and Bavaria, the cause 
 was discoverable in the small number of Calviuists in those 
 countries. 
 
 The King of Prussia had declared that it was a 
 ritual merely, and not a doctrinal amalgamation, had been 
 proposed by "the Union" but the two could not be sepa- 
 rated. Several preachers and village congregations who felt 
 this to be the fact, and perceived that the Union would be 
 the annihilation of the Lutheran Confession, wished to hold 
 themselves aloof from it ; but the Government determined to 
 treat them as " dangerous sectaries," according to the pre- 
 scriptions of the general law of the country 1 that is to say, 
 to inflict punishments upon them, expatriation, imprisonment, 
 and military executions. In Berlin the Bishops Eylert and 
 Neander had come to a complete understanding. The 
 present General-Superintendent, Hahn, marched at the head 
 
 1 EILER'S " Meine Wanderung (lurch's Leben," iv. 204.
 
 REVIVAL OF THEOLOGY. 279 
 
 of a military force against the refractory congregations. The 
 Minister Altenstein spoke in accordance to the theory of 
 " the limited understanding of subjects." "It was the duty of 
 the Government to protect the deluded people against the 
 consequences of their own thoughtless actions." 1 Thousands 
 were compelled to emigrate to America, and not one single voice 
 was raised in all Protestant Germany on behalf of the suf- 
 ferers, who had been treated with refined cruelty, and against 
 whom the whole apparatus of bureaucratic methods of 
 coercion had been employed. The entire liberal press 
 approved and applauded what had been thus done. 
 
 The Lutherans had rightly judged that " the Union " 
 would inevitably lean to two results : the dissolution of 
 Lutheranism, and the spread of dogmatic indifferentism 
 that is to say, of infidelity. As soon as Frederick William 
 IV. had set free the imprisoned preachers, they established, 
 at a synod at Breslau in 1841, a separate Lutheran Church 
 at the head of which was the jurist Huschke, and which 
 soon obtained from the Government recognition and tolera- 
 tion as a separate sectarian Church. 
 
 Theology, in the meanwhile, had begun again to raise 
 itself from the slough of unspiritual, unbelieving Rationalism. 
 The accession of Frederick William IV. who, as a zealous 
 friend of his church, immediately promised and afforded it 
 the most powerful protection gave a new impulse to a ten- 
 dency towards the Positive, already awakened and encou- 
 raged by excellent teachers at the Universities. The 
 believing theologians and preachers saw themselves every- 
 where preferred by the Government; the rising generation of 
 students turned towards them ; and then there came to 
 divide the feelings of old and young the catastrophe of 1848, 
 which struck terror into the whole Protestant clergy of 
 North Germany, and showed them in the perspective the 
 threatened rule of a multitude destitute of religion through the 
 fault of the clergy themselves. In Prussia the reign of 
 Hegel's Pantheism was at an end the Pantheism to which 
 the minister Altenstein had given up both schools and 
 
 1 EILER'S "Meine Wanderung durch's Leben," iv. 235.
 
 280 " UNION," OR (l RECONCILEMENT THEOLOGY." 
 
 pulpits. By degrees theological educational offices were all 
 filled by believing professors. Jena and Giessen alone 
 remained on the hands of the Rationalists. In the new and 
 now orthodox theology a twofold direction was soon 
 observed, proceeding from two different assumptions, and 
 leading to very different results. Chiefly on the foundation laid 
 by Schleiermacher and Neander, there was formed a " Union," 
 or "reconcilement theology," represented by Nitzsch, 
 Julius Miiller, Dorner, Liicke, Rothe and others. By the 
 side of this arose a Lutheran theology, encouraged especially 
 in Erlangen, Dorpat, Leipsig, and Rostock. It declared 
 itself at first as merely a Repristination theology, as the doc- 
 trine simply of the Concordian formula, translated from the 
 language of the sixteenth into that of the nineteenth century. 
 But this soon manifested itself to be a sheer impossibility for 
 scientifically instructed and energetically disciplined men. 
 This dreary undertaking was abandoned to a few pastors, at 
 the head of whom was Ruclelbach, who could now boast that, 
 as "old Lutherans," they cultivated the only genuine 
 Lutheran theology so that if Luther should come back to 
 earth he might recognise the contributors to the " Zeitschrift 
 fur lutherische Theologie" as his own true sons and spiritual 
 heirs. In the Universities, with scarcely a single exception, 
 they declined having anything to do with this Lutheranism ; 
 and in them (the Universities) was formed the party of " the 
 new Lutherans," represented by such men as Kahnis, 
 Delitzsch, Kliefoth, Stahl, and others, with whom are also to 
 be mentioned Harnack, Vilmar, Petri, and Miinchmeyer. 
 These theologians declare that they keep to the Lutheran 
 doctrine of Justification, but will not be bound by the 
 favourite Protestant dogma of " the invisibility of the 
 Church," and a "universal priesthood." Since they main- 
 tain the idea of a divine institution of the office of the 
 Church, in opposition to that of a mere transmission by the 
 congregation, they are logically compelled to the acceptance 
 of another divinely ordained transmission, namely, that of the 
 Sacrament of Ordination. They profess, therefore, opinions 
 concerning " office " and " ordination," " sacrament " and
 
 DISSATISFACTION WITH THE " UNION." 281 
 
 "sacrifice," which have brought on them from all sides the 
 reproach of " Catholicity." " You are already," it is said, 
 " close to the gates of Rome a little further on, and you 
 will find yourselves inside of the Eternal City." 1 That 
 this German Lutheran Puseyisrn must, like the Anglican, 
 lead to a union with the Papists, is the opinion expressed 
 in the " Zeitschrift " of Guerike and Rudelbach. 2 
 
 Of the preachers in Prussia who are dissatisfied with " the 
 Union," only a small number has left the Church : the great 
 majority has remained within it, partly because they could 
 not rely on their congregations partly because they did not 
 like to renounce fixed incomes, to become dependent upon 
 the will of their congregations. 3 But they would like to 
 throw oft' the yoke of " the Union," and withdraw themselves 
 as far as possible from a community with Calvinism in 
 doctrine and worship. They will not, however, give up 
 their position in "the Union Church," because it is "the 
 State Church," and one does not like to forego its rights and 
 advantages by separating from it; and, also, because one 
 can contend against " the Union " much more effectually 
 when within its precincts than from the outside. The 
 Unionists declare that, were the Union dissolved, there 
 would be at least five Churches in Prussia. It would be the 
 most "un-Prussian act" that could be committed; and it 
 is added, " that they who endeavour to bring about the abo- 
 lition of the Union are the enemies of Prussia." 4 
 
 The ordinances of Frederick William IV. sought to con- 
 tent the Lutheran or Confessional party at the head of 
 which stood Stahl and Hensstenberg by various conces- 
 
 o / 
 
 sions, and, at the same time, to restrain it within certain 
 limits, by a renewed proclamation of the principles of " the 
 Union." Finally, in the year 1857, "the English Evange- 
 lical Alliance" was summoned to Berlin to strengthen the 
 
 1 LEHMANN, pp. 2, 6. 2 " Jahrgang," 1853, p. 163. 
 
 3 See the declaration of LENZ, " Denkschrift liber die neuesten kirch- 
 lichen Bewegungen in Pommern." Berlin, 1858, p. 43. 
 
 * The General- Superintendent HOFFMANN, " Verhandlungen der Berl. 
 Kirchl. Conferenz.," 1857, p. 577.
 
 282 THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE IN BERLIN. 
 
 cause of " the Union." Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, 
 Congregationalism,' Calvinist Anglicans, and other sects, im- 
 pelled by their common hatred to the Catholic Church to 
 fraternize (but reserving their differences), proclaimed that 
 " they came to Berlin to bear testimony against the new- 
 Pharisees and Sadducees." And the heads of the United 
 Lutherans very clearly perceived that the first designation 
 was meant to apply to themselves. On the other hand, 
 Hoffmann, Nitzsch, Schenkel, Krummacher, Heppe, Sack, 
 Kapff, Plitt, Ledderhose, and a numerous band of German 
 spiritual kindred, declared that these Enwlish-Scotch-Ameri- 
 can " Denominations " were " flesh of their flesh and bone of 
 their bone," and welcome fellow-combatants in the battle 
 against exclusive Lutheranism and "Rome." 1 It ought to 
 be considered, they cried out to these members of many 
 creeds, that " the Alliance" consisted only of good Protestant 
 denominations, and all professing the grand fundamental 
 doctrine of Justification by imputed righteousness ; and that 
 only by such an " Alliance " could it be possible to represent, 
 on the Protestant side, the essential unity of the Church of 
 Christ. 2 
 
 When the grand display was over, the Lutherans scorn- 
 fully asked, "What permanent end had been attained by it?" 
 By thus calling in foreigners, they had cast suspicion and 
 raised accusations against their German fellow-believers, 
 with whom they had hitherto lived in peace ; and they had, 
 by fraternizing with erroneous believers, confirmed them in 
 their error. 3 In fact, the result of this " Communion of 
 Saints" made visible in Berlin was that the general confu- 
 sion was greatly increased, the doubts and uncertainties of 
 the laity strengthened, and the people confirmed in the idea 
 that theologians and preachers had themselves no fixed doc- 
 trines ; and that, after all, perhaps doctrine was a matter of 
 very little consequence. "The Union" had previously pro- 
 vided that the people should be much puzzled what to believe 
 
 1 Stahl's speech in HENGSTENBERG'S "K.-Ztg.," 1857, p. 553. 
 
 2 LIEBETRUT, u Die Evangel. Allianz." Berlin, 1857, p. 27. 
 * WANGEMANN'S "Preuss. Kirchengesch.,'' iii. 750.
 
 TONE OF THE ASSEMBLY. 283 
 
 concerning the Lord's Supper ; and now, through lt the Alli- 
 ance," Baptism also was placed among the articles of 
 which no one knew what was to be taught as certainly 
 true. 
 
 The chief promoter of the Berlin Alliance Assembly was 
 Von Bunsen, who, as Geheimrath Eilers 1 testifies, was 
 possessed with the idea of uniting all non-Catholic Confes- 
 sions and Sects into one grand Evangelical union against 
 the Catholic Church. After the death of Frederick Wil- 
 liam III., it was expected and desired, in the higher official 
 world of Berlin where, in the words of the same statesman, 2 
 " hatred to Catholicity had awakened an interest for the 
 Evangelicals " that Bunsen would be appointed to the 
 Ministry of Spiritual Affairs, and the demonstration of the 
 Alliance in the German metropolis of Protestantism was 
 welcomed in those circles for the same reason. The same 
 men who, at the Church Assembly at Bremen in 1852, had 
 declared the struggle against " Rome " to be the first and 
 most pressing affair to be considered, 3 formed also the kernel 
 of the Berlin Alliance gathering. Hatred to the Catholic 
 Church, and joy at every injury, real or imaginary, to it, 
 constituted the fundamental tone to the whole proceedings 
 of the Assembly ; but whatever else was of permanent con- 
 sequence solely to the Protestant Church system, was 
 regarded by the orthodox Lutherans and Confessionalists as a 
 blow aimed at themselves. 
 
 Since the illness and retirement of King Frederick Wil- 
 liam IV. from the Government, which followed immediately 
 
 1 " Wanderung durch's Leben," iv. 48. * Ibid., iv. 41. 
 
 3 Against HENGSTEXBERG'S speech concerning the relation of the 
 Catholic Church, especially of its mission, arose a cloud of witnesses. 
 ZANDER'S speech closed with the words, " Let us attack the enemy 
 where he is to be found, namely, in the heart of Rome," and after this, 
 " the sluices were opened, and the waters rose high." " Babel must 
 fall." " Rome is an offspring of hell." " The infernal system of the 
 Papacy evokes hatred, and the Gospel must, as long as Rome is Rome, 
 hold no fellowship with it." These were the fundamental chords that 
 were struck. Thus reports the " Neue Preussiche Zeitung," Sept. 19, 
 1852.
 
 284 STATE OF INDIVIDUAL PROTESTANT CHURCHES. 
 
 the Alliance Assembly, there has been a kind of truce entered 
 upon. Those disposed to Lutheranism shake from time to 
 time indignantly the ecclesiastical chains that " the Union " 
 has imposed upon them ; but they do not talk any longer 
 of leaving the State Church. Some have endeavoured to 
 establish themselves in countries that have remained Lu- 
 theran, but the majority feel themselves weak, because they 
 are, in fact, nothing more than a party of theologians and 
 pastors, without any flocks to follow them. Goschel, one of 
 the temporal leaders of Lutheranism, mournfully confessed, 
 lately, "that the Lutheran Church of Germany was really 
 in a dying state. It has lost for the most part its very 
 name ; in many countries it has already fallen to ruin, and 
 the cause of its destruction is the prevailing indifferentism." 
 A reaction has indeed been aroused against the absorption of 
 Lutheranism by "the Union," but it is utterly wanting in 
 energy it is sick with all kinds of hesitations and scruples. 1 
 "Throughout Germany," says a Wiirtemberg theologian, 2 
 " the Lutheran Church is become a mere name to the peo- 
 ple ; and as to the educated classes and theologians, it has 
 with them been cut down to the root. 'Lutheran' has be- 
 come in Wiirtemberg an obnoxious and abusive sectarian 
 epithet." 
 
 If we now proceed to the contemplation of the state of 
 individual Churches in Protestant Germany, there is first to 
 be noted especially since 1846 a very active life, and an 
 impulse to ecclesiastical construction and improvement among 
 the clergy, and the laity friendly to them. Numerous dis- 
 cussions at Conferences and Church-days, provincial and 
 general, have taken place ; and a considerable number of 
 institutions of an educational or ethical character, or for the 
 physical welfare of the people, have been established through 
 the " Home Mission." But all great and really religious 
 problems await their solution ; and very few people have 
 even made an attempt to come to an understanding as to 
 how the problem can be solved. 
 
 1 " Zeitschrift fur luth. Theolog.," 1860, p. 310. 
 * In SCHAFF'S " Kirchenfretmd," 1857, p. 67.
 
 THE CHURCH CONSTITUTION. 285 
 
 The very first question that of the Church Constitution 
 the retention or abolition of the Episcopacy of the temporal 
 sovereign is at the outset calculated to cause a division. 
 
 O ' 
 
 and to discourage the friends of the Church. In most coun- 
 tries, it is thought that the Csesaro-Papacy is a chief cause 
 of the decay of the Church. " What really oppresses our 
 Church" (the writer is speaking especially of Saxony) "is 
 the bureaucracy and the temporalization of the Church in all 
 its institutions, so that all is bureaucratically governed, and 
 spiritual affairs are disposed of like any other common 
 matter of business. 1 
 
 It is now well known what was thought of his own Supre- 
 macy by the monarch who, among all the princes of modern 
 times, was the wisest and most clear-sighted friend of the 
 Protestant Church. The state of the German Churches, we 
 find, was in his eyes "absurd and untenable." "The terri- 
 torial system, and the supremacy of the sovereign," says 
 Frederick William IV., "are of such a nature, that one alone 
 would be sufficient to kill a church, were it mortal." He then 
 mentions, as a highly characteristic fact, that the abolition of 
 the Consistory (in the year 1808), and the transference of its 
 business to the government authorities, had been allowed to 
 pass as a purely indifferent administrative measure, in which 
 " the Church " was by no means concerned. " With all his 
 soul and with all his strength " the king said, " he longed for 
 the moment in which he might resign his Church supremacy 
 to Bishops, with whatever name it might be thought fit to 
 bestow upon them." 2 
 
 Every important change in the state of things previously 
 existing is regarded, however, with fear and trembling, even 
 though the subserviency of the Church, and its absorption 
 into the organism of the State, are felt to be oppressive and 
 degrading. " Take from the Church," it is said, " in its 
 present shattered condition a condition that has become 
 much worse since 1848 the support and strength it receives 
 
 1 HENGSTENBERG'S "K.-Z.," 1851, p. 99. 
 
 2 L. RICHTER'S " Konig Friedrich-Wilhelm IV., und die Verfassung 
 der evangel. -Kirche." Berlin, 1861, pp. 22, 38.
 
 286 THE INSTITUTION OF SYNODS. 
 
 from having the sovereign as its head and guardian, and you 
 will see that it will fall asunder so completely that no one 
 will ever be able to re-unite the fragments." 1 Up to this 
 time it has never appeared that the orthodox have anywhere 
 shewn themselves at all in earnest with the principle of 
 Church independence. "The majority" warns and threatens 
 them with fatal consequences. The only country in which 
 a really new Church constitution has been introduced is 
 Baden; and this does, in fact, appear as a terrifying example, 
 although its originators regard their modern constitution 
 as "a model for the whole of Evangelical Germany." Their 
 plan is a transference of "political constitutionalism" to the 
 Church a change even in the idea and essence of the 
 Church which is hereby transformed from " a community of 
 all who think to be justified by faith in Christ " into " a com- 
 munity of those who," according to the expression of a 
 government organ, " believe in the moral order of the 
 world." 2 
 
 High hopes were placed for many years in the institution 
 of the Synods. In Prussia in all Germany great things 
 were expected from these assemblies; but they were required 
 that was the first condition to leave the Episcopacy of 
 the sovereign untouched, and restrict themselves to a merely 
 deliberative character ; and to play the part rather of a 
 convocation of Church notables than of a modern constitu- 
 tional representative assembly. The first attempts were not 
 encouraging. Concerning the ecclesiastical conference of the 
 Deputies from German Princes, held in 1845, in Berlin, it is 
 said : lt The first attempt was the last, and remained without 
 any visible result." 3 Then came the splendidly-composed 
 General Synod of 1846, including the very flower of theo- 
 logical intelligence, and of the religiously-disposed portion 
 of the Government. It undertook the solution of the most 
 difficult religious questions, and desired to set aside the 
 
 1 MESSNER'S " K.-Zeitung," 1860, p. 84. 
 MESSNER'S " K.-Ztg.," July, 1861. 
 
 1 RICJITER'S " Geschichte der evangel. Kirchenverfassung in Deutsch- 
 laml," p. 253.
 
 OBJECTIONS TO THEM. 287 
 
 confessional writings of the old Reformers, and introduce a 
 new formula. This, which was drawn up by Nitzsch, was, 
 however, made so vague and verbose, in order that it might 
 be acceptable to all parties, that, as the Lutherans said, " it did 
 not attribute too much faith to the unbelieving, nor too much 
 incredulity to the believing." Although approved by the Synod, 
 it became a jest to the public in general; and a few months after 
 the termination of the Synod, no one would have anything to do 
 with the resolutions that had been passed by great majorities. 1 
 New attempts at Synods were made in Berlin in the years 
 1856 and 1857. The King desired to have them, but he 
 was warned " that, by calling them together, he made 
 obvious to all the world the imperfection and disorders of the 
 Church, which otherwise had been partly a secret of the 
 authorities, and were known in all their extent only to a few 
 of the initiated." 2 The impossibility of a Synod devising 
 anything tenable in the way of a Confession of Faith, and 
 steering a safe course between the claims of the Union and 
 
 o 
 
 of the Lutherans, but especially the anxiety as to the form 
 in which this Synodical system was likely to develope itself, 
 occasioned this plan to be again dropped. One thing was 
 dreaded and detested as the worst that could happen to the 
 Church namely, the rule of "majorities," or that Church- 
 democracy so warmly recommended by Bunsen. " If," said 
 Kothe, "the majority of those who count themselves as 
 members of our Church is to decide concerning matters of 
 faith, and doctrine, and worship, the Church established 
 according to their notions will soon have little more of a 
 Christian Church left in it." 3 
 
 If we now turn to the doctrinal-theological side of the 
 German Protestant Church, we shall acknowledge, that here 
 even at the present time is its chief strength and fame. 
 That only in Germany does there now exist a real Protestant 
 
 1 HENGSTENBERG, in the " Aktenstiicken der Evang. Oberkirchen- 
 raths," 1856, iii., ii., p. 25. 
 
 * HENGSTENBERG, 1856, iii., ii. 
 
 " Ethik," iii. 1041. See HENGSTEXBERG'S " K.-Ztg.," 1856, p. 533.
 
 288 A THEOLOGICAL CHURCH. 
 
 theology, a science of theology, is generally acknowledged. 
 All other Churches of the Reformation obtain their theological 
 nutriment as far as they feel the want of any from the 
 Germans. Julius Miiller and Liebner are quite in the right 
 the former, when he designates theology, " with its restless 
 spirit of inquiry, and its earnest desire to dig deep," as the 
 actual charisma of German Protestantism ;' the latter, when 
 he paints the contrast between the burden of ignorance 
 which lies on the Protestant Church so that the "city upon 
 a hill is scarcely any more to be seen, or the eye is blinded 
 to it," and the splendid efforts of the German theologians of 
 the present day. 2 
 
 The Protestant Church of Germany is, before all things, and 
 essentially, a Theological Church. Theologians, literati, learned 
 university men, created it, and fixed on it,ineflfaceably,the stamp 
 of their own thoughts and actions. Theologians form its only 
 authority, and, through the advice they give to princes, may be 
 called its rulers. Its "churches" are, consequently, "schools," 
 or "lecture-halls;" and its "pulpits," "professorial chairs." It 
 began its existence with the theses of an academical dispu- 
 tation. The " word," as its founder was accustomed to say 
 (and he never really departed from his professorial character), 
 is, in fact, all first and last and its only word. It lec- 
 tures, makes its bow, and withdraws ; it preaches, and it 
 sings, but its "chaunts" are not "hymns;" they are, for 
 the most part, nothing more than " versified theological 
 treatises," or " sermons in rhyme." It is a Church born of a 
 connubial alliance between professors and princes; the features 
 of both parents are discernible in its features, though not 
 exactly in harmonious combination ; and if it is frequently 
 reproached with being " sicklied o'er with the pale cast of 
 thought " and that it is " temporalized " and that it is to 
 be regarded as an institution rather than a Church why, 
 that is but merely saying that -"the child cannot deny its 
 
 1 " Fortbildung der Deutsch-protestantischen Kircbenverfassung " 
 p. 4. 
 
 2 " Zur Kirchlichen Prinzipienfrage der Gegenwart." Dresden, 
 1860, p. 24, et seq.
 
 MODIFICATIONS OF LUTHERANISM. 289 
 
 own father and mother." And so it is possible that the 
 judgment passed upon it by the richest intellect and most 
 profound mind among living Protestant theologians may 
 prove to be prophetic " The Protestant Church in Ger- 
 many," he says, "has educated a theology" (I should reverse 
 this relation), " which, in the course of time and that by no 
 accidental process, but by the necessity of its very existence 
 will be brought into the most complete hostility with the 
 same Church, and enter on a course, of which the sole, 
 inevitable result must be its complete dissolution." 1 
 
 Theology in Germany has indeed again become believing, 
 but much is wanting to its being a rightly believing one in 
 the sense of the confessional writings. Even those theo- 
 logians who boast particularly of their faithful devotion to 
 the Lutheran system are not orthodox. " The fact is ob- 
 vious to every one," says Julius Miiller, " that among all the 
 Lutheran theologians who have lately published any com- 
 prehensive works in the domain of doctrines of faith, there 
 is not a single one who does not consider the Lutheran sym- 
 bolic books as requiring modification in some point or other." 2 
 And here come into consideration definitions of profound 
 importance. " For many years," said Ehrenberg, at the 
 Berlin General Synod, " he had been looking for a man who 
 agreed in all points with the symbolic books of his con- 
 fession, but as yet he had never found one." 3 For a century 
 it has been maintained that no theologian, whether from his 
 professorial chair or in the pulpit, has been instructing his 
 hearers in complete accordance, either as to form and sub- 
 stance, with the symbolical books. 4 And so imperiously 
 does this position, especially in reference to the solemn con- 
 fession of faith, bear upon the clergy, that they have found 
 out a way by which they might make that which is the fact 
 appear to be in accordance with what was required both by 
 law and custom. 
 
 1 ROTHE'S " Theologische Ethik," iii. 1015. 
 
 * " Deutsche Zeitschrift," 1855, p. 107. 
 
 * " Verhandlungen der evang. Generalsynode zu Berlin," p. 301. 
 
 * " Monatschrift fur die unirte evang. Kirche," 1847, ii. 84. 
 
 U
 
 290 PREDICAMENT OF THE REFORMED CHURCHES. 
 
 So long as German Protestants were in the habit of sub- 
 mitting to every ecclesiastical regulation made by their 
 monarchical supreme bishops, they quieted their consciences 
 with the reflection that the princes had prescribed an oath to 
 be taken as to the symbolical books ; and then, about the 
 close of the last century, jurists gave expression to this 
 opinion : that the views taken as to the accepted teaching 
 in reference to the symbolical books was only to continue as 
 long as the Protestant princes might desire they should be 
 maintained. 1 After a long dispute upon the point, as to 
 whether a person had to swear as to the symbolical books, 
 either "because" or "in so far as" they contained Scripture 
 doctrine, there came the period of Rationalism, in which 
 " light work" was made with both oath and creed, and each 
 individual found a consolation for himself in the multitude 
 around him who entertained the same views, and were placed 
 in a like predicament with himself. Ever since 1817, the 
 Church authorities proved themselves to be ingenious in 
 discovering devices forgiving full scope to private judgment, 
 and in constructing formulas peculiarly qualified to evade or 
 to weaken the rigidity of Confessional declarations. And 
 so persons promised to teach "in the spirit," or "according 
 to the principles," or " in so far as they were scriptural," or 
 " with a certain regard to the declarations of creed :" and in 
 Baden they went so far as in their " Confession" to maintain 
 a free examination of the Scriptures. In Saxony and in 
 Baden, however, the old, strict, and unconditional " Decla- 
 ration" was adhered to. 
 
 All propositions and discussions upon the same question 
 have, up to this time, been attended with an unsatisfactory 
 result. The Churches of the Reformation are in this pre- 
 dicament they cannot well subsist without a solemn Decla- 
 ration from their clergy and a settled doctrine ; and neither 
 can they subsist if they have .either the one or the other. 
 On one side it is said: " What can a Church be from which 
 every symbol has vanished what can it be but a Babel?" 2 
 
 1 TOLLNER'S " Unterricht von symbolischen Biicbern," p. 30. 
 3 BROMEL, in the " Luth. Zcitschrift," 1855, p. 275.
 
 STANDARDS OF CREEDS AND DOCTRINES. 291 
 
 On the other side it is replied, and with perfect justice too: 
 " A rigid binding down to symbols, in the present state of 
 theology, can only lead to hypocrisy and intolerable violence 
 to conscience." l Thus it is indispensable to make the solemn 
 Declaration very vague, in order that a, free scope be afforded 
 to the clergy as to the symbol. And hence it is only "ac- 
 cording to its spirit" that they can be judged; and the signi- 
 fication to be given to "the spirit," and the weight to be 
 attached to it, must in the end be left to the clergy them- 
 selves, unless there happens to be, as in Saxony, a living, 
 active, acknowledged authority to interpret and determine 
 what doctrine is to be taught. 
 
 At the foundation of the Evangelical Church Union at 
 Wittenberg, in the year 1848, a considerable number of 
 distinguished theologians for the first time declared that 
 " they stood, as to their creed, upon the ground of the 
 Reformed Confession." This very wide phrase, and at 
 bottom binding to nothing those who made it, has since that 
 time become a great favourite. Then in the year 1853 it 
 was declared, at a meeting in Berlin, " that the Augsburg 
 Confession should be regarded as the standard and expression 
 of a common creed and doctrine." This was the strongest 
 and greatest effort at effecting a submission to a certain 
 formula which had yet been made. The matter, however, 
 though seriously proposed, was not seriously meant, for even 
 those who were present assenting to such a proposition were 
 thoroughly well aware that amongst themselves, and in all 
 Germany, there was not a single theologian who did, in 
 point of fact, accept all the articles of the Augsburg Con- 
 fession. How little the parties who passed such a resolution 
 felt themselves bound in points of faith by it, was soon 
 shown by some of those who had taken part in the pro- 
 ceedings of the meeting at which it was passed (Schenkel, 
 for instance), publishing writings which were in distinct and 
 strong contradiction to the Confession of 1530. 
 
 And then, where "the Union" is most firmly established, 
 there the authority of the symbolical books is irremediably 
 1 Thus speak Rothe, Petersen, and Marheineke. 
 
 U2
 
 292 DISREGARD OF THE SOLEMN OBLIGATION. 
 
 ruined. At church assemblies and pastoral meetings it has 
 recently been declared that in Prussia, according to the 
 Tenth Article, a person is free to partake of the Lord's 
 Supper in three different senses in the Lutheran, or the 
 Calvinistic, or in accordance with the Union signification ; 
 and there are others, also, who maintain there is nothing to 
 prevent its being taken and understood in a fourth or a fifth 
 sense! 1 Besides this, there was the fact, which was not, and 
 could not, be disputed, viz., that by the Solemn Declaration 
 contained in the Ordination Formula, many were, in Prussia 
 (as well as in Saxony and Hanover), forced by the law to 
 lie the fact is not to be palliated, but to be lamented and 
 the only way of quieting individuals so situated was with the 
 reflection that there was a multitude of others who were tell- 
 ing lies, or had lied ; and that such lying must be borne with, 
 because numbers of their followers would be involved in an 
 inextricable embarrassment if a serious construction were put 
 upon the Solemn Obligation. 2 
 
 If the Solemn Obligation were to be accepted as effectively 
 binding, and really to be acted upon, then the theological- 
 scientific education of the sacerdotal order must be abandoned, 
 and persons in authority restrict themselves to the formation 
 of establishments for clerical candidates similar to the Dis- 
 senters' academies in England. No theologian can, or will, 
 any more seriously bind himself to the whole doctrine of the 
 Augsburg Confession and Concordian formulas. The use 
 which hitherto has been made of these by-gone rules of creed 
 has been mainly polemical. Every one lays down the 
 measure of the symbolical books upon that which he desires 
 to denounce as heterodox ; but every one, at the same time, 
 denies that his own doctrine is, when he departs from such a 
 standard, to be decided by it. No one who is clothed with 
 an official professional position can venture to stand against 
 the torrent of modern exegesis ; and when, for example, Er- 
 langen theologians vowed that there was no passage in the 
 Bible could be expounded in a sense different from that 
 
 1 u Deutsche Zeitschrift," 1854, p. 200. 
 * BRUN'S " Repertorium," viii. 134.
 
 DOCTRINE OF "JUSTIFICATION" ABANDONED. 293 
 
 which was laid down in the symbolical books, then " the 
 Scripture Evidence" of Professor von Hofmann was pointed 
 at ; and he then was, on all sides, accused of being a falsifier 
 of the pure Lutheran doctrine of " Satisfaction," and "Justi- 
 fication" and so did the same book serve to show that, at 
 this time of day, neither the big nor the little flies will remain 
 quiescently pendent in the spider's web of such Solemn 
 Obligations. 
 
 All are agreed in this that the main doctrine of the whole 
 of the Confessional writings is that of "Justification;" that 
 in that dogma Protestant antagonism to the Catholic system 
 has its centre and its most pregnant expression. In it " the 
 Reformation recognises its central point, its noblest jewel, 
 its essential substance it is that wherewith Evangelical 
 Christianity, founded upon the Gospel, stands and falls." 1 
 "No one understands anything of Christianity who has not a 
 clear and vivid comprehension of this doctrine. This doctrine 
 is, however, in its innermost core, destroyed in the Romish 
 Church.'' 2 " In accordance therewith," says Hengstenberg's 
 organ, " in every sermon must our banner be at least once 
 unfurled." 3 " The doctrine of Justification," it is said in 
 Erlangen, " is the permanent death that gnaws the bones of 
 Catholics." 4 " It is the standard by which the whole of the 
 Gospel must be interpreted, and every obscure passage ex- 
 plained." 5 
 
 If now one should say to a religious member of the Ger- 
 man (and especially on account of this doctrine self-styled 
 "Evangelical") Church : "This doctrine is abandoned by the 
 scientific theologians of Germany ; there is scarcely one 
 theologian of any name who will stand up, in serious earnest- 
 ness, and with a view to the inevitable consequence following 
 from it, for this dogma of the Reformers and of the symbolical 
 
 1 KLING, in HERZOG'S " Encyklopiidie," xii. 582. 
 
 2 Thus writes F. W. KRUMMACHER in the u Halleschen Volksblatte," 
 1853, p. 203. 
 
 ' " Evang. K.-Z.," vol. xlviii., pp. 415-416. 
 
 4 " Zeitschr. flir Protest.," vol. xxvi., p. 119. 
 
 5 Ibid., vol. xxix., p. 134.
 
 LUTHERANISM AND THE NEW THEOLOGY. 
 
 books, and the Concordian formula in particular" if these 
 words were so spoken, they would only provoke an incre- 
 dulous and compassionate smile. And yet such is absolutely 
 the fact. Already had Tholuck's "Literary Advertiser" 
 (litterarischer Anzeiger) directed general attention to the 
 unheard-of levity with which the article on " Justification" 
 was at the present time treated j 1 so that what the Reformers 
 had (as in the case of Osiander and others) rejected, was 
 now declared to be the orthodox doctrine. And then it has 
 been shown by Schneckenburger 2 that the new Lutheran 
 theologians have disowned both the doctrine of Luther and 
 the symbolical books, and have abandoned the main article 
 of " Justification," or they have given to it a signification 
 the very opposite to that which the first Reformers had de- 
 sired or intended. And so it has come to pass, as he 
 remarks, that there is but one theological writer, who can 
 at the present time be named, who remains true to the old 
 Lutheran doctrine, and that is Petri. 3 Since Schnecken- 
 btirger's death the contradiction between the dogmatic and 
 exegetical deductions of theologians, and between a general 
 appeal to the " Confession," the " pure Doctrine," and the 
 article of "the standing and falling Church," has become 
 more sharp, harsh, and dissonant. A few years ago Kahnis, 
 too, declared, "he recognised in the direction of the 'Union' 
 theology (Nitzsch, Lange, Miiller, &c.) no theologians who 
 stood on the basis of ' Justification through faith.'" Kahnis 
 had, he said, to remark with respect to "Justification" first, 
 that he held with the Lutheran theologians Martensen, 
 Von Hofmann, Sartorius, and others ; and, secondly, that he 
 had found himself formerly in a position like to theirs. 4 
 
 1 " Jahrg," 1848, p. 248. 
 
 * " Vergleichende Darstellung des lutherischen und refofmirten Lehr- 
 begriffs," 1855, ii. 38-45. 
 
 * Although SCHNECKENBURGER is right, upon the whole, in his judg- 
 ment of the Lutheran doctrine and theologians, still he has fallen into 
 error when he ascribes to the Reformers an opposite doctrine, by hunting 
 up a few theologians of the same confession, who held opinions opposite 
 to the prevailing and adopted doctrine, and then putting those few for- 
 ward as the real representatives of the Protestant Church doctrine. 
 
 4 " Die Lehre vom heiligen Geiste." Halle, 1847, p. 82.
 
 THEOLOGIANS OF THE NEW SCHOOL. 295 
 
 And here, if the author is not to be reproached with the 
 introduction of what may be considered as superfluous, he 
 would wish to cite the names of theologians, some living, 
 and some dead, who were participators in the latest theolo- 
 gical development, and who have abandoned the Protestant 
 doctrine of " Justification," as it is set forth in the Concor- 
 dian formula and the Heidelberg Catechism, and which was 
 the prevailing doctrine until 1760. 
 
 These theologians are Olshausen, Schleiermacher and his 
 entire school, Heydenreich, Brandt, Nitzsch, Ullmann, 
 Neander, Sartorius, Bahr, Schenkel, Martensen, Nagelsbach, 
 J. T. Beck, Kollner, Schoberlein, Gerock, Hundeshagen, 
 Richard Rothe, J. P. Lange, Ebrard, Von Hofmann, Julius 
 Miiller, Lipsius, Beneke, Rennecke, Sack, Dorner, Kostlin, 
 Baumgarten, Diisterdiek, Kurtz, Ackermann, Krehl, Schmid, 
 Weizsacker, Kalchreuter, Krahner, Ge^s, Stier, Griineisen, 
 Hagenbach, and De Wette. 1 This list could, upon more 
 diligent examination, be certainly considerably enlarged. It 
 indisputably embraces the most gifted individuals, and who, 
 as the most profound investigators in Biblical learning, have 
 especially imparted a new impulse to theology. And, as- 
 suredly, many others might take their place by the side of 
 those that have been named, if they had not preferred, upon 
 such a subject as this, to content themselves with the hack- 
 neyed phrases of " Justification by Faith," &c., &c. ; and at the 
 same time carefully eschewed every close exposition and 
 minute anatomization of the dogma. 
 
 It has, indeed, been for some time customary to make an open 
 avowal as to an adherence to the material principle of the Re- 
 formation, and so to carry on a game with phrases, as if they 
 
 1 Even the theologians, -who pass in our days as the purest Lutherans, 
 have not escaped the reproach of having fallen away from the Lutheran 
 doctrine of " Justification." This has occurred with KLIEFOTH, (see 
 " Zeitsch. fur luth. Theol.," 1854, p. 84), and so with Thomasius, Harless, 
 and Preger (see KLIEFOTH'S " Kirchl. Zeitsch.," 1858, p. 404). Guerike, 
 who has obtained, beyond all others, the praise of holding by the purest 
 Lutheran orthodoxy, is shown in THOLUCK'S " Theol. Auzeiger," 1848, 
 p. 322, &c., to have had in his description of the tl Justification" creed, 
 in his " Symbolik" (2d Edit., 1846, p. 365), to have destroyed what was 
 the leading idea of Luther and the Reformation.
 
 296 A GAME WITH PHRASES. 
 
 were so many counters ; whilst, as regards these phrases, no 
 fixed ideas are attached to them, or different ideas are 
 affixed to the same solemn words of " Justification by Faith." 
 " Of what avail is it," says a theologian, " to Evangelical 
 Christianity, if it confesses that it is only through faith that 
 righteousness and salvation are attainable, when it is at the 
 same time not agreed as to wherefore there is faith unto 
 salvation." 1 Upon this point Schenkel is a remarkable 
 example ; for he, upon every opportunity, repudiates the 
 Eeformer's doctrine of Justification as untenable ; and then 
 again can speak exactly like one of the mob of preachers 
 upon the grand material principle of Protestantism ! Thus, 
 too, Bunsen intimates that Justification alone through Faith 
 has been translated out of the Semitic tongue into the 
 Japhetic, and that it is " the principle of moral self- 
 responsibility." 2 And very recently, Rossman, in his 
 " Remarks upon the age of the Reformation," (" Betrachtung- 
 en iiber das Zeitalter der Reformation,") made the discovery 
 that every modern state is based upon the evangelical 
 principle of Justification through Faith ! 
 
 It is indisputably one of the most suggestive and, at the 
 same time, widely comprehensive events in the later history 
 of religion, that the doctrine which was peculiarly the foun- 
 dation of the whole edifice of Protestant teaching should be 
 scientifically prostrated completely to the earth. It is, in 
 sooth, still a standing reproach for one theologian to make to 
 another that it is sought to lead him into error, and to turn 
 him away from the " Gospel," when the attempt is made to 
 divert him from the pure doctrine of Justification by Faith. 
 But then, when a person is compelled to propound a scientific 
 exposition of the dogma, and when general phrases can no 
 longer be employed, then there regularly is brought into 
 view a doctrine which Reformers and the genuine followers 
 of Luther denounce as " Pa'pistical" or " Arminian." 
 
 1 LOWE in the " Gbttinger Monatschrift fiir Theol. und Kirche," 1851, 
 p. 336. Also HASE, "Die Entwicklung des Protestantismus," 18o5, p. 
 19, speaks openly upon the contradiction between the now widely ex- 
 tended notion of Justification through Faith and the orthodox doctrine. 
 
 * " Hippolytus," i. 339.
 
 MEANS USED TO UPHOLD THE LUTHERAN DOGMA. 297 
 
 Exegetic theology in Germany has become so powerful, 
 and distinguished expounders of the Bible have still so 
 high a scientific reputation to maintain, that the repulsion 
 of this theology to the expositions of the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries, is an impossibility. Not a few of the 
 modern exegetists have, with the very best intentions, 
 attempted to connect together the doctrines of the Reformers 
 and the Bible. With such intentions they went to work; 
 but their labour came to naught ! The staff is broken 
 upon which they leant who sought to render the Confessional 
 writings again available ; and the toil has been vain of those 
 who have sought to restore the old Protestant creed, and to 
 re-animate the faith at one period placed in the symbolical 
 books. Even the distinctive appellation of "Evangelical," 
 has no longer its right signification ; for what was mea,nt 
 at the time of the Reformation by that word was the 
 t( Imputation " doctrine, with all its consequences. 
 
 And yet all things were attempted, and all, too, ventured, 
 for the purpose of upholding this " article of a standing and 
 falling Church ! " It was for the sake of this that the 
 Epistle of St. James was pronounced to be " an epistle of 
 straw ;" and it was for the sake of this that in the Augsburg 
 Confession, laid before the Emperor and the Empire, the 
 barefaced falsehood was promulgated, that this doctrine had 
 previously been maintained by St. Augustine; and when 
 Melancthon, out of sheer down-right shame, had omitted it 
 from an edition of the Confession, still it was despite of 
 most earnest protests on the part of a few theologians again 
 (in 1576) foisted into the text of the Confession! For the 
 sake also of this doctrine, had Luther deliberately and 
 purposely given a mistranslation of several passages in the 
 Bible, and especially of the Epistles of St. Paul ; it was, 
 too, to uphold this, his favourite dogma, that the great Re- 
 former interpolated fanciful expressions of his own, that were 
 foreign to, and altogether undiscoverable in, the original text. 
 
 The Reformers went further. For the purpose of being 
 able to preserve and maintain an article of faith which was 
 utterly unknown to all Christian antiquity, a breach was
 
 298 NOVELTY OF THE DOCTRINE. 
 
 made with all ecclesiastical tradition, and the authority 
 of the dogmatic testimony of the Church in every age 
 rejected. " This," says Julius Mtiller, " must be openly 
 admitted, by every unprejudiced historical investigation, that 
 not merely the ecclesiastical theology of the middle ages, 
 but even the Patristic theology of the fourth, fifth, and sixth 
 centuries, are, upon every point that is a matter of dispute 
 between Catholicism and Protestantism, more on the side of 
 the former than of the latter." 1 
 
 If Miiller intended to intimate that this important fact 
 lay concealed from the men of the Reformation, viz., thnt 
 their doctrine was at variance with that which was main- 
 tained in the first centuries of Christianity, he is partly ri<rht, 
 that is, he is so far right in this, that the fact was carefully 
 concealed from the people that the laity did not know any- 
 thing about it; but it was far otherwise in the narrow circle 
 of the Reformers, because there the circumstance was openly 
 adverted to. Melancthon declared in his letter to Brenz that 
 what he had maintained for the German Protestants in the 
 Augsburg Confession was an untruth. Luther had fre- 
 quently and frankly avowed that his doctrine was quite dif- 
 ferent from any to be found in the most ancient Churches ; 
 and hence it was that he contemned the Fathers, as witnesses 
 to what was the Ancient Church doctrine. His labours to 
 lower, so far as he possibly could, in public estimation, the 
 authority of the Ancient Councils, were plainly in corre- 
 spondence with the consciousness of their being adverse to 
 his doctrine. The same thing has been acknowledged by 
 Calvin, viz. that the new doctrine of " Justification " was 
 neither to be found in tradition nor amongst the Fathers. 
 And when the United Theologians and preachers of Rostock, 
 in a written appeal to the preachers of the cities of Liibeck, 
 Hamburg, and Liineburg, declare " That as to the articles 
 of ' Free Will,' ' Grace,' and ' Justification,' the teaching of or- 
 thodox antiquity is in complete concordance with that men- 
 tioned by Catholic theologians" 2 when such a circumstance, 
 
 1 "Deutsche Zeitschrift," July, p. 214. 
 
 * See BERTRAM'S u Evangel. Liineburg," p. 271. They remark that 
 there are only a few passages in the later -writings of Augustine and
 
 STAHL'S VIEW. 299 
 
 we say, as this occurs, then it is plain that those who really 
 are theologians indulge in no illusions upon these points. 
 But then when persons are speaking before the world 
 another, and quite a different, form of language is used. 
 
 A something, however, must be said upon this point, and 
 what it is may be surmised from the view which Stahl takes 
 of it, viz. " Imputed righteousness is the mystery which 
 contains the innermost essence of the Christian religion, and 
 the fulness of Divine Light; and it is only through the Re- 
 formation that this Divine Light was shed upon the spirit of 
 mankind." 1 And this doctrine it is which peculiarly qualifies 
 
 Prosper (upon the irresistible operation of Grace). They are an excep- 
 tion to the Catholic and Ancient Church doctrine. 
 
 1 HESGSTENBERG'S " K.-Z.," 1853, pp. 324-325. The theologians of 
 modern times are in the habit of avoiding the use of the expression " im- 
 puted righteousness" as a distinction from true, interiorly affected 
 " righteousness." The discourse is ever only of the righteousness by 
 faith, justification through faith. This designation, however, in the 
 mouth of a Protestant is so much the more inapplicable and deceptive, as 
 it is the Catholic Church that has been peculiarly competent to show 
 how faith, operating through love, has been found to be right in the sight 
 of God; whilst, on the other hand, according to the old Protestant 
 system, it is not faith, but the imputation of the sufferings of Christ, 
 which makes man appear justified before God, or that the process of 
 justification is therewith fulfilled, that God attributes to man the suffer- 
 ings and the fulfilment of the law by Christ, as if man himself had 
 yielded the same obedience, and that man, through faith, knows and be- 
 comes assured of this imputation. By such a mode of comprehending the 
 subject, man is justified in a very vague manner merely through the 
 means of a very forced figure of speech ; so that one can only be said to 
 be justified through faith, as it might be affirmed " that he had eaten a 
 full meal because he had handled a fork." But what service the imputa- 
 tion doctrine can confer upon individuals or the community may be in- 
 ferred from the following words of VILMAR : " Even in Luther, despite 
 of all the boundless graces bestowed upon him, there is sin and sin never 
 to be justified. But we see in him not sin, but to the sinner imputed 
 righteousness through faith in the one Redeemer, Jesus Christ ; and all 
 have heard what He has said, that through this imputed righteousness is 
 alone to be judged what may, in man's whole existence, happen, or 
 apparently occur to him. Take away this imputed righteousness, let us 
 not see it, and then nought remains of him but the weakest sinner, and 
 in all his thoughts the wildest nonsense that the dreariest of madcaps 
 ever devised." " Zeitschr. fiir huh. Theol.," 1848, p. 234.
 
 300 PROTESTANTISM IN A DILEMMA. 
 
 the Lutheran Church to hold a high position in the Catho- 
 licity of its doctrine of that Catholicity which, as he says, 
 ever consists in God-appointed doctrine and ordinance, and 
 in being the bond of Christianity for all places and through 
 all times, and in opposition to human invented error, which 
 never has been universally accepted. 1 
 
 In the author's judgment the importance of the subject 
 here mentioned can scarcely be too highly appreciated. Here 
 upon the one side stand Luther, Melancthon, Calvin, and 
 their disciples, the Protestant Confessional writings, and the 
 combined Lutheran and Calvinistic theology of the sixteenth 
 and seventeenth centuries. They all have professed to find 
 that doctrine which we for brevity sake name "the doctrine 
 of Imputation," laid down distinctly in the Bible. On the 
 other side is the newer and the latest theology, the whole 
 modern scientific exegesis, and it rejects the doctrine, it re- 
 jects the Reformation exposition of fragmentary Bible pas- 
 sages as false and untenable. But it .is a supreme evangeli- 
 cal principle, that the Scripture is perfectly clear and suffi- 
 cient on all fundamental points. How, then, is this funda- 
 mental difference to be cleared up ? And thereby is con- 
 cerned a doctrine which, as everyone admits, has an incalcu- 
 lable influence upon Christian consciousness and ecclesiastical 
 life a doctrine (by the admission or confession of many 
 Protestant theologians), that had formerly been a source of 
 destruction to countless beings, and has caused a desola- 
 tion of the Churches, of which persons formerly had no fore- 
 thougrht. The whole edifice of the Protestant Church and 
 
 O 
 
 theology reposes, therefore, on two principles one material, 
 the other formal : the doctrine of Imputation, and the suffi- 
 ciency of the Bible. But the material principle is given up 
 by exegesis and dogmatic theology; and as to the formal 
 principle, for the sufficiency of the Bible, or even for the 
 inspiration of the writings of the disciples of the Apostles, 
 not the shadow of a scriptural argument can be adduced. 
 The time will, it must, come when the whole vast importance 
 of this matter will excite universal attention. To such 
 1 " Die lutherische Kirche," 1859, p. 452.
 
 1MPOTENCY OP PREACHING. 301 
 
 serious thought must the experience which has now been 
 gone through force the attention of those who, in driving 
 Rationalism out of the pulpit, and re-establishing a Protest- 
 ant believing body of preachers, have found the experiment 
 not correspond with their expectations. " For a long time," 
 says Baumgarten, 1 " persons might entertain the notion that 
 it was Rationalism made our churches empty, and our 
 preaching unattended to. But now since Christ crucified is 
 again preached, and yet no serious effect, upon the whole, is 
 to be observed, it is necessary to abandon this mistake, and 
 not to conceal from ourselves that preaching is unable to 
 revive religious life." " The impotency of the present 
 preaching," he continues, " is still more appalling, when it is 
 generally known and confessed that those who could testify 
 to the extreme depth of the degradation to which it has 
 descended, refrain from telling the entire of its evil conse- 
 quences." 
 
 Delitzsch has confirmed the testimony given by Baumgarten. 
 "It is," he says, "indeed true that the nullity of results 
 from preaching is one of the saddest circumstances of the 
 day." 2 And there have of late been many Councils held as 
 to the causes of this deplorable fact. The Berlin meeting of 
 the Evangelical Alliance occupied itself a good deal with this 
 theme. " Wherefore," it was asked, " has it come to pass 
 that, despite of a restoration of theology to the Ecclesiastical 
 Confessions, there should be exhibited so little of spiritual life 
 amongst the congregations ?" Professor Krafft, who delivered 
 a lecture on the subject, has recognised some of the causes of 
 the evil. He has said, and that, too, plainly enough, that the 
 doctrine of the symbolical books had, at a former period, 
 effected " the downfall of all spiritual life ; and persons, 
 therefore, must not be surprised, if its renewal at the present 
 moment should bear similar fruit." 3 The preacher Beyschlag, 
 of Caiisruhe, who, immediately after KrafFt, addressed the 
 meeting, has spoken still more clearly on the same theme, 
 
 1 " Nachtgesichte des Sacharias," 1855, ii. 12 1, et seq. 
 3 " Erlang. Zeitschr. fur Protestantismus," 1858, p. 305. 
 3 " Verhandlungen," p. 186.
 
 302 CONDITION OF PROTESTANT CONGREGATIONS. 
 
 which he referred to as " the most peculiarly pressing and 
 urgent ecclesiastical question of the time." 1 The whole 
 calamity of the Protestant Church up to this very day was 
 "itsone-sided creed confession 1 ' the"dead orthodoxy," with 
 its doctrine of " Sanctification." 2 "Out of it Rationalism had 
 naturally sprung; and the revival of this orthodoxy has become 
 a chronic Church epidemic, seizing upon and carrying off great 
 numbers of the clergy." 
 
 Naturally, these declarations, as to the phenomenon, were 
 repudiated by many; but, then, as to the fact itself, all 
 were unanimous. And even at meetings of preachers (for 
 instance, the Berliners, in 1858, and the Saxons, at Gnadau, 
 in 1859), held consultations about it. Lately, too, the ten- 
 dency towards which the faithful were inclining was com- 
 plained of even in a Palatinate ecclesiastical journal. 3 " If," 
 as it said, "one looks closely into the condition of individual 
 congregations, to whom, for long years, the Gospel has been 
 preached in its simplicity and purity, it will be found that the 
 Word seems to have fallen on land covered with thorns, or 
 upon a stony soil, or upon the hard-beaten highway ;" and in 
 such a complaint is involved the strongest demand for 
 subjecting the so-called "Evangelical Gospel" itself to a 
 revision. 
 
 In logical connection with the Imputation doctrine stands 
 the Reformation apprehension of " the four last things" The 
 old Lutheran and Calvinistic doctrine was, that every man, 
 upon his death, instantly either attained to the happiness of 
 Heaven, or was thrust down into Hell. An indispensable 
 absolution and purification from sin was regarded as a species 
 of physical process, and lay in death and the corruption of the 
 body so that, as a modern writer has remarked, " all that 
 was wanting to Death was the name of a Sacrament, and to 
 join it on to, and make it the completion of, the other two." 4 
 
 1 " Verhandlungen," p. 194. 
 
 In the same manner in which the " justitia forensis" was branded by 
 him, was the old essentially Protestant doctrine referred to. See p. 195. 
 
 3 u Evangelischer Reichsbote," 1859, " Neujahrswort." 
 
 4 FRIES, in the " Jahrbiichern fur deutsche Theol.," i. 304. I do not 
 understand how KLIEFOTH (" Liturg. Abhandlungen," i. 169) can make
 
 DEFECT OF THE OLD SYSTEM RECOGNIZED. 303 
 
 At the time of the Reformation, and even up to the end of 
 the last century, the people were very ready to accept this 
 notion, which the lightness of faith, and Declaration Acts, 
 made appear to them as alike suitable and consolatory. 
 Truly, indeed, as Professor Neumann has complained, "has 
 the doing away of every species of communion between the 
 living and the dead mainly led the mass of Protestants to 
 the very brink of doubt in everlasting life." 1 From it has 
 arisen that general beatification, and that pestilent mischief 
 of funeral sermons, which have, in no slight degree, contri- 
 buted to a moral and religious torpor, and to the wide-spread 
 frivolous delusion, as to man's ascension into Heaven being 
 alike instantaneous and easy of accomplishment." 2 
 
 Theologians have now recognised the sad defect of the old 
 system ; and even zealous Lutherans cannot venture to fall 
 back upon this point to the views promulgated by the early 
 Reformers. Hence, for some time back, the necessity has 
 been perceived for adopting a half-way manner of explaining 
 it as has been done, for example, by Kern, Fries, Girgensohn, 
 and others. And then, as to a question connected therewith 
 that is, " If prayer for the dead was permissible or advis- 
 able ? " that is put to rest as an undecided point. Every 
 preacher has, concerning it, either his own settled opinion, or 
 none ! That which, in some places, it is recommended to 
 the laymen to do, is, in other places, exposed to a severe 
 censure. The old Lutheran theologians consistently declared 
 that prayers for the departed were altogether useless. 3 The 
 Prussian Agenda has adopted the practice, whilst, at the 
 same time, in accordance with the example given by the 
 Anglican Church Liturgy, it assures the hearers of the sal- 
 vation of the deceased, and that he is indubitably in the full 
 possession of beatitude ; and hence its prayers may be 
 
 Rationalism responsible for what had previously been the doctrine of the 
 Reformers. 
 
 1 " Zeitschrift fur luth. Theologie," 1852, 282. 
 
 * See upon this point the recollections of MAYWAHLEN in the Preface 
 to his book, " Der Tod." Berlin, 1854. 
 
 * KLIEFOTH'S " Liturg. Abhandlungen," i. 311.
 
 304 FORMS OF CHRISTIAN WORSHIP. 
 
 regarded as an insignificant formula. Besides this, there are 
 to be found amongst clergymen, as in Wiirtemberg, no few 
 adherents to the doctrine of a restoration of all things for 
 
 O 
 
 example, the prelate Kapff and these persons, in their 
 innocence! do not perceive that they thus shatter to pieces 
 the old Protestant system, and do not leave one stone of it 
 resting upon another ! 
 
 In Divine Service, the doctrine of a Church gives a form 
 to its religious aspect. If there is in a Church a sound 
 and harmonious relation between doctrine and life, between 
 the clergy and the laity, it manifests itself in the appro- 
 priateness of the Divine Service, and the participation of the 
 people. 
 
 There are not more, it may be said, than three possible 
 modes of a Christian form of worship. Either the sermon 
 constitutes the main portion and centre of the worship, so 
 that the remainder, hymn and prayer, are merely subservient 
 assistants. Or, the main act of worship is a Liturgy, in 
 which there is a reading aloud of passages of Scripture and 
 forms of prayer. Or, in the third, the worship is an actual 
 celebration of the whole work of Redemption a Communion, 
 in which all who are present participate in the complete act 
 of the Lord's Supper, and in which each of the whole com- 
 munity offers himself up, with Christ, a victim to the Father 
 as the most perfect form of adoration to the Almighty 
 God. The first form is indisputably the most suitable to the 
 old and true Protestantism ; the second is that which has 
 been chosen by the English Established Church, and though 
 pleasing to the higher classes, is not so universally acceptable 
 to the populace ; the third is the form of worship of the 
 ancient Church, and of the ecclesiastical communities which 
 have maintained their continuity, either without interruption 
 or essential change such as t'he Catholic, the Greek, the 
 Russian, and the Monophysite Churches in Asia and Africa. 
 In Protestant Germany, the sermon has always had the 
 absolute masterdom. The Divine Service is a preachment 
 service, and its Church peculiarly and especially a lecture-
 
 PROTESTANT CONGREGATIONAL PASSIVITY. 305 
 
 room, or a school. It became an accepted maxim with its 
 theologians, that without a sermon there could be no real 
 Divine Service. In the same measured progress in which 
 this opinion advanced, it was found that, without any pre- 
 concert, and without any visible influence of one national 
 Church upon another, the few liturgical pieces which had 
 been at the first used in Divine Service, began to disappear 
 from amongst the congregations in all parts of Germany. 1 
 And this impoverishment of the Divine Service was thus 
 shewn to be a perfectly natural circumstance, for it was one 
 in complete correspondence with the Protestant mode of 
 thought and feeling. 
 
 The consequence of this practice was first, that the con- 
 gregations were, for their edification, in subjectivity to the 
 clergy ; secondly, that the complete passivity of the people 
 in the Divine Service became the characteristic mark of 
 Protestant worship. Theologians themselves have admitted 
 " that at no period has there been found the same rank 
 deficiency of congregational energy amongst Catholics as in 
 the midst of Protestants." 2 " The Evangelical Church," 
 says another, " repudiates every semblance of the office and 
 order of priesthood, and yet transfers the whole of the 
 Divine Service into the hands of a preacher, and affords to 
 him a proportionately higher power, and a far more exclusive 
 representation of the whole congregation, than the Romish 
 Church has ever conceded to one of its priests." 3 Hence 
 the attendance on Divine Service is altogether dependent 
 upon the popularity of the preacher ; and hence persons are 
 accustomed to say, " I no longer go to church to him" A 
 third points out the contradiction that arises between the 
 numerous discourses of a priesthood and the immobility of 
 
 1 GRUNEISEX, "Die Evang. Gottesdienstordnung." Stuttgart, 1856, 
 p. 41. He shows how naturally it came to pass in Wiirtemberg since 
 the sixteenth century, until at length its Divine service had not its equal 
 for " poverty and partiality." 
 
 * BAHR, " Begriindung einer Gottesdienstordnung." Karlsruhe, 1856, 
 p. 154. 
 
 * REES VON ESENBECK, " Der christl. Gottesdienst," 1854, p. 161. 
 
 X
 
 306 UNDUE IMPORTANCE OF PREACHING. 
 
 the congregations, who never say even an "Amen" to the 
 prayers offered up for them, but merely let themselves be 
 talked at ; and it is affirmed -that the much lauded and often 
 praised simplicity of the Protestant Divine Service should 
 be most properly described as " poverty-stricken" and 
 " monotonous," and not only imparting an impression of 
 " dryness," but also as being characterized with " weakness, 
 weariness, and somnolency." 1 
 
 And it has come to this, that, by the admission of the 
 clergy themselves, they have no longer congregations, but 
 merely a public audience, and that audience chooses the 
 preacher it prefers fancying him for his voice, manners, 
 and attitudes running after him who best suits its own 
 notions, and then forsaking him if he has exhausted his gifts as 
 an orator, or has ceased to be the fashionable. And there 
 is also the declaration of a very calamitous fact of visits to the 
 Church being barren of fruit, of being negligently paid, and 
 so the churches left empty. " The community," says a 
 Prussian clergyman, " are sickened with sermons ; and the 
 multitude has become tired, at last, of having always to go to 
 school!" 2 
 
 In such circumstances, it is a remarkable symptom of the 
 present state of affairs viz. the experiment at an intrusion 
 upon the territory of the Divine Service, such as had never 
 before been attempted. For three hundred years there 
 never had been so much written upon the same topic as 
 within the last ten or twenty years. 3 The first species of 
 aid that presented itself, naturally, was to increase the 
 number of hymns and prayers, such as has happened in 
 Prussia since the introduction of the liturgical element. 
 
 But then this fact has come out on all sides namely, that 
 the churches are really only visited by the public for the 
 sake of the sermon. The singing and the Divine service are 
 neglected, and it is only a short time previous to the delivery 
 
 1 SCHOBERLEIN, " Ueber den liturgischen Ausbau," 1859, p. 83. 
 * CUNZ, " Das geistliche Amt und der Pastorenstand," p. 60. 
 3 BAIIR, p. 1.
 
 LACK OF SOLEMN FESTIVALS. 307 
 
 of the sermon that the churches begin to fill. Such is cer- 
 tainly the case in all Saxony. 1 And then wherever the 
 " Agenda" is introduced, there is the same account to be 
 given of the behaviour of the people. " In North and Middle 
 Germany," says Zittel, " I have often had the opportunity 
 of remarking how three fourths of the church visitors only 
 began to enter the church when the liturgy was over, and 
 that immediately after the sermon they again left it. 2 Even 
 the General Superintendent Hofmann has remarked that 
 in most cases congregations exhibit not the slightest par- 
 ticipation in the Service during the Liturgy, or they are 
 merely represented in the children's choir. 8 
 
 There is an awful lack of the solemn festivals of the 
 Catholic Church, in which each great festival is symbolically 
 individualised, and adapts itself in a life-like manner to the 
 popular sentiment and feeling. The Protestant Church, on 
 the other hand, " which has an absolute horror of all sym- 
 bolical significations in its Divine service," and therefore, as 
 it is said by a clergyman of that church, " there is in our 
 festivals something so monotonous, and in all their physiog- 
 nomies something so similar, that they can neither be dis- 
 tinguished from one another, nor from the usual Sunday 
 services." 4 And then, if an alteration be attempted, and a 
 symbolical element introduced, the same fate overtakes it as 
 befell the attempt to make the people kneel down during 
 Divine service that is, it is almost everywhere put an end 
 to. 5 The preachers and the Consistories were perfectly 
 willing again to introduce the practice ; but the population 
 refused with the declaration " Kneeling is a Catholic prac- 
 tice." It was further desired that Protestant churches should 
 be not merely stations for preaching, but also houses of 
 prayer ; 6 for they were in this respect in such a scandalous 
 
 1 HENGSTENBERG'S "K.-Z.," 1858, p. 1114. 
 
 2 HUNDESHAGEN, " Der Badische Agendenstreit." Frankfort, 1859, 
 p. 13. * MESSXER'S u Kirch. -Ztg.," 1860, p. 105. 
 
 * ZITTEL, " Zustande," &c., p. 236. 
 
 5 SCHOBERLEIN, " Ueber den liturg. Ausbau." Gotha, 1859, pp. 329, 
 330. 
 
 "Erlang. Zeitsch.," vol. xxv., p. 185. 
 
 x2
 
 308 CATHOLICISING THE PROTESTANT SERVICE. 
 
 condition, that "one could not bring a heathen inside of 
 them without blushing for shame." 1 They seemed but to 
 be intended for a brief assembling together. The only use 
 to which they were applied was for a meeting of an hour or 
 two's duration every eight days. The people did nothing for 
 the adornment of their churches ; they were nothing more, 
 in public estimation, than " the stone houses in which the 
 preacher made a speech on Sundays," and they were regarded 
 as quite good enough for that purpose. But here is a point 
 on which advice is of no use. If there were another service 
 in the course of the week, it would be only another sermon 
 over again, and the people (it was generally acknowledged) 
 had already had quite enough of preaching. And then 
 there is the fact that it is only within the last ten or twenty 
 years that there ever had been in many places Divine service 
 in the middle of the week. 
 
 But then there was another mode of proceeding one, 
 however, that has not yet been introduced and that will 
 not be attempted, because of the universal opposition it would 
 provoke, but that still in theory is recommendable and that 
 is, in accordance with the custom in the old church, to make 
 the Holy Communion the main part and centre of the Divine 
 service, and therewith to recognise and exalt the character 
 of the Victim in this Holy Action. Such a course is now 
 recommended by the most illustrious of the theologians by 
 Kliefoth, Hengstenberg, Hofling, Sartorius, Harnack, Lb'he, 
 Kahnis, Bachmann, &c. And here is to be noted an essential 
 difference between Lutheranism and Calvinism that the 
 Lutherans in their churches have an altar, and thereby at 
 least intimate the desire for a Sacrifice and its admissibility ; 
 whilst the Calvinists have only a common table for their 
 celebration of the Lord's Supper. 2 This Sacrifice theory is, 
 however, an open repudiation of real Protestantism, for its 
 originators and promoters, when they proceed seriously with 
 the subject, are compelled to abandon the name of " Lu- 
 therans." And sharp reproaches have not failed to be made 
 
 HEXGSTEXBERG'S "K.-Z.," 1857, p. 529. 
 1 GOBEL'S " Reform. K.-Z.," 1855, p. 167.
 
 PROTESTANT DIFFICULTIES. 309 
 
 against such theologians for their " Mass-Sacrifice theory," 
 and with respect to their " catholicising." l 
 
 There is a very pressing necessity felt as to the restoration 
 of the fitting, celebration of Sunday devotion, and impressing 
 upon the people an attendance upon Divine service as a 
 sacred duty. But here again every struggle is impeded by 
 Protestant principles, which rise up in the way as insur- 
 mountable obstacles. 
 
 Kraussold, 2 Liebetrut, and others, have shown that the 
 principles of the Reformation have rendered it impossible to 
 found upon them an obligation to the solemn observance of 
 the Sabbath. The Sabbath has fallen with the Mosaic law ; 
 the Sunday is not to be found commanded as a Holy 
 Day in the New Testament ; the Church has no higher 
 authority to introduce such a Holy Day : to its commands, 
 therefore, there is as little obedience due (through Evan- 
 gelical freedom) as to its Ordinances respecting Fasting, 
 Confession, and so forth. How, then, is it possible to make . 
 a Protestant population comprehend that they are bound 
 to the observance of the Sunday as a Holy Day? The 
 numberless councils for the last thirty years that have been 
 held upon this question have, as a matter of course, only 
 served to establish the complete impossibility of solving it. 
 Already has a demand been made to change the Lutheran 
 translation of the Bible ; but when the people seek there for 
 a passage upon the Sunday, and upon the obligation to 
 observe it holy, and can find no such thing, then the preacher 
 by his interposition will not be able to afford much help in 
 getting out of the difficulty. 3 
 
 A similar difficulty manifests itself in the case of the Baptists, 
 who form a considerable and constantly increasing fraction of 
 Protestant Christianity. It is now admitted on all sides 
 that neither a command of Christ nor of the Apostles can be 
 cited in support of Infant Baptism. At the Church 
 Assembly at Frankfort, in the year 1854, space was afforded 
 
 1 See " Studien und Kritiken," 1836, p. 472. 
 
 * " Drei Kapitel iiber die Sonntagsfeier." Erlangen, 1850. 
 
 8 " Deutsche Zeitschrift," 1855, p. 273.
 
 310 HELPLESSNESS OF THE CLERGY. 
 
 for the reception of the Baptists present, by the declaration 
 of the President, that "Infant Baptism was one of those 
 problems that had not yet been fully solved." And there 
 have been a few theologians, such as Ebrard, who would 
 much rather yield the point and abandon Infant Baptism, so 
 that the principle of the literal interpretation of the Bible 
 may be preserved, and persons not be compelled to recognise 
 the authority of the Church. For years persons have, in 
 Conferences and Church Assemblies, been labouring at the 
 double question of Infant Baptism and Baptism by effusion 
 or aspersion, without being able to make one step in 
 advance. 
 
 But this is not all: Even as regards Marriage and the 
 Nuptial Benediction there are now assertions set up, from 
 which, in point of fact, all that can be said 6r inferred is, 
 that those who make them would, if they could, support 
 them by Scriptural quotations. Thus, a short time ago, the 
 Lutheran Pastoral Conference at Ravensberg, amongst 
 others, adopted a resolution to the effect, " That the Church 
 cannot acknowledge any real marriage without Ecclesiastical 
 Benediction." 1 At the same time, it was declared to be the 
 determination of the Assembly to enter a Protest against all 
 civil marriages within the Church, and to excommunicate 
 everyone who entered into a civil marriage. It may easily 
 be guessed what answer these pastors would be able to give 
 if a layman had called upon them for Scriptural proofs in 
 sustainment of such propositions. 
 
 The utter helplessness of the clergy in their relations with 
 their congregations in general, as well as individual members 
 the fact that at present the pulpit is the only place from 
 which, and the sole means through which, the preacher can 
 exercise any effective influence all these things have 
 attracted the attention of many to the two most deeply felt 
 defects of ecclesiastical life : and these are a want in the care 
 of souls and of Church discipline. Upon the possibility and 
 the urgency of attempting a restoration of both, there has 
 1 "Darmstadt K.-Ztg.," 1859, No. xxxiv.
 
 PRIVATE CONFESSION. 311 
 
 been much both thought and written. Almost every 
 assembly of preachers is occupied especially with the ques- 
 tion of Church discipline, of which the last remnants have 
 long since disappeared. And then it has been thoroughly 
 recognised that "a cure of souls" can be only attainable 
 when the souls show themselves as they really are to their 
 clergyman make themselves known to him seek for and 
 desire his advice and special guidance ; and the only means 
 by which such objects are attainable is through confession. 
 " The Confessional," says Kliefoth, "is the place ordained 
 for the cure of souls." 1 The practice of "Confession" has, 
 however, disappeared from all parts of Germany. The 
 preacher now announces a general absolution from the pulpit, 
 without even the form of a confession of sins being gone 
 through or acknowledged and admitted by an affirmation 
 on the part of the congregation. 
 
 Every attempt to facilitate a revival of the practice of 
 Confession instantly encounters a determined opposition on 
 the part of the people. 2 " Private Confession," it is said, in 
 the Protestation of the Augsburg Protestants against the 
 Orders of the Upper Consistory, in the year 1856, "is, con- 
 sidering the position of Evangelical clergymen, and their con- 
 nection with family life, an institution that would be abso- 
 lutely intolerable." " The people," say the Erlangen Theolo- 
 
 1 " Liturgische Abhandlungen," ii. 496. 
 
 * The following report from Riga shows what are the means employed 
 to render it impossible for preachers to have a real " cure of souls" : 
 " The office of the clergyman as a spiritual director the cure of souls 
 is here, as with us elsewhere, fallen into desuetude. People have long 
 since desisted from making the clergyman the confidential depository of 
 their spiritual condition. The moment it is suggested, then there is a 
 notion of ' auricular confession,' ' priestcraft,' ' tyrannizing over con- 
 sciences,' &c., &c., &c. Many would, upon being noticed in making a 
 nearer approach to the clergy, be warned, as if they were upon the point 
 of abandoning the evangelical faith and becoming Catholics." " Kirch - 
 liche Vierteljahrsschrift," Berlin, 1845, p. 166. Cunz and others had 
 remarked that when a person in Protestant districts happened to ask a 
 question as to "who was the spiritual director of the place?" he re- 
 ceived as an answer, " There are no Catholics here, and the only clergy- 
 man here is a preacher."
 
 312 DOCTRINE OF A UNIVERSAL PRIESTHOOD. 
 
 gians, "never have had confidence in their clergymen as 
 Father-Confessors." 1 It is, then, no longer possible to re- 
 establish "Confession" in any form whatever not even in 
 the old Lutheran fashion, whereby all that was done was to 
 recite to the preacher "a General Confession of Sins," which 
 was either got off by heart, or read out from a piece of paper 
 even that, the easiest, most commodious, and most imperfect 
 form of Confession one, too, of which conscientious clergy- 
 men in the seventeenth century, had such a horror, that they 
 declared " the Lutheran mode of making confessions was the 
 plague of their Church " -well ! even that can be never 
 more introduced and established. Every attempt must be 
 wrecked upon the rock of that prime and darling doctrine of 
 " a universal priesthood," by means of which everyone is 
 made his own priest and teacher, and stands in need of no 
 intermediary, no witness, and no office, but can, with a clear, 
 unswerving conscience, absolve himself of his own sins ! 
 So has it at all times been held in every Calvinistic Reformed 
 Church, and consequently there is nothing less thought of in 
 " the Union " than the revival of Confession. " Of what 
 avail to me is mine own priesthood," says a Protestant lay- 
 man, "if I must first be assured by a pastor, who knows 
 nothing of the state of my soul, that my sins have been for- 
 given me ?" The power of dispensing with every species of 
 priestly intercession "the directness of a communication 
 with Christ" is, as it has been in various modes already 
 expressed, that which, connected with the Imputation doc- 
 trine, makes (with many) the Protestant religion far prefer- 
 able to the Catholic. 2 
 
 For the purpose of winning an assent to the possibility of 
 establishing a sacerdotal, sin-absolving office and to induce 
 persons again to recognise (that which is alike strange and 
 foreign to the notions both of preachers and laymen in the 
 world of Protestantism) an individual really having a cure 
 of souls there has been devised a portrait of a universal 
 priesthood, which very closely resembles the Catholic view, 
 
 1 " Zeitschr. fiir Protest.," vol. xxi., p. 52. 
 
 * See, for example, the "Deutsche Zeitschrift," 1857, p. 66.
 
 MEANS OF ENFORCING CHURCH DISCIPLINE. 313 
 
 and is the very opposite of that which Luther drew at the 
 commencement of his career. This has been done by 
 Henjjstenbenj, 1 amongst others. But all such theories have 
 
 o o/ o 
 
 not the slightest influence in practical life. 
 
 And so, too, every hope and expectation must be aban- 
 doned, of ever seeing " Church discipline" in any form what- 
 soever introduced. As to " Confession," and " discipline " 
 exercised through the practice of Confession, there cannot be 
 as much as one word spoken. And so there finally remain 
 as means of enforcing discipline "an exclusion from the 
 Communion table, and the refusal of Christian burial." As 
 to the first means, it is inapplicable, because of the indiffer- 
 ence there is felt with respect to the Sacrament of the 
 Altar ; and the general negligence in attending it is one of the 
 crying evils of the Church at the present moment. From 
 various quarters it is reported that the number of those par- 
 taking of the Lord's Supper is constantly declining more 
 and more, 2 and that even the most of those well disposed 
 towards the Church content themselves with Communion 
 once in a year. 3 " Hundreds of thousands of Evangelical 
 Christians," says Friihbuss, 4 " are self-excommunicated, and 
 will have absolutely nothing to say or do with the Sacrament 
 of the Altar." There are numberless others who, from a 
 scruple of conscience, or from the Unionist mode of adminis- 
 tering the Sacrament, will not participate in it. And so, it 
 may be seen that there are, in the Church, vast numbers 
 against whom " an exclusion from the Sacrament " could not 
 be employed for the purpose of enforcing Church discipline. 
 The matter, however, is still worse as regards " Christian 
 burial." In the North, the custom is entirely abandoned 
 of the clergymen accompanying the body of the deceased to 
 the grave. 5 In Hamburg, for instance, interments take 
 
 1 See his expressions in his u Kirchen-Zeitung," 1852, p. 19, and on 
 the " Catechismus Romanus," pp. 2, 7, 22. 
 
 2 BAUMGARTEN, u Der Kirkliche Nothstand in Mecklenburg," 1861, 
 p, 41. 
 
 HENGSTENBERG'S " K.-Ztg.," 1858, p. 1115. 
 
 4 " Ueber Wiederbelebung der Kirchenzucht." Breslau, 1859, p. 50. 
 
 4 " Berlin Kirchenzeitung," 1844, No. Ixiii.
 
 314 EXCESS OF PREACHING. 
 
 place without any participation on the part of the ecclesias- 
 tical authorities. 1 "In town and country," says Friihbuss, 
 "it is the rule not to have a religious burial, when one 
 wishes to avoid payment of fees. The poor people, looking 
 to a saving of expenses, pray for permission to have " a quiet 
 funeral." From this practice has arisen a general notion that 
 a quiet funeral " a still burial," that is, one divested of 
 ecclesiastical ceremonies is much " more solemn ;" and so it 
 is regarded as the prerogative of persons distinguished for 
 learning and science, and has become a privilege of many 
 orders in society. 2 In Prussia, it has been moreover re- 
 marked that, if Church discipline were once again actively 
 enforced, and that the most important canons of the Primi- 
 tive Church were put into execution, the most of those who 
 are now discharging the duties of educational professors, and 
 three-fourths of the Pastors, would be put at once under a 
 ban of excommunication. 3 
 
 The Protestant Church in Germany has no room for a 
 multiplicity of offices and vocations. Every one who enters 
 into its service must be a preacher must make that his 
 main occupation ; and he is, therefore, exposed to all the 
 temptations and mischiefs which a constant call for public 
 speaking must inevitably entail upon him. " He may, or he 
 may not, have gifts for his office," says Karsten, " but still he 
 must preach ; and by that which he least understands will 
 the measure of his capability be taken ; whilst that which he 
 really does thoroughly comprehend, in the existing condition 
 of his office, he cannot make use of for the benefit of the 
 congregation." 4 " And then, how very few, in fine, will be 
 found to be the number of really good preachers ! If we 
 
 1 HENGSTENBERG'S "K.-Z.," 1857, p. 60. 
 
 2 KLIEFOTH'S " Liturg. Abhandlungen," i. 201. FRUHBTJSS, p. 68, 
 remarks, that in Berlin a few cigar-smokers are preferred to pastors as 
 attendants upon the bodies of the deceased. 
 
 * FRUHBUSS, p. 61. 
 
 4 "Die protest. Kirche," p. 54.
 
 CANDIDATES FOE HOLY ORDERS. 315 
 
 reckon them up, we shall discover that not one-tenth part 
 of the clergy are suited to be preachers." 1 Hence comes the 
 prevalence of a conventional style of speaking, of traditional 
 cues, hollow phrases, and theological inanities, upon which, 
 if one attempts to lay hold, they are found to elude the 
 grasp like a vaporous mist. The universal domination 
 of mere phraseology has attained to an unexampled height 
 amongst modern German homilists. " Shall we never have 
 done," exclaims the preacher Hoyer, "with the awful 
 chattering of contemporary theology, which, like a bewilder- 
 ing demon, has seized hold of our poor students, walks 
 with them in their official duties, and talks with them in their 
 sermons ; and when it cannot render them unintelligible, is 
 yet able to make them spiritless, tame, and disagreeable?" 2 
 
 For a very long time, the wretched condition of candidates 
 for holy orders has been discussed in writings, and debated 
 in public conferences. " We are," say the complaints of 
 candidates for the office of preachers, "after we have 
 terminated our academical studies, for the best part of our 
 lives (very generally for fifteen years) excluded from the 
 service of the Church. We must become tutors in public 
 schools or private families for many years, and when we, at 
 last, and at a late period of life, attain the position of preacher, 
 we then find that occupations ' not in accordance with our 
 vocation' have estranged us from it. 3 " Without any 
 immediate connection with the Church," so describes 
 Schmieder their position, "without any cohesion amongst 
 themselves, they wander about, isolated, homeless, often 
 without any means of livelihood, a prey to want utterly 
 hopeless ! The Church leaves them to their fate ! How many 
 candidates have been overwhelmed through this pressure of 
 circumstances upon them, and have silently been destroyed 
 by their misery ! 4 A person has only to compare the organ- 
 ization of the Protestant Church with the Catholic, where 
 
 1 Cuxz, "Das geistliche Amt.," p. 51. 
 
 2 " Zeitschrift fur luth. Theologie," 1855, 295. 
 
 8 LANDSCHREIBER, " Die Kirkliche Situation." Leipzig, 1860, p. 80. 
 4 " Verhandlungen des Kirchentags zu Elberfeld," p. 57. .
 
 316 DOMESTIC CARES OF THE CLERGY. 
 
 every young man, the moment his preparatory studies are 
 completed, finds his. fitting employment in the service of the 
 Church ; a person has only to make this comparison, and he 
 will at once discover where lies the root of the evil so 
 generally complained of." 
 
 It is well known that every candidate, so soon as he has 
 obtained a position affording the necessary means for the 
 maintenance of a family, enters into the state of marriage. 
 Then anxiety respecting his income, and care concerning his 
 wife and children, become the main affairs of life ; and what 
 a state of dependence and slavishness is inextricably bound 
 up with his domestic circumstances, is briefly and graphi- 
 cally portrayed by Schenkel. 1 " There arises," he justly 
 observes, " a species of demoralization, which is an unavoid- 
 able concomitant of his condition, and compels him to be 
 ever sufficiently prudent, so as not to give offence to person- 
 ages of influence. This incompetent, inadequate, thought- 
 smothering, unprotestant institution has had such a character- 
 degrading effect in our German Protestant Church." The 
 opinion thus expressed is not incorrect ; but then, that the 
 questionable institution is unprotestant, is an opinion so far 
 from being correct, that it may, on the contrary, be affirmed 
 that it is one of the consequences naturally developed by the 
 Reformation. 
 
 Then there have been large districts and parishes of two, 
 three, and four thousand souls, with two such parishes united 
 in one, in order that a suitable maintenance might be pro- 
 vided for "the families" (of the clergymen). And yet the 
 pressure of want is felt more and more by such " families " 
 every year. Thus, the Schleswig Consistory, in an Appeal 
 made in the year 1858, had complained that " there had 
 lately been many parishes in which no one could venture to 
 take upon himself the office of .pastor, for the clergymen in 
 them were in such constant anxiety to procure a sufficiency 
 of daily bread for their families, that they had lost all satis- 
 faction in the discharge of their parochial duties, and were 
 
 1 " Die Erneuerung der deutschen evangelischen Kirche." Gotha, 
 1860, p. 55.
 
 THEIR DEPENDENT CONDITION. 317 
 
 destitute of that ease of mind requisite for a proper per- 
 formance of them." 1 On all sides the description becomes 
 still more gloomy of " the destitution of the parish clergy," 
 of the increasing household expenditure of their " families," 
 and of their incomes at the same time either remaining the 
 same, or diminishing. It has been the custom to bestow the 
 highest eulogies upon the prerogative of the clergy of the 
 Evangelical Confession, that they, as husbands and fathers of 
 families, were identified with laymen in their mode of life, 
 united with them in social intercourse, and therefore form- 
 ing no particular order in society, and belonging not to a 
 distinct " caste," and so being, in fact, made to correspond 
 with, and carry out the doctrine of, "a common priesthood," 
 which required that there should be the greatest possible 
 similarity of condition between laymen and preachers. 
 Meanwhile it is shown, and there are a thousand voices to 
 testify to the fact, that for three hundred years one constant 
 complaint has been made, as to the rank of a preacher being 
 universally despised, and their office so little prized, that 
 they have very seldom been able to win the love or confi- 
 dence of the people ; and that the general disfavour in which 
 they stood made itself painfully felt in the wretched income 
 and the poverty-stricken state of the majority of the body. 
 In the past century the contempt and degradation that had 
 fallen upon the order of preachers, were the motive to Ja- 
 blonsky for entering into a negotiation with England, and 
 this with the approval of the Prussian Court, for the purpose 
 of introducing the Episcopacy into Prussia. 2 In the year 
 1792, a preacher mentions that the best theologians of the 
 time were accustomed to lay upon Luther the responsibility 
 
 1 KRAUSE'S " Kirchenzeitung," 1858, p. 72. Compare with this the 
 complaint made in the " Gottinger Monatschrift," 1849, p. 325 : " In the 
 smaller districts the preachers, with their families, cannot live without 
 the greatest economy, and even so find it very difficult ' to make both 
 ends meet' (kaum durch kommen)." 
 
 2 " Christian Remembrancer," 1845, i. 120. See HENKE'S " Magazin," 
 v. 224, where will be found a vivid description of the prevailing con- 
 tempt for clergymen.
 
 318 ALIENATION BETWEEN PASTORS AND PEOPLE. 
 
 of their condition iiaving become so lamentable. 1 In our 
 own time the Prussian Government has desired to create a 
 respect for the preachers' class, by the bestowal of titles and 
 orders, 2 and has shown itself quite willing to regard the 
 clergy as a particle of its widely-extended, many-branched 
 bureaucratic officials, and to permit it to have some share in 
 the honours and prerogatives enjoyed by other government 
 employes. The Upper Consistory of Mark has, indeed, 
 complained that there is not the slightest prospect for 
 preachers attaining to independence through a marriage with a 
 wealthy wife, as few maidens with large dowries could ever be 
 induced to prefer a preacher to any other person for ahusband! 3 
 To such lengths has an alienation between pastors and 
 people reached, that, according to the declaration made by 
 the preacher Kuntze at the meeting of " the Alliance " in 
 Berlin, " the people being now estranged from the Church, 
 look upon preachers, the Church, and Christianity itself, as 
 a species of mere governmental and police institution, and 
 exhibit in the plainest and most distinct manner their dislike 
 and contempt for the three together." 4 " So far," he says, 
 " as we are concerned, the Church has not the slightest in- 
 fluence upon the feelings or consciences of the population. 
 With such effect have persons laboured for the spiritualiza- 
 tion of the Church, that body and spirit are both very nearly 
 annihilated. In the estimation of the multitude, all that the 
 pastor now represents is himself!" 5 "Amongst most con- 
 gregations," says Moll, " there is a dislike and an avoidance 
 of any communication with the clergy ; whilst a necessity 
 for their services is neither felt nor understood. No confi- 
 dence is reposed in the clergyman ; and the general exhorta- 
 tion made by the Agenda to congregations, to seek in their 
 spiritual necessities for the aid and counsel 6 of their pastors, 
 
 1 STEINECK, " Nachricht von dem Leben des J. M. Gb'tze." Ham- 
 biirg, 1792, p. 19. 
 
 1 HENGSTENBERG'S "K.-Ztg.," vol. xxx., p. 20. 
 
 3 HENGSTENBERG, vol. xxx., p. 22. 
 
 4 Hid., p. 22. 
 
 * " Verhandlungen," p. 432. 
 
 HEKGSTENBERG'S "K. Z ," 1857, p. 690.
 
 DISCOURAGEMENT OF THE CLERGY. 319 
 
 has scarcely been attended to by a single individual." 1 
 " There exists," said Jaspis, at the Church Assembly at 
 Hamburg, in the year 1858, "a frightful partition between 
 the people and their spiritual directors so great is it, that 
 in many places earnest clergymen give up all as lost, and do 
 not venture to do anything." 2 A year earlier, Dean Rinck 
 had spoken the following bitter words, at a Church Assembly 
 held in Stuttgart : " A universal complaint must be pre- 
 ferred against our modern clergy, that they have so com- 
 pletely abandoned the attempt to exercise an active personal 
 influence upon the souls and families of those committed to 
 their charge, as if it was their desire that the spiritual care 
 of their flocks should be taken away from them." 3 A highly 
 respectable theologian of Wiirtemberg said to Professor 
 Schaff, " The people now regard us clergymen as nothing 
 better than royal officials and black-coated policemen." 4 
 
 So far have gone an absolute discouragement and complete 
 despair as to the possibility of accomplishing any fruitful 
 result with religion, that the question has been propounded, 
 " Whether or not a person ought to remain in the service of 
 the Church, or if it was not absolutely necessary to leave it?" 
 Superintendent Thym refers to cases having occurred, within 
 his own experience, as to how such a question assails and 
 afflicts almost all pious souls who thoroughly comprehend 
 the terrific perdition of the time, and who are also well 
 aware how little they, with all their labours, can do to miti- 
 gate it. 5 
 
 A Wiirtemberg clergyman remarks : " The Church has 
 disappeared even almost to its very name both amongst 
 the educated classes and with the multitude in Germany. 
 Theologians, indeed, speak much of a Church that is, of 
 
 1 " Die gegenwartige Noth der evang. Kirche Preussens," pp. 11, 26. 
 
 2 " Verhandlungen, herausgeben v. Biernatzki," p. 8. 
 
 * " Yerhandlungen," p. 140. 
 
 4 " Germany, its Universities, Theology, and Religion." Edinburgh, 
 1857, p. 116. 
 
 "1st die evangeliche Kirche Babel, und der Austritt aus ihr daher 
 unerlassliche Pflicht," Von SPENER, uberarbeitet von THYM. Griefe- 
 walde, 1853.
 
 320 RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF THE LAITY. 
 
 the dignity, power, and revenues of a Church. The people, 
 too, now and again go ' into the church ;' but it is only as 
 ' the public' they go there, and not as * a congregation ;' but 
 that they themselves are a part of the Church that they are 
 the living stones wherewith are built up the edifice of an 
 ecclesiastical community that is a thing either not thought 
 of, or it has never been brought home to their understanding. 
 Cassaro-Papism, and still more Bureaucraticism combined 
 with Nationalism, have impaired the Church utterly, and 
 given to it the appearance of being nothing better than a 
 mere political association; whilst Pietism has abolished the 
 last remnant of all right notions respecting a true Church 
 community, by concentrating such notions upon its own little 
 'gatherings' (Gemeinschaften). In the place of an objective 
 Church creed, there is everywhere to be met with the indi- 
 vidual 'subjective stand-point' the individual 'sovereign I,' 
 and the spirit of 'individualism' the spirit of these times, 
 with its pass-words and talismans, which persons prefer bearing 
 rather than submit themselves to the yoke of Christ and the 
 creed of the Reformers." 1 Not less disheartening is the 
 judgment pronounced by two Saxon clergymen : " The 
 Church knows nothing of the necessities and spiritual wants 
 of its members ; it has for them neither eyes, hands, nor 
 heart ; it holds no relation with daily life ; it is nothing more 
 than a Sunday institution, and is unconscious of all that 
 passes during the week. Preaching and baptism, surplice- 
 fees and theological squabbles, are the sole visible signs by 
 which its existence is made known to the bulk of mankind." 2 
 
 When the present situation of the Protestant clergy in 
 Germany is portrayed, the description, of course, includes 
 an account of the religious condition of the laity. What is 
 said of the one is, for the most part, applicable to the others. 
 All tends to prove this lamentable fact the masses are non- 
 Churchmen. It would be both weakness and folly to waste 
 
 1 SCHAFF'S " Kirchenfreund," 1857, p. 416. 
 
 * Kirchen und Schulblatt," von TEUSCHER und HANSCHMANX. 
 Weimar, 1852, p. 65.
 
 SOURCE OF DANGER TO PROTESTANTISM. 321 
 
 time in useless lamentations over this circumstance. What 
 is necessary to be done is to look the fact straight in the 
 face. 1 A broad and deep chasm lies between Theology and 
 the Christian knowledge of the people : the one has ascended 
 to the highest point of speculation, whilst the latter is still 
 stumbling through the alphabet. 2 The Erlangen theologians 
 complain " that every one amongst the Protestant popula- 
 tions fancies he can make a religion for himself, and no one 
 any longer rightly knows what he ought to believe and what 
 he ought to maintain ; and with this confusion in their ideas, 
 the people are also to be remarked for having lost their 
 moral stability." 3 
 
 But what might occur if a knowledge of the true state of 
 affairs should penetrate amongst those who may be rightfully 
 called " the people," and especially amongst the intellectual 
 and educated classes'? It may sound like a paradox, but 
 still every one who thoroughly comprehends the subject will 
 admit its truth that the universal religious indifference of 
 the educated classes at this moment is the chief security for 
 the existence of the Protestant Church. If there once 
 awakens in those circles a living interest for religious matters ; 
 if they take the Bible in their own hands for the purpose of 
 testing their religion ; if they should desire to learn in what 
 relation to each other stand the now existing theology and 
 the doctrines taught from the pulpit, and how their preachers 
 coincide in their opinions with those expressed in other states 
 and countries if they should do these things, there will 
 come the day of discovery and of exposure ; and then, too, 
 the confidence now reposed in the Church will be at an end. 
 Then also will they perceive that Luther's Bible not merely 
 abounds with gross faults and misapprehensions of the 
 original text, but also that lie frequently and intentionally, 
 and for the purpose of upholding his doctrine, disguised the 
 Apostolic words ; and that the Epistle of St. Paul in par- 
 
 1 " Sachsisches Kirchenblatt." Preface to 1860. 
 * Ibid., 1860, No. vi. 
 
 Zeitschr. fur Protestantismus," vol. xx., p. 371. 
 
 u
 
 322 IGNORANCE OF PROTESTANT LAYMEN. 
 
 ticular was mishandled by him. 1 They would learn, also, 
 that the grand " acquisition" of the Reformation, the Pro- 
 testant "Justification" doctrine, is now abandoned by the 
 most distinguished theologians as "untenable," and by the 
 exegetists branded as " unbiblical." Nitzsch, indeed, recom- 
 mends to theologians silently to correct the symbol ; 2 but 
 the time cannot be far distant when this silent correction 
 will become notorious to the multitude ; and the secret will 
 not long remain unspoken, viz., that not a single theologian of 
 any name or note binds himself down to the Confessional 
 writings. 
 
 The first prelate of the Saxon Church, Liebner, a short 
 time since, portrayed, in the darkest colours, the utter want 
 in Christian knowledge, "which was," he said, "actually 
 astounding, not only amongst the multitude attached to the 
 German Evangelical Church, but even amongst the great 
 body of the educated classes." 3 The Churches of his Con- 
 fession appeared to him to resemble a Manichaean world a 
 kingdom of light, composed of German theology and its 
 guardians ; a kingdom of darkness, composed of laymen, for 
 the main part deeply immersed in negative and positive 
 ignorance ; and both the light and the darkness standing in 
 strong contrast opposed to one another. That, beyond all 
 other things concerning which the great mass of laymen had 
 formed the most perverse notions, was first as to the Reforma- 
 tion, and then of Luther himself. "The laymen," such is 
 
 1 The only preacher of whom it is known that he, on this point, con- 
 ducted himself with candour towards his congregation, was the Prussian 
 preacher, Ehrenstrbm, who afterwards emigrated to America. He taught 
 Greek to members of his congregation, and then pointed out to them the 
 different passages that Luther had falsely translated. (WANGEMANN'S 
 " Preuss. Kirchengeschichte," iii. 132). On the other hand, PALMER 
 ( u HOMILETIK," p. 303) emphatically warns all preachers never to say to 
 the people that this or that passage was falsely translated by Luther 
 that the fact was to be as a mystery, on which they were to remain silent ; 
 or, at the utmost, all they ought to do should be to admit that the trans- 
 lation was obscure and indistinct. 
 
 1 " Deutsche Zeitschrift," viii. 201. 
 
 * u Zur Kirchlichen Priuzipienfrage der Gegenwart ; Zeugnisse a. d 
 Siichsischen Kirchenregimente." Dresden, I860, p. 19.
 
 SEVERE QUESTIONS. 323 
 
 Liebner's opinion, " have pictured to themselves Luther as 
 a man who was to be venerated as a grand deliverer, who had 
 freed them not merely from the yoke of Popes, Bishops, and 
 Councils, but also from the tutorship of Protestant theologians, 
 and conferred upon each man the right to believe according 
 to the extent, of his faith, and to live according to the measure 
 of his conscience. Such, however," he added, " is not the 
 Luther of the theologians." 
 
 Laymen, on the other side, counterbalance these heavy 
 complaints with severe replies. "When," it is said, "Liebner 
 so loudly lauds the high pretensions of existing theology, 1 and 
 that it has been in constant unity and continuity with the 
 Scripture, and exhibiting itself as a progressive and internally 
 developing Church, and, therefore, to be truly Catholic, then 
 can intelligent laymen ask ' Have you yourselves not unfre- 
 quently said, and proved to us, that the Reformation was the 
 deepest and most incurable breach that ever had been made 
 in the unity and continuity of the Church ? Is it not, too, 
 an admitted fact that the main doctrine of the new Church 
 was previously completely unknown, and that it was not a 
 Continuation, but a Negation of doctrine hitherto taught ? 
 Is the destruction of the Primacy, the Episcopacy, and the 
 entire Church Constitution, a perduration of Ecclesiastical 
 Continuity ? Is annihilation the same thing as devel- 
 opment and perpetuation ? You reproach us with wan- 
 dering in the dark night of theological ignorance; but, 
 before you repeat the reproach, place, if you can, in our hands 
 an Ariadne thread, which will help to guide us in safety out 
 of the labyrinth of doubt and uncertainty in which we are 
 now straying. Give us a clear answer to this most urgent 
 of all questions Who is it that we are to believe? Is it 
 the particular preacher beneath whose pulpit accident has 
 placed us ? Is it the Consistory of the country ? Is it the 
 
 1 Ibid., p. 37. So had STAHL, in a preceding year, in a discourse upon 
 ecclesiastical congregational order, spoken " of the faith of the Church 
 being the same for centuries." Is it possible that Stahl fancied he could 
 persuade the Berliners that what their forefathers believed in the year 
 1580 was that which had been believed by the people of Berlin in 1516 ? 
 
 Y2
 
 324 MODERN ORTHODOX THEOLOGY. 
 
 theological Faculty of the National University ? Is it the 
 temporal Prince, who is also a Supreme Bishop ? Is it the 
 symbolical books, from which every theologian has emancipated 
 himself? Is it our own private judgment upon particular 
 passages of the Bible 1 We take up your latest commenta- 
 tors upon the Bible to help us on our way and what do we 
 discover? Ten different explanations of one and the same 
 passage in the Scriptures, and each explanation backed up by 
 the name of some celebrated theologian ! How many are the 
 confirmatory passages in Scripture cited in the symbolical 
 books, to which a different interpretation is now attached 
 from that there assigned to them ? We have asked you for 
 bread, and you have given us a stone. You have always on 
 your lips the words Protestant Freedom, but it is an iron yoke 
 which you lay upon us ; it is a spiritual bondage that you 
 would exact from laymen. Should we accept, with a blind 
 faith, doctrine from a preacher who is bound by no higher 
 authority than himself, and cannot prove that the doctrine he 
 teaches is a common, general, and accepted doctrine? It 
 has been said by one of yourselves : A community can never 
 be more grossly tyrannized over than when it is compelled to 
 place itself beneath the unrestrained will of any one indi- 
 vidual and when it must be guided in accordance with his 
 peculiar notions.' MI 
 
 When Liebner maintains that his own and his colleagues' 
 
 O 
 
 theology contains within its bosom all the saving means which 
 the necessities of the time require, but that this is only a 
 secret doctrine so he allows all sorts of conjectures to be 
 formed as to the meaning of his mystery ; whilst a very 
 different opinion is loudly expressed by others as to what 
 have been the achievements of theology in the present day. 
 A very short time has elapsed since Stahl made the declara- 
 tion " that the theological science of Germany was at best 
 but a double-edged sword, and as capable of inflicting a 
 wound upon faith as infidelity." 2 So, too, Professor Krafft, 
 of Bonn, and the preacher Beyschlag complained, at the 
 
 1 KARSTEN, " Die protest. Kirche," p. 29. 
 MESSNER'S " K.-Ztg.," 18G1, p. 377.
 
 DETERMINATION OP CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 325 
 
 Berlin meeting of the Evangelical Alliance, that the modern 
 orthodox theology, with its recoil upon the symbolical books, 
 was the principal cause of the religious weakness of German 
 Protestantism. 1 
 
 The Bible Societies have for the last fifty years distri- 
 buted in Germany, as in other places, millions of Bibles. 
 Even the poorest person can now, with very little trouble, 
 possess a German Bible. The effect, however, is, according 
 to the assurance of a preacher, " that there is no book less 
 studied than the Bible that amongst a hundred Christian 
 households there was scarcely one to be found in which the 
 Holy Scriptures were still read." 2 " The people," says 
 Gu'der, " nurture a secret distrust of the Scriptures." 3 
 " Even the best amongst the country people," observes 
 another, " mostly read it only on Sundays and festival 
 days." 4 
 
 Nevertheless, it has lately happened that a Faculty alto- 
 gether theological declared " that naught of the doctrine of 
 the Church can now be referred to by the preachers in their 
 addresses to the people ; because the main decisive question 
 is ' Why and wherefore they should believe ?' And this 
 misleads the people as to a false notion that, when they are 
 taught to believe anything upon the mere human authority of 
 the Evangelical Church, they should also be bound to accept 
 an interpretation of the Scripture for doing so. And hence 
 it is that no preacher can suggest to his congregation that 
 they should simply receive his doctrine, but he must refer 
 each to an examination of the Bible for himself and it is 
 the result of this self-study, and not the testimony of his 
 own Church, that is to determine the acceptance of Chris- 
 tian doctrine. And with this state of circumstances, it is 
 found that nineteen out of every twenty of the still church- 
 going population must be declared to be creedless ; and if 
 one should be able to carry into effect this theory upon the 
 
 1 " Verhandlungen," pp. 187, 196. 
 * THOLUCK'S " Liter. Anz.," 1845, p. 289. 
 1 "Deutsche Zeitschrii't," 1855, p. 151. 
 4 HENGSTENBEEG, "K.-Z.," 1852, p. 873.
 
 326 A CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 
 
 creed preached from the pulpit, the churches would soon 
 become empty a matter upon which the Faculty would 
 give themselves so much the less trouble, as they have here 
 a very weighty authority on their side namely, the Evan- 
 gelical Alliance, whose second Article has determined " that 
 it is the right and the duty of every Christian man to inter- 
 pret the Scripture according to his own conviction of its 
 meaning." Theologians and preachers, who have attached 
 themselves in crowds to the Alliance, in Berlin, have ac- 
 cepted this Article without hesitation. It is not as yet 
 adopted in the Catechism. How many laymen, it may be 
 asked, are there in all Germany, who think of this " duty," 
 and of fully performing it ? 
 
 There is a small number of Lutheran theologians, men of 
 very earnest views, and who in reality imagine that, woful 
 as may now be the appearance of the Lutheran Church in 
 Germany, still it bears within itself, and it alone does 
 so, every hope of a better state of Church affairs in the 
 future. Somewhat larger may be the number of those who 
 bind up their expectations with " the United Church," and 
 dream of a grand development for it at a near period. 
 A few thoughtful theologians, however, acknowledge that 
 neither " Lutheranism" nor " Calvinism," nor a com- 
 mingling of both elements into a " Unionism," can have 
 either a long duration, or hold out the hope of a vigorous 
 development, and therefore they await a Church of the future. 
 This fact must, indeed, be admitted by every believing 
 Christian, that the present state of Church fragmentation 
 cannot possibly be a normal state, nor be of long con- 
 tinuance ; but, on the contrary, " that the Church's inborn 
 essence of Unity will yet overcome that disruption which has 
 been effected by the powers of this world." 1 
 
 In this future Unity it is -said that even the Catholic 
 Church will be included ; and that it should, in essential 
 things, become Protestant, is what is naturally required ; as 
 
 1 Thus do the Gbttingen theologians express themselves in their Decla- 
 ration, 1854, p. 66.
 
 UNION OF THE TWO CHURCHES. 327 
 
 well as that its "reserved" organism should be destroyed. 
 For this, it is hoped, events sooner or later will provide. Now, 
 the right view to take of such a notion as this is " that an 
 amalgamation of the Catholic Church with the Protestant, 
 so that the peculiarities of both may be transferred into 
 one United Church, is an impossibility." That which is 
 essentially Catholic, and that which is essentially Protes- 
 tant, are not like the two opposite sides of the same sub- 
 stantiality, which conjointly make it complete, and united 
 together form a richer and more harmonious totality ; but 
 they stand in relation to each other as two repellents, for the 
 one is a negative of the other. 
 
 A union of the two Churches, through amalgamation, 
 could only be effected by the one of them ceasing to be what 
 it is, and breaking off from its tradition whether that tra- 
 dition was Protestant or Catholic. 
 
 The acceptation of one single principle, upon the one side 
 or the other, would be sufficient to attain this object. At 
 the moment, for instance, in which German Protestantism 
 should acknowledge that there is a Church, in the sense of 
 one that is real, divine, with promises and power, and an 
 established institution, then, in that moment, it would enter 
 upon the process of being Catholicised ; and so, too, would 
 the Catholic Church be self-dissolved upon the day in which 
 it would accept the Second Article of the Evangelical 
 Alliance, and proclaim " that no one must henceforth 
 submit himself to religious authority, but must, on the con- 
 trary, found his faith, in the last instance, upon nothing else 
 than his own interpretation of the Bible." 
 
 Fichte (if the author mistakes not) was the first who, in 
 1806, gave expression to the notion, " that there must, 
 out of Peter's (the Catholic) and Paul's (the Protestant) 
 Churches, be a third, which would be a transfiguration and 
 amalgamation of the two, and which, by " the abolition 
 of the peculiarities" of each, should be their successor 
 " a John's Church." Schelling, at a later period, in his lec- 
 tures, expatiated on this idea, and it has, since then, been 
 many times referred to with great applause. Thus, for
 
 328 EXPECTATION OF A NEW CHURCH. 
 
 instance, Professor Piper, in the Church Assembly at Stutt- 
 gart, in 1857, consoled his auditors with the expectation of 
 their yet beholding a " John's Church." 1 So also has 
 Merz presented his readers with a view of "a Church of 
 Humanity of the living John ;" and, with this John's 
 Church, the commencement of " a fourth revolution in the 
 Church." 2 
 
 Ullman, 8 yielding to a like turn of thought, has discovered 
 three leading forms of Christianity, which found an outward 
 manifestation in the Greek, Roman, and Protestant Churches; 
 and then directs attention to a fourth, in which Christianity, 
 as a religion of the Divinity with humanity, will constitute 
 itself as a perfect absolute religion, and be " the Church of 
 the future." 
 
 Such a notion as this is doubtless at the present moment 
 very widely extended. As to the comparison of the opposi- 
 tion between Catholicity and Protestantism, as a difference 
 between Peter and Paul, it is intrinsically untrue, and will 
 scarcely be regarded as permissible by any theologian ; whilst 
 there are doubtless many theologians who suppose that there 
 will yet be a new Church, in which there will be but one 
 shepherd and one flock, and that this Church will present 
 itself in a form very different from that which is now exhi- 
 bited by Protestantism. 
 
 If one would describe, as does the Berlin " Deutsche 
 Zeitschrift," the existing Protestant Church as "a mere 
 outward form, a stranger alike to the sympathies and life of 
 the people, and as the mere ruin of times that have passed 
 away; 1 or if the notion concerning it be that expressed by 
 Schenkel, Lange, and Rothe, 5 that " Protestantism has never 
 yet brought forth one real, substantial, operative Church," 
 
 1 u Verhandlungen," p. 48. 
 
 * " Armuth und Christenthum," p. 88. 
 
 * " Wesen des Christenthums." Hamburg, 1849. 
 
 * " Jahrg.," 1851, p. 304. 
 
 s ROTHE'S " Theol. Ethik," iii. 1012. SCHENKEL, " Das Prinzip des 
 Protestantismus," p. 11. LANGE, " Uber die Neugestaltung des Ver- 
 haltnisses zwischen Staat und Kirche," 1848, p. 89.
 
 HOPE OF A SECOND PENTECOST. 329 
 
 then indeed are persons justified in fixing their thoughts 
 upon " a future " or " a John's Church ;" or they must, like 
 Hase, begin to prophesy of the downfall of Christianity itself, 
 and of the birth and predominance of a completely new re- 
 ligion. As to the budding forth of a Church in the State, 
 such as Rothe expects, it must be a future Church of a 
 peculiar constitution in fact, nothing less than a Universal 
 State Church ! 
 
 But when an attempt is made to impart a corporeal, 
 substantial form to this shadow of a future Church, then are 
 the ideologists found to evaporate in empty phrases, or they 
 picture forth a modern millennium, and emit a cluster of 
 hopes, and a swarm of wishes, bright, brilliant, fugacious 
 and volatile as butterflies, " and in whose actuality the simple 
 Christian will place as little faith as any other human being 
 in his sober senses." l 
 
 In close connexion with these expectations of a new 
 Church is to be found in all the Protestant portions of 
 Europe a very general and longing desire for a new " descent 
 of the Holy Ghost." In England there are some prayer 
 societies established for that purpose. At the Church As- 
 sembly in Berlin, and in despite of the unanimous adhesion 
 to an unchanged Augsburg Confession, the cry went forth 
 " that there could be no salvation without a new descent of 
 the Holy Ghost !" In the pulpits, as in pamphlets, a second 
 Pentecost, without which it was said " the world could not 
 much louger go on, was wished for, and therefore was to be 
 expected." Even Delitzsch 2 himself says, "It is indis- 
 pensable that there should be a descent of the Spirit from 
 above." Such a repetition of the Festival of Pentecost is, 
 however, neither promised in Scripture, nor in the eighteen 
 
 1 Such is the proper remark of the " Zeitschrift fiir luth. Theol.," 
 1857, p. 311. "These churches of the future," says Rudelbach, in the 
 same journal (1853, p. 90), "are the scabies of the day, and bear with 
 them all the characteristics of that malady they show that there is in- 
 wardly decay, and exteriorly, irritation." 
 
 2 " Erlanger Zeitschrift fur Protest.," 1858, p. 305.
 
 330 EXPECTATION OF A MILLENNIUM. 
 
 hundred years of the duration of the Church has it ever been 
 either desired or hoped for. 1 
 
 Near to these hopeful expectants, who are looking forward 
 to a new Church, and to a second Pentecost as the birth-day 
 of their new Church, are those numerous individuals, more 
 down-hearted or less aspiring in their anticipations, who 
 announce the near approach of the ending of this world, and 
 the return of Jesus Christ to judgment, or to the commence- 
 ment of the millennium. 
 
 When an expectation of a millennium of an earthly kingdom 
 of Christ shews itself (the Augsburg Confession notwith- 
 standing) amongst the Lutherans, 2 it is to be regarded, 
 as being based upon their despair of any improvement of 
 their Church, as a perception of the inevitable dissolution of 
 that Church; and to such sentiments must be attributed the 
 origin of such an idea. Clergy and theologians who stand 
 like incompetent physicians by the sick-bed of their Church 
 are, it may be said, " born Chiliasts." By them it is said : 
 " The discipline of faith has no hold any more either above 
 or below and even the simple but true preaching of the 
 Gospel encounters manifold contradictions or multitudinous 
 indifference.", 3 Or they take the same view with Rudelbach, 
 when he says, " Where one fortress of Lutheran orthodoxy 
 tumbles down after another, and when at the head-quarters 
 (of Lutheranism) there is such an awful chasm opened, then 
 must it be plainly seen that the days in which we live are 
 ripe for the great apostasy." 4 
 
 Many, too, seek for salvation and consolation in new 
 interpretations of the Apocalypse, and in a reference to the 
 
 1 " If such a notion," says Hase, with respect to it, "is seriously enter- 
 tained, then these persons place their hopes in the performance of a 
 miracle, such as has not occurred since the times of the Apostles. In so 
 doing they only openly declare their despair to conduct their religious 
 affairs in accordance with that historical and natural development with 
 which Christ has guided his Church through eighteen hundred centuries." 
 "Prot. K.-Z.," 1856, p. 1151. 
 
 2 Recently by Lessing, Florke, Karsten, &c. 
 
 HENGSTENBERG'S " K.-Z.," 1859, p. 1181. 
 4 " Zeitschrift fur luth. Theologie," 1859, p. 255.
 
 CONSOLING PROSPECTS FOR THE CREDULOUS. 331 
 
 approaching millennium, when and where all that is now 
 wanting to the Protestantism of to-day shall be supplied, 
 and " the crooked ways be made straight." And then there 
 is Auberlen, who has recently discovered that the whole 
 visible Church, including even the Protestant portion of it, 
 has become part and parcel of "the harlot" in the Apoca- 
 lypse, and, therefore, there is nothing left to mankind but to 
 await the millennium j 1 and another, Nagelsbach, is charmed 
 with Auberlen's " consolation for all, who on the one side 
 would willingly aid the Church, but on the other see no 
 possible means of being able to render it effectual assist- 
 ance" so that, in fact, all that any one is able to do is to 
 wait ! 2 
 
 Others, like Baumgarten, admit that the existing Church 
 is fundamentally perverted, but they console themselves 
 with the prospect of a speedy conversion of the Jews. 
 " The whole development of the Church hitherto," it is 
 maintained by Baumgarten, is a gross erratic wandering of 
 State-Churchdom a degenerate Heathenish Church ; but 
 that converted Israel is destined to become for all nations 
 '' the redeeming and sanctifying head," 3 and will once more 
 present a bleeding victim in the temple of Jerusalem ! It 
 is more positively announced by another that there will soon 
 appear one who has been foretold by Christ as an earthly 
 Consoler and Messias. We are now, it is said, in the 
 year 5976 of the Redemption, and in the year 6000 will be 
 the first resurrection and the millennium. 4 
 
 Finally, the present Minister of Public Worship and 
 Education in Prussia, Von Bethmann-Hollweg, shortly be- 
 fore his appointment to office, gave expression to his despair 
 in Chiliastic aspirations. 5 " To the Apostles, Peter and 
 
 1 " Der Prophet Daniel und die Offenbarung Johannis," 1854, p. 294. 
 
 2 REUTER'S " Repertor.," vol. xcii., p. 204, and again in vol. ciii., p. 85. 
 8 HENGSTENBERG'S u K.-Ztg.," 1859, p. 697. 
 
 4 CHRISTIANUS, " Das Evangelium des Reiches ;" Leipzig, 1859. The 
 author asserts that he has availed himself especially of the works of the 
 Erlanger theologian, Von Hofmann. 
 
 5 In GELZER'S " Monatsbliittern," 1858, vol. xi. p. 126.
 
 332 PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY. 
 
 Paul, who have each had their Churches, for a time must 
 that of John succeed. In Church and State are alike 
 exhibited the counteraction of every progressive step there 
 is dissolution both in State and in Church ; there is the 
 decay of organic forms, and there is an incapacity in the age 
 to create new. Both Church and State must perish in their 
 earthly forms, that the kingdom of Christ may be set up over 
 all nations that the bride of the Lamb, the perfect com- 
 munity, the new Jerusalem, may descend from Heaven" 
 
 Not long before this was published, another Protestant 
 Statesman had warned his Protestant readers to turn away 
 from false prophets who announce the end of the world, be- 
 cause they have come to an end of their own wisdom. 1 
 
 A description of the present state of ecclesiastical affairs 
 makes it necessary to devote a few sentences to a description 
 of the position which Protestantism in Germany maintains 
 with regard to the Catholic Church. The adherents of both 
 Confessions associate and intermingle daily more and more 
 with each other. With equal steps they advance, and a 
 contact of mind with mind becomes more frequent ; and 
 everywhere the Protestant churches and congregations place 
 themselves close to the Catholics ; and they do so as 
 adversaries. Even in the extremities of the North, as of the 
 South, the toleration of a foreign faith can now only be 
 a question of time. As to the situation which Catholics 
 appear to occupy, it shall be referred to in another place. 
 What is desired in this part of the work is to fix attention 
 upon the course of conduct exhibited by the ecclesiastical 
 leaders and orators of the Protestant Church towards the 
 Catholic, and on the false position in which they place them- 
 selves. 
 
 This may, with truth, be said that Catholic tendencies 
 lie at the bottom of the whole movement that has been made 
 towards a religious life and an ecclesiastical restoration in 
 Protestantism. He who has watched this movement receives 
 the same impression as if he saw a number of individuals 
 1 BUNSEN, " Gott in der Geschichte," i. 133.
 
 ITS RELATION TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 333 
 
 thrust into a narrow, stifling, dark, and loathsome cell ; and 
 that those who were so packed together were attempting to 
 open now this door and then that, in order that they might 
 inhale fresh air and new strength ; but that, with every such 
 attempt, there pealed forth in their ears a loud chorus of 
 clerical and lay voices, exclaiming " Shut out the miasma ; 
 keep away from you the foul grave-stench that arises from 
 old, mouldering tombs." It is with the reproach, " You are 
 becoming Catholic," that the opponents of the movement 
 have sought to check it. It is with the cry, " You want to 
 make Catholics of us," that the great masses of the population 
 have, for twenty years, repelled every earnest effort made 
 towards the enrichment and improvement of Protestantism 
 in dogma, in ecclesiastical life, and in the Divine service. 
 Who can deny that, consistently with the principles from 
 which the spirit of Protestantism has originated, such a 
 course of conduct so marked with fear and caution is not 
 perfectly natural ? " The attitude of Protestantism," says 
 Stahl, " is ever that of the Borghese gladiator. It is a per- 
 manent assault, the uttermost tension of every sinew and 
 muscle, against Rome. Its whole energy is directed to this 
 point never to let near it Catholic doctrine and discipline, 
 as the smallest manifestation in that direction excites far 
 more horror than would be caused by the grossest trans- 
 gression in an opposite way, &c., &c., &C." 1 
 
 In the years 1848-1851 there were many signs given, from 
 which might be inferred a closer approximation of the two 
 Confessions : it appeared as if both the motives and doc- 
 trines which separated them not being brought prominently 
 forward could, and did, cordially join hand in hand together 
 for the common protection and preservation of moral and 
 religious principles, both in political and social life. In the 
 Diet of some provinces such an association of believing Pro- 
 testants and Catholics had been formed with very happy 
 results. It had so shewn itself that, in most of the affairs 
 then pending, the only alternative to choose between was, 
 " Christianity or Atheism" and at such a crisis the causes 
 1 " Die lutherische Kirche und die Union." Berlin, 1859, p. 456.
 
 334 RESOLUTION OF THE BREMEN ASSEMBLY. 
 
 for a separation of creeds had better be avoided as questions 
 for discussion. But then came the Church Assembly in 
 Bremen, which must have produced a deep and painful im- 
 pression in all parts of Catholic Germany ; because there 
 the great majority of an Assembly, composed of professors 
 and clergymen, expressed themselves with such bitter and 
 unrelenting hatred against a Church to which belonged the 
 larger number of their own countrymen, as well as a pre- 
 ponderating number of all baptized Christians. A particular 
 provocation on the part of the Catholics had not been given 
 to afford an opportunity, or to supply a pretext, for any such 
 explosion. And yet, at that Assembly, a resolution was 
 unanimously passed : " That the expression of this confessional 
 hatred should, in every German congregation, be adopted as 
 a constituent portion of the Divine service, and that in every 
 place should again be sung forth the words : 
 1 As pious men, we pray and hope 
 For sudden death to Turk and Pope. 1 " * 
 
 Rationalist times had made a change with regard to those 
 words, which theologians and pastors, having now again 
 become believers, deemed it to be an urgent task for them to 
 restore to popularity, and again excite the people to their 
 repetition ! An intimation as to the probable or necessary 
 consequences of such circumstances as these, or what may be 
 their signification as pathological symptoms, it does not 
 belong to us here to notify; but we supply the place that might 
 be otherwise occupied, by the expression of opinions formed 
 by two individuals, who, from the high official positions for- 
 merly held by them, had the best opportunity of knowing 
 the matters of which they spoke, and who were both the most 
 determined political opponents of Catholic interests, and 
 both zealous friends and supporters of the Evangelical Church. 
 These two individuals are the President von Gerlach airtl 
 the Privy-Councillor Eilers. The first of these says : " We 
 daily see how small, in comparison with the power of the 
 Catholic Church, is the influence which the Evangelical has 
 
 ' O 
 
 1 " Und steur 1 des Papsts und Tiirken Mord ! " " Verhaudlungen," p. 
 152.
 
 CONCILIATORY ADMISSION. 335 
 
 upon the enlightenment and sanctification of the mass of the 
 population, and upon the majority of its own members. The 
 cause for this is not far to seek." 1 
 
 The second of these, Eilers, was well known as one of the 
 most influential officials in the Eichhorn Administration, and 
 who, in his day, held in his own hands the management of 
 three newspapers, devoted to the purpose of opposing the 
 Catholic Church ; and which were, for that purpose, subsid- 
 ized by the Government. These are his words: "I have 
 made it my study to ascertain the connection that exists 
 between what is the Christian life of the Catholic population, 
 and its institutions and practices ; and, with an unwilling 
 heart, I am compelled to admit that, in general, a far more 
 Christian-like life is led by those who belong to the Catholic 
 than to the Evangelical Church. It is a well recognised fact 
 that the Evangelical clergy, in general, are far very far 
 behind the Catholic in their devotion and efficiency in the 
 discharge of their pastoral duties." 2 
 
 When two laymen express themselves in a manner so rea- 
 sonable and conciliatory, may it not be hoped that the time 
 is coming, and perhaps is already near, when preachers and 
 theologians may give way to milder thoughts and gentler 
 expressions and that they may learn to think and believe 
 that what, upon the whole, the Catholic Church in Germany 
 has done is no more than it could not leave undone! All 
 the reproaches and complaints made against the Church 
 amount to this that those preferred under the name of a 
 reformation and a breaking away from the past, have been 
 refuted that the^Church has remained true to the commission 
 entrusted to it : and thus adhering firmly to the principles on 
 which it was established, it has regularly and consistently 
 been developed ; and, furthermore, that, rigidly abiding with 
 unbroken steadiness to its ecclesiastical life, and in cohesion 
 with other portions of the same Church, it has fulfilled its 
 mission. 
 
 1 " Aktenstiicke aus der Verwaltung des evangel. Oberkirchenraths." 
 Berlin, 1856, iii. 423. 
 
 * EILERS, " Heine Wanderung durch's Leben." Leipzig, ii. p. 226.
 
 336 
 
 THE POPE AND THE STATES OF THE CHURCH 
 
 TO THE TIME OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 
 DOWN to the period of the fall of the Western Roman 
 Empire, the Popes were subjects of the Roman Emperors. 
 They stood, subsequently to the close of the fifth century, in 
 the same relation with respect to the Ostrogoth kings of 
 Italy; and one of the Pontiffs, John I., died in the prison 
 into which he had been thrown by King Theodoric. When 
 the Ostrogoths had been overthrown by the arms of the 
 Byzantines, the Popes then became subjects of the Eastern 
 Roman Emperors. The Popes, although grossly maltreated, 
 and placed in an embarrassing position, between Constanti- 
 nople, the Exarchate, and the Longobards (ever craving for 
 the possession of Rome), still continued constantly to increase, 
 both in power and influence, in Italy. At the close of the 
 sixth century the Pope was already the richest landowner in 
 the Peninsula. Large patrimonies scattered over the whole 
 of the Peninsula, as well as in Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and 
 even France, belonged to the Pontiff; and these being attended 
 to by ecclesiastical managers, enabled the Pope to supply the 
 population of Rome with food, and to purchase peace from 
 the Longobards. Gregory the Great exercised upon his 
 numerous estates a certain jurisdiction, and superintended 
 the Imperial Government officers. And then, in the same
 
 BREACH BETWEEN ROME AND CONSTANTINOPLE. 337 
 
 proportion in which the Eastern Roman sovereignty became 
 crippled, and that the Exarchate was scarcely able to main- 
 tain itself against the strength of the Longobards, the power 
 of the Pope naturally rose of itself, and the temporal 
 dominion of Rome fell to him not as a possession to be 
 ambitiously sought for, but as a mere matter of necessity 
 and duty. The Popes were compelled to become war-leaders, 
 to build fortifications, to enlist soldiers, and to appoint 
 officers. 
 
 The iconoclast strife, combined with the harsh, provoking 
 Church-intermeddling and political despotism of the new 
 Byzantine Soldier-Emperors, led to a breach between Rome 
 and Constantinople, and this breach to the loss of the rich 
 Papal territories in Sicily and Lower Italy, which were taken 
 by violence away from the Papal See, by the Emperor Leo. 
 For this loss a rich recompense was soon afforded. The 
 Longobard king, Luitprand, with a generosity not common 
 to that prince, presented a portion of Southern Tuscany to 
 the Church of St. Peter ; and the Frank king, Pepin, made 
 over, in the same way, the districts that he conquered 
 Emilia, Flaminia, and the Pentapolis that is, the land on 
 the sea coast, from the mouth of the Po to Ancona; and 
 eastward, from the ridge of the Apennines to the Reno. 1 The 
 
 1 It will, we conceive, be useful to the general reader, before accom- 
 panying the author in his sketch of the history of the Papal States, to 
 know exactly what territories were comprised in them, previous to any 
 recent invasion from Piedmont. Upon the return of Pope Pius IX. to 
 Rome, he issued several edicts in the months of September, October, and 
 November, 1850, regulating various details as to institutions, and estab- 
 lishing the following organization, which makes known the names of the 
 various districts and provinces over which he ruled as Sovereign : 
 
 "The whole of the State was distributed into five great divisions. One 
 of these was to bear the name of the District of Rome (' Circondario di 
 Roma'), and the other four were to be termed ' Legations.' The great 
 divisions were subdivided into provinces, the provinces again into 
 governments, and the governments into communes. 
 
 " In the district of Rome were included, besides Rome and the 
 Comarca, or country immediately about the city, three provinces Viterbo, 
 Civita Vecchia, and Orvieto. 
 
 " The four Legations were 
 
 Z
 
 338 ROME AND THE FRANKISH KINGS. 
 
 Pope, on his side although he and the Romans still acknow- 
 ledged, in theory, the Byzantine authority granted to the 
 Frankish king and his sons the Roman " Patriciate " that is 
 to say, the office of " Protector of Rome, and of the Roman 
 See." 
 
 Although Pepin had laid the keys of the towns of the 
 Exarchate on the altar of St. Peter at Rome, still, the Pope 
 could exercise no real authority in them ; on the contrary, 
 Sergius, and, after him, Leo, constituted themselves Arch- 
 bishops of the richly-endowed Church of Ravenna, and 
 rulers over the Exarchate ; and when, by the victories of 
 Charlemagne, the endowments were renewed, still the Papal 
 See did not obtain exclusive governmental power within the 
 district. The Frankish kings granted to the Church of 
 Rome the revenues of the lands, but retained for themselves 
 the supreme authority over them. 1 Charlemagne, indeed, 
 confirmed the endowments of his father, and in subsequent 
 years added to them new patrimonies and revenues, and gave 
 Tuscan cities to the Pope ; and we see afterwards that is, 
 after 780 the Pope in possession of the dominion of 
 Ravenna, but still acknowledging the supremacy of Charle- 
 magne, by a steady execution of the imperial commands. 2 The 
 city of Rome belonged to the Pope ; but he himself desired 
 to see the military and judicial authority in the hands of 
 Charlemagne, as " Patricius," and provided for the Roman 
 people taking an oath of obedience and fidelity to the 
 king. 
 
 By Charlemagne's taking upon himself the imperial dig- 
 nity, and founding or re-establishing a Western Empire, the 
 
 44 1. Romagna comprising four provinces, Bologna, Ferrara, Forli, 
 and Ravenna. 
 
 " 2. Le Marche comprising six provinces, Urbino and Pesaro, Mace- 
 rata with Loreto, Ancona, Fermo, Ascoli, and Camerino. 
 
 "8. Umbria comprising three provinces, Perugia, Spoleto, and Rieti. 
 
 "4. Marittima e Campagna comprising three provinces, Velletri, 
 Frosinone, and Benevento." " Despatches from Mr. Lyons respecting the 
 condition and administration of the Papal States." London, 1860, p. 11. 
 
 1 VESI, 4l Storia di Romagna," i. 394. 
 
 " Cod. Carol. 67, ap. Cenni Monum. 81," p. 439.
 
 IMPERIAL AND PAPAL AUTHORITY. 339 
 
 temporal power of the Pope became both more distinctly 
 marked and more secure. 
 
 The shadow of a Byzantine supreme authority had now 
 disappeared. Rome belonged to the Western Empire, and 
 the Pope and the Romans took an oath of fealty to the Em- 
 peror. As the Emperor was to be, beyond all other things, 
 the protector of the Church, and as the temporal possessions 
 of the Pope now stood specially under the imperial guardian- 
 ship, so were they also under the imperial authority. The 
 limits between the Imperial and Papal authority were never 
 very exactly drawn. The kingdom of Italy, which was held 
 by Pepin, the sou of Charles, was composed of the former 
 Longobard territories in Northern and Middle Italy. In 
 Rome and the Roman territories, the imperial supreme au- 
 thority was exercised by envoys or messengers "Missi." Since 
 these formed a superior class of officers to those who were 
 appointed by the Pope, the officers named by him in the 
 towns under his rule were called "duces" and as the imperial 
 officers had superintendence over them, the Emperor Lo- 
 thair, in the year 824, decreed that these "missi" should be no- 
 minated jointly by the Pope and the Emperor; and that 
 every neglect of the Papal officers, the duces and judices, should 
 in the first instance be reported to the Pope. Both powers, 
 the Papal and the Imperial, mutually supported each other. 
 The Pope let the Roman people swear fidelity to the Em- 
 peror ; and the Emperor as Lothair did threatened every- 
 one with his displeasure who should not in all things render 
 obedience to the Pope. Official documents were dated ac- 
 coixling to the years of the Emperor's reign, and the Roman 
 coins were impressed with his image. The election of the 
 Pope, which was made by the great persons at Rome eccle- 
 siastics and laymen was to be subjected to the confirmation 
 of the Emperor : this was positively settled, and was in it- 
 self established as a guarantee for the freedom and regularity 
 of the election but the distance of the Emperor from Rome, 
 the long delay, and the interests of the Roman parties, led 
 to this arrangement being frequently unattended to. 
 
 The state of affairs, so regulated, and so favourable to the 
 
 Z 2
 
 340 DEGRADATION OF THE PAPACY. 
 
 Papal See, was not of long duration. The Carolingian house 
 and its power went to destruction through internal discord, 
 fratricidal wars, and constant territorial partitions, without 
 there being any strong dynasty to fill its place. The splen- 
 dour of the Empire grew pale, and in the person of Louis 
 II. it was limited to Italy, whilst he no longer possessed the 
 power of protecting Rome and the peninsula against the in- 
 cursions of the Saracens from the South. And when, on 
 the death of the childless Louis, the territorial empire came 
 to an end, and the Popes, by the act of coronation, decided 
 as to who was to be possessor of the Imperial dignity, without 
 consideration as to the order of succession, an extremely impor- 
 tant step was taken for the elevation of the Papal authority. 
 Neither the Italians nor the Pope obtained any substantial 
 benefit from enfeebled imperial shadows. The defenceless 
 Pope could not prevent his cities being torn away from him 
 and the Romish Church by Italian princes. And worse still 
 were the proceedings adopted on the part of his Roman 
 nobles, who, no longer restrained by the strong hand of an 
 Emperor, took upon themselves the power of electing an oc- 
 cupant for the chair of St. Peter and often filled it with 
 their own tools, and made use of it for their own purposes. 
 
 Thus began, with the close of the ninth century, that dark 
 anarchical age when the Papacy was degraded and maltreated 
 by powerful laymen. The Roman clergy of the time were 
 destitute of a firm organization, and proved utterly power- 
 less when opposed to the nobles. The Popes succeeded each 
 other rapidly. They were elevated by one faction, over- 
 thrown by another, imprisoned and murdered. The Romans 
 did at that period all they possibly could utterly to destroy 
 the Papacy, but the moral strength of the institution was 
 invincible. Of the Papal States which had been created by 
 preceding Popes and Emperors, there were now only frag- 
 ments remaining. The towns of the Romagna were obliged, 
 when the invasions of the Hungarians commenced, to do un- 
 aided all they could to defend themselves. 
 
 In Rome there ruled, after an intriguing woman, Marozia, 
 her son Alberic, and he, through his family influence, his
 
 DEPENDENT CONDITION OF THE POPES. 341 
 
 riches, and by holding possession of the castle of St. Angelo, 
 exercised, as " Prince and Senator of all in Rome," unlimited 
 power until the year 954. The Exarchate and Pentapolis 
 were in the power of Berenger, King of Italy. Alberic 
 must, however, himself have felt that a temporal Princedom 
 of Koine could not be of long duration, and he therefore se- 
 cured the election to the Papal dignity for his young son and 
 heir, Octavius. Thus had Rome, in the person of Octavius, 
 or John XII., a spiritual prince ; but the Church a good-for- 
 nothing Pope. 
 
 Then appeared and invoked by the Pope himself the 
 German King, Otho the Saxon, who became the second 
 restorer of a Western Empire, which empire was now 
 transferred to the German nation. He from that time forth 
 exercised, both in Rome and with regard to the Pope, his 
 imperial rights to their widest extent. He caused John XII. 
 to be deposed by a Synod, and Leo VIII. to be elected in 
 his place ; and when the Romans once more endeavoured to 
 get possession of the Papal chair, by the election of Bene- 
 dict V., he had him deposed and sent into exile in Germany. 
 As to a real free election of a Pope, there was not a thought 
 or talk about it, neither all this time nor during the whole of 
 the following century. In Rome as well as out of Rome 
 there was naught on which the Pope could rest for support. 
 Without the Emperor he was a mere ball tossed about by 
 the hands of the audacious nobility factions. Emperors, 
 acting under the advice of their bishops and spiritual coun- 
 cillors, had given more worthy Popes to the Church than 
 the Roman chiefs, for whose selection there was no motive 
 beyond the gratification of their own ambition ; and they 
 sometimes preferred the most unworthy candidate, because 
 they hoped to find in such a more pliant tool. 
 
 Immediately after the death of Otho I. the disorders of 
 the factious nobles again burst forth. Two parties, the 
 Sabini and the Tusculani, struggled for power; the Popes were 
 elevated sometimes by the one, and sometimes by the other 
 party ; but, after a brief period of time, were deposed again, 
 and ended their days in dungeons, or were murdered. It
 
 342 GERMAN POPES. 
 
 was not until Otho III. appointed his cousin, Bruno, and 
 afterwards the celebrated Gerbert, as Popes, and protected 
 them by an armed force, that the Papacy could once more 
 obtain and exercise its influence and authority in ecclesias- 
 tical affairs. 
 
 After the early death of Gerbert, or Sylvester II., the 
 House of the Tusculani, probably descendants from that 
 Alberic who had formerly been the master and ruler of 
 Rome, gained possession of power in the city, and also over 
 the Papal See. A Pope of this house, Benedict VIII. (whose 
 reign, although it only lasted for twelve years, had been the 
 longest of any of the Popes for two centuries), could, when 
 borne up by his family power, and strongly supported by the 
 Emperor Henry II., command as master in Rome, and 
 also exercise his power and authority in the affairs of the 
 Universal Church. But his pontificate likewise served to 
 secure power in his own family ; for after his death there 
 succeeded two Popes of the same house his brother, John 
 XIX., and his nephew, Benedict IX. But the crimes of 
 the latter became intolerable. The evils of dissension were 
 added to the disgrace and degradation of the Church, and 
 then Germany at last came forward with thorough and en- 
 during aid. The strong arm of Henry III., and the series- of 
 German Popes he gave to the Church, purified and elevated 
 the stained and degraded Roman See. The reformation of 
 the clergy, which had become a matter of urgent necessity, 
 and for which the congregation of Clugny had been making 
 a prefatory preparation, could only now be commenced. 
 
 The greater portion of the Papal States had, during the 
 whole of this period (that is, from the year 800 until lOoOor 
 1060) fallen into the hands of laymen. Ravenna, and its 
 territory, and the towns of the Pentapolis, had become the 
 Emperor's. In Sabinum and Pra3neste there was a branch 
 of the house of the Crescenti. 1 Southern Tuscany, with 
 Spoleto and Camerino, was held by Ugo the Great, Duke of 
 Etruria, but destined soon to fall into the grasp of the 
 
 1 See GFRORER'S " Papst. Gregorious VII.," v. 597.
 
 DEED OF DONATION OF OTHO III. 343 
 
 Emperor. The revenues of the Roman See consisted of rents 
 paid by some holders of fiefs. 
 
 Some light is thrown upon the state of things at the end 
 of the tenth century, by the Deed of Donation of Otho III., 
 of the year 999. l The Emperor animadverts in sharp 
 terms upon the carelessness and fatuity of former Popes (for 
 they, as the impotent creatures of the Albani and Crescenti, 
 had been in the current century intruded upon the Church), 
 who (as the Pope himself said, for tributes of a very 
 small amount) had frittered away almost the whole posses- 
 sions of the Church, both in and outside of the city, and 
 had, to replace them, taken what was imperial property. 
 He, therefore, bestowed, for the maintenance of the Papal 
 dignity, certain fiefs belonging to him the eight countyships 
 of Pesaro, Fano, Sinigaglia, Ancona, Fossombrone, Cagli, 
 Aesi, and Osimo. In the following century these districts 
 were again lost, and had again to be won back. 
 
 In the dispute with the Emperor, Henry III., Benevento 
 was taken away from the Pope, Leo IX., who gained, how- 
 ever, for the Papal See, that which was far more valuable 
 
 1 1 entertain no doubt about the authenticity of this so much (and still 
 in WILLMAN'S " Jahrbiicher des deutschen Reichs," ii. 2, pp. 233-43) 
 disputed document (ap. PERTZ, "Mou.-Germ. IV.," B. 162). I am of 
 this opinion with Muratori, Pertz, Giesebrecht, Gfrorer, Gregorovius, 
 who also have decided on its authenticity, against Baronius and Pagi. 
 Pope Sylvester himself complains in the feofment-diploma of Terracina 
 of the year 999, that the Papal property had been dissipated from the Roman 
 See, " Cum lucris operam darent et sub parvissimo censu maximas res 
 ecclesiae perderent" (" Ap. CONTATORE Hist. Terrocin.," p. 41), and the real 
 " Comitate" are mentioned in a letter of Otho's to the Pope as " qui sub 
 lite sunt," (" GERBERTI Epistolae," p. 70). He has, says the Emperor, 
 delivered them to the Marquis Ugo of Etruria, who also possesses the 
 Countships of Spoleto and Camerino, out of love to the Pope, in order 
 that the people may have a ruler, and the Pope may, through the same 
 person, receive from the " Comitate" fitting services and dues. The 
 Popes neither could nor should directly rule over the territories bestowed 
 on them, but might enjoy the revenues in gold, or natural productions, 
 and have military aid, in case of war. Consequently the supreme im- 
 perial authority over the territories given to the Pope must be main- 
 tained. The grounds, for upholding the authority of the documents 
 which Giescebrecht and Gfrorer have cited, might be still further enlarged.
 
 344 DEVELOPMENT OF SPIRITUAL POWER. 
 
 than the possession of that territory and that was, the vassal- 
 ship of the Norman conqueror of Lower Italy. That which 
 Leo IX. had commenced with the brothers Humphrey and 
 Robert, was continued with Robert by Gregory VII., and 
 completed by Innocent II., in the year 1139, with King 
 Roger. For what was still withheld from them, and the 
 loss of which Nicholas I. continued to complain of (namely, 
 their rich patrimony in Lower Italy and Sicily), there was, 
 however, one compensation left to the Popes, viz. : that 
 they were recognised as the Suzerain lords of a mighty 
 kingdom that the princes of this kingdom did homage 
 to them as vassals, and paid them tribute. Subsequently, 
 indeed, it was precisely this very vassal kingdom that 
 became the cause of the Pope's falling into a dependence 
 upon France, and that led to the episode at Avignon, and, 
 through it, to the great schism, the consequences whereof 
 remain to this day unfathomable. 
 
 In the long struggle concerning Investitures, the spiritual 
 power of the Papacy developed itself in all its greatness, 
 whilst the material basis of the temporal position upon which 
 the Popes were placed was weak and insecure. Gregory 
 VII. at first ruled in Rome with a firm hand ; but after a 
 few years there sprang up an imperial party amongst the 
 populace, and its constantly increasing strength induced 
 Gregory to unite with the Normans in Lower Italy. The 
 same party drove his successor, Victor III., out of the city, 
 and compelled Urban II. to seek refuge for some time in 
 France. The districts lately bestowed upon the Church, as 
 a portion of its estates, were then, for the most part, in the 
 hands of imperial feudatories of such persons as that 
 Werner, or Guarnieri, who describes himself, in writing, as 
 "By God's grace, Duke and Marquis of the Marche of 
 Ancoua, and enlarged by the marquesates of Camerino and 
 Fermo." 1 
 
 1 PERUZZI, " Storia d'Ancona," i. 280. [" E perciocche egli s' intitola, 
 ed e intitolato ' Guarnerius Dei gratia Dux et Marchio,' se ne puo in- 
 ferire, che non la sola Marca d'Ancona, ma anche il Ducato di Spoleto, 
 fossero a lui sottoposti." MURATOBI, " Annali d'ltalia," a. 1016. 
 Monaco, 1762, vol. vi., p. 350.]
 
 EOME IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY. 345 
 
 Urban II., one of the most powerful Popes out of Rome, 
 was, in Rome itself, absolutely powerless ; and, being robbed 
 of his revenues, was, for a long time, living upon alms. His 
 successors, Paschalis II. and Gelasius II., were several 
 times compelled to abandon Rome, on account of the pre- 
 dominant sway of the noble families. The two mightiest 
 houses now in Rome were the families of the Frangipani, 
 and of Peter Leoni; and it was only when these two 
 factions were at variance that the Popes could, by adhering 
 to one of them as a support, maintain anything like an 
 independent position in Rome. One of these families (it 
 was by the elevation of a son of Peter Leoni's, under the 
 name of Anacletus II.) plunged the whole Church into a 
 long and lasting schism. Some years afterwards, in 1143, 
 the Roman people revolted, appointed from amongst them- 
 selves a senate, independent of the Pope, and a municipal 
 chief, with the title of " Patricius ;" and Lucius II., in the 
 attempt to make himself master of the city, met with a violent 
 death. 1 
 
 The Emperor, Frederick I., forced the Romans, who 
 then, under the influence of Arnold of Brescia, were 
 dreaming of a restoration of the ancient republic, to deliver 
 up all the regalia into the hands of Pope Eugenius III. ; 
 and he who did this was of all the Emperors since 
 Charles the Great the most determined opponent and 
 champion against an independent Papacy, as well as of 
 ecclesiastical states, as a basis on which it might be main- 
 tained. And thus had the Popes, during the whole of the 
 twelfth century, no fixed settled territory of their own in 
 Italy. They were never able to maintain themselves in 
 Rome, but for a short and transitory time ; and outside of 
 Rome there was not one town of importance on which they 
 
 1 [The character of the Romans in the twelfth century is accurately 
 described by Muratori in a few lines, when referring to an incident in 
 the life of Gelasius II. " Egli (the Pope) non si potea fidar de' Romani, 
 gente venale in que' tempi, e tante volte provati da' suoi predecessor! e 
 da lui stesso per poco fedeli." "Annali d'ltalia," a. 1118. Monaco, 
 1762, vol. vi., p. 390.]
 
 346 INNOCENT III. 
 
 could with security calculate ; and hence it is that we see 
 them so frequently turning towards France for a prolonged 
 residence. After Urban II., this was done by Paschalis II., 
 Gelasius II., Calistus II., Innocent II., Eugenius III., and 
 Alexander III. After the death of the last-named Pope, 
 Lucius III., and Urban III., preferred remaining in Verona, 
 because the Romans would not submit to them. The gift of 
 the illustrious Countess Matilda had afforded to the Popes 
 a grand prospect of the secure possession of an extensive 
 territory. Had the terms of this donation been literally 
 complied with, the Popes would have at once become the 
 greatest landed princes in U pper and Middle Italy. Liguria 
 and Etruria, say contemporaries, were included in the 
 donation; but as the imperial fief could not possibly be 
 separated from the allodial property, the Emperor seized 
 upon, and, under the pretext of relationship, laid claim to, 
 and escheated the whole inheritance. The Popes were 
 compelled to let this be done by Henry V. The Emperor 
 Lothair, however, recognised their right so far as to submit, 
 with Duke Henry of Bavaria, in the year 1133, to accept 
 an endowment of the allodium of the Countess, from 
 Innocent II.; in consequence of which, in the year 1135, a 
 Marquis of Etruria, named Engelbert, having received a 
 portion of this property from the Emperor, made an oath of 
 fealty to the Pope, on account of the Matilda-endowment. 
 The recurrence of the Estates to the Papal See, after the 
 death of Henry, was, meanwhile, vainly sought and 
 stipulated for. The Emperor, Frederick I., and his son, 
 Henry VI., held fast by the inheritance, until Innocent III., 
 at the proper moment of time, asserted, with his customary 
 active vigilance, the right of his See; and thus, at last, the 
 so-named " patrimony of St. Peter," namely, Southern Tus- 
 cany out of the inheritance bequeathed by Matilda really 
 came into the possession of the See of Home. 
 
 Innocent III. (1198 1216) was not so much the restorer, 
 as he was, practically, the first actual founder of the Papal 
 States ; for, previous to him, no Pope can be named who 
 actually reigned over a large territory. Previously, the
 
 FOUNDATION OF THE PAPAL STATES. 347 
 
 Popes had possessions from which they received taxes and 
 feudal services, but not a single state that they governed. 
 When he (Innocent), in the year 1198, entered into his 
 Pontificate, all (belonging to the Church) was in the hands 
 of strangers. The Swabian knight, Conrad, was Duke of 
 Spoleto. In the Catnpagna, Henry VI. had distributed 
 fiefs amongst his military followers. In Ravenna, the Marche 
 and Romaudiole, the Seneschal of the Empire, Markwald, 
 was in command; and in the Exarchate and Pentapolis, 
 the cities (once the great commercial movement had 
 extended over the whole of Upper and Middle Italy) had 
 developed themselves as municipal Republics. The cities 
 had well understood how to turn to their own advantage the 
 dispute between the Emperor and the Pope, and, as Macchia- 
 velli says, had employed the imperial power against the 
 Pope, and then made use of the latter to obtain freedom, 
 self-government, the right of election, and the yearly change 
 of their chief magistrates, consuls, or podestas. 
 
 Even in his first year Innocent had brought under sub- 
 mission the important cities of the Marquesates of Camerino 
 and Fermo, and of the Duchy of Spoleto ; and then Perugia, 
 Montefiascone, Radicofani, and Aquapendente, along with 
 the Countship of Benevento. The cities of the Romagna 
 speedily recognised the supreme authority of the Church 
 an authority so mildly exercised that they could scarcely 
 perceive it. 1 The freedom and full autonomy of the cities 
 were granted. Thus Innocent, in 1198, declared Perugia 
 to be a property of the Roman See ; but he then also con- 
 firmed the constitution of the city, its government by consuls, 
 and the free use of the laws which the citizens had made for 
 themselves. 2 In this respect the Popes gave more than the 
 Emperor. The cities had only to pay a small yearly tribute, 
 and, in case of necessity, to furnish men-at-arms ; and even 
 this was not usual, for it was remarked of Viterbo, that, 
 
 1 VESI, " Storia di Romagna," ii. 224. 
 
 ? See introduction to the Chronicle of Perugia in " Archivio-Stor.," 
 vol. xvi., I., p. xxii., and IXXOCEXTII, u Epistolse," i. 375, 426.
 
 348 CONFLICT WITH THE EMPEROR. 
 
 before the fifteenth century, it had to pay nothing. 1 It was 
 in Rome itself that the Pope had the toughest resistance 
 to overcome, and he was sometimes obliged to quit the city, 
 until at last he was able to induce the Romans to leave to 
 him the nomination of the Chief Captain of the municipality, 
 who was also now called " Senator." 
 
 In the desperate conflict with the too powerful Frederick 
 II. the most of that which had been won by the Popes was 
 again lost ; and then, after the death of the Emperor and 
 the downfall of his son Manfred, its gradual restoration had 
 to be sought for. An injurious effect of the quarrel between 
 the Emperor and Pope was the formation of the Guelph 
 and Ghibelline parties, which penetrated into all the cities, 
 and continued to abide in them. The Church-friends, the 
 Guelphs, were everywhere the democratic party; whilst the in- 
 terests of the nobles, as a class, in the success of the Imperialist 
 Ghibellines, won for them consideration and power. Where 
 the latter gained the upper hand the supreme authority of 
 the Papal See could not be, even nominally, maintained ; 
 and as to the Guelphs, they also, whenever they could, 
 wished themselves to govern, and to wage war and make 
 peace, according to their own will and pleasure. The 
 Popes (with all the splendour of appearance which could be 
 afforded by the victories of the Guelphs in a great part of 
 Italy, and beyond the limits of the Church States), were still 
 in such a position that no city was really subject to them, 
 and they were often in embarrassment as to where they 
 should take up their abode. Thus Clement IV., in one of 
 his writings of the year 1265, says that, after he had conse- 
 crated a church in Assissi, he would go again to Perugia, 
 since he could not procure a dwelling-place anywhere else ; 
 because the other cities of his Patrimony were entangled in 
 feuds, or had not a sufficiency of provisions. 2 If he wished 
 to make a city a permanent residence, he must have first 
 entered into an agreement with the municipality, by which 
 the Roman Court should retain a free, unhindered movement 
 
 1 Bussi, " Istoria di Viterbo," p. 47. 
 
 * " Bullarium Franciscanum," ed. Sbaralea, iv. 29.
 
 RESTRICTION OF PAPAL AUTHORITY. 349 
 
 within its own sphere of action ; and it must also have been 
 promised that the city would choose only for their consuls 
 and podestas men who were faithful to the Roman See ; and 
 also that they would not impede the Papal Marshal in the 
 exercise of his judicial office over the personality of the 
 court. 1 
 
 Thus nearly all supreme sovereign rights had passed away 
 to cities, or to individual noble families a part of them also 
 became vested in bishops and monasteries ; and the Papal 
 authority in temporal affairs became little more than a supre- 
 macy of dignity over a number of municipal republics, and of 
 noble and princely signories. 2 The sovereign authority of 
 the Pope was restricted to the exercise of a judicial power, 
 that was, upon the whole, very much limited to the disposal 
 of the pecuniary means and troops which well-disposed 
 cities and dynasties furnished, and to acts of arbitration. The 
 wonted method by ban and interdict no longer operated 
 with an unerring effect upon Guelph cities, and far less 
 upon Ghibelline. Rome, where the Savellis, Orsinis, and 
 Colonnas now preponderated, was, as usual, a restless city, 
 always suspicious and on the watch against the strengthen- 
 ing of the Papal Government, and ever inclined towards the 
 Imperialists and Ghibellines. 3 They were so, partly out of 
 opposition to the Pope, and partly because of the theory then 
 prevalent over all Italy : viz., that it was the people and the 
 city who were the real heirs and possessors of the Imperial 
 dignity and pre-eminence ; 4 so that the Pope could only in 
 
 1 Such are the terms of the treaty that was made in the year 1278, 
 in the name of Nicholas III., with the town of Viterbo. See MARINI, 
 " Degli Archiatri Pontificij." Rome, 1783, ii. 11. 
 
 * CAXTU, " Storia degli Italiani," iv. 11 ; LEO'S " Geschichte der itali- 
 anischen Staaten," iv. 423. 
 
 3 " Populus urbis (Romse), qui naturaliter imperialis existit." 
 SABA MALASPINA, Ap. Murator, S.S. Ital.,vii. 842. 
 
 4 This was not merely a Ghibelline notion, as Dante describes it in his 
 " Monarchia," but it was also that of the Guelphs, as Matteo Villani re- 
 presents it, lib. iv., c. 77, and lib. v., c. 1, prologo, when he says, 
 amongst other things : " L' autorita del popolo Romano creava gli im- 
 peradori : e questo medesimo popolo, non da se, ma la chiesa per lui, in
 
 350 ELEVATION OF THE HOUSE OF ANJOU. 
 
 the name and by the authority of the Eoman people transfer 
 the election of an Emperor to the princes of Germany. 
 
 Rudolph of Hapsburg had in his interview with Pope 
 Gregory X., at Lausanne, in 1274, solemnly granted and 
 confirmed to him the full possession of the Papal State terri- 
 tories, according to the then existing designation the land 
 of Radicofani to Ceperano, the Exarchate of Ravenna, the 
 Pentapolis, the Marche of Ancona, the Dnchy of Spoleto, the 
 country of the Countess Matilda, and the Countship of Berti- 
 noro. Even Corsica and Sardinia were included in this grant. 1 
 At the same time was abandoned the appointment of an 
 Imperial Count, or Vicar of the Empire, who had hitherto, 
 in the exercise of an imperialist jurisdiction, restricted very 
 much the Papal power in the Romagna, the Pentapolis, the 
 Marche, and Spoleto. In the year 1278, Rudolph actually 
 sent a special envoy to Pope Nicholas III., for the purpose 
 of having recalled and declared null and void the oath which 
 his chancellors had caused to be sworn by the cities of 
 Bologna, Imola, Faenza, Forli, Cesena, Ravenna, Rimini, and 
 Urbino. 8 
 
 The appointment and elevation of the House of Anjou 
 to the Sicilian throne was a momentous turning-point 
 in history ; for by it was transformed the condition of 
 Italy, the character of the Guelph party, and, beyond all 
 other things, the position of the Papal See. The Guelphs 
 ceased to be a national party, a party opposed to foreign 
 domination ; a party essentially devoted to the Church. 
 They became Angiovini, accessible thereby to French influence, 
 and subservient to French interests. The Popes lost the 
 leadership of the Guelph party, which had passed over to the 
 Anjous, and to other princes of the royal family of France ; 
 
 certo sussidio de' fedeli cristiani, concedette 1'elezione degli imperadori a 
 sette principi della Magna." From this it further was concluded, u That 
 the Tuscans were originally Latins, that is, Romans, and so were not 
 subjected to the sway of the Emperor, and naturally still less to that of 
 the Romans." See u Storia Fiorentina di Pietro Boninsegni," p. 437. 
 
 1 PERTZ, " Mon. Ger.," iv. 403, 404. 
 
 * RAYNAIJ), ad a. 1278, 51.
 
 THE REIGN OP FRENCH POPES. 351 
 
 and so arose that bastard Guelphdom which Dante so much 
 hated. Through it was the vast importance of the Empire 
 to Italy, to the Pope and the States of the Church, attacked 
 at its very roots, and by it was the imperial action in the 
 Peninsula crippled. French cardinals, French popes (Clem- 
 ent IV., Urban IV., and, chiefest, Martin IV.), did what they 
 could to strengthen the influence of their nation, and of its 
 two dynasties, the Capets and the Angiovines, in the Penin- 
 sula. Martin IV. appointed Frenchmen attached to the 
 suite of Charles of Anjou to be governors in provinces of 
 the Papal States; he subjugated, with the hired arms of 
 Frenchmen, the Ghibelline Forli ;* and he nominated Charles 
 himself as " Senator of Rome." The latter placed there his 
 own officers, whilst the Popes seldom permitted themselves 
 to be seen in Rome ; and so much more did they prefer 
 residing in Viterbo, Orvieto, or Anagni, that, when Innocent 
 V., in the year 1276, said mass in St. Peter's Church, he 
 observed that it was the first time a Pope had done so in the 
 same place for the space of thirty years. 2 The relations of 
 the Popes with the population of the Papal States, and 
 especially of those who were French Popes, became more harsh, 
 and more marked with rigid force. It became so particularly 
 whilst the authority over the provinces lay in the hands of 
 Charles of Anjou far more than in those of the Pontiff. 
 Gregory X., the wisest and noblest of the Popes of that age, 
 had everywhere endeavoured to reconcile the Guelphs and 
 the Ghibellines, and to amalgamate the two parties ; but his 
 successors, under the Anjou influence, turned away from the 
 path he had pursued. The Ghibellines were driven to 
 despair. Ban and interdict, employed as instruments of 
 government, had become, from too frequent use, ineffective. 
 The wars which the Popes had to carry on by means of 
 foreign " condottieri," and by giving high pay to foreign 
 hirelings, multiplied fiscal burdens on the people; whilst the 
 unproductiveness of the revenues derived from the States of 
 the Church compelled the Popes to maintain their wars with 
 
 1 " Chron. Pipini," ap. MURAT, ix. 720. 
 
 * "Annal. Salisburg," ap. PERTZ, "Mon. G.," xi. 801.
 
 352 TRANSFERENCE OF THE COURT TO AVIGNON. 
 
 the revenues of the Church, and by the imposition of new 
 ecclesiastical tributes. In the first years of the fourteenth 
 century there was already to be found some unknown states- 
 man to make the following proposal viz. : That the lands of 
 the Pope should be given over to some powerful king in 
 emphyteusis, under the obligation of leaving to the Pope the 
 revenue derivable from them ; and thus the Pope might 
 become the organizer and protector of the public peace, and 
 no longer have occasion to wage wars, or to accumulate 
 treasures. 1 
 
 The-French Popes believed they had discovered the means 
 whereby they might, for a long time, be able to bring the 
 Pontificate into French hands exclusively, and that was by 
 naming Frenchmen as cardinals until they should become 
 the majority. For them Rome and Italy were foreign coun- 
 tries they wished to live on their native soil ; and so came 
 the transference of the Court of Rome to Avignon, where it 
 remained for seventy years. The States of the Church had 
 now nigh lost all their importance. In Avignon they were 
 treated and regarded as a distinct province, which need not 
 be very closely looked after, and that might be governed 
 through deputies. The influence of the Parisian Court was 
 so powerful at Avignon, and in many cases it was so over- 
 whelming, that the Pope did not appear to be master of one 
 inch of ground in Italy. 
 
 With the commencement of the fourteenth century had 
 arrived the period of decay for the free States of Italy. 
 These, with few exceptions, had, through civil strife, been 
 changed into Principalities. This was the case, beyond all 
 others, with those in the Romagna and the Marche, where 
 the Polentas in Ravenna, the Malatestas in Rimini, the 
 Manfredis in Faenza, the Ordelaffis in Forli, the Montefeltros 
 in Urbino, and the Baranos in Camerino, had arrogated all 
 power to themselves. The whole of the Papal States was 
 broken up into fragments. In Rome and in the Campagna 
 reigned anarchy and wild club-law so that, to use the words 
 
 1 "De recuperatione terrae sanctae," in the " Gesta Dei per Francos." 
 BONGARS, ii. 324.
 
 UNIVERSAL REVOLT. 353 
 
 of Villani, "strangers and pilgrims were as lambs in the 
 midst of wolves, and everything became an object of plunder 
 and a booty." Then it was that the tribune, Cola Rienzo, 
 his thoughts filled with images of the ancient Roman 
 glories, succeeded in bringing back, for a short time, a transi- 
 tory glimmer of a well-ordered republic, affording a guarantee 
 for legal freedom. The rights of the Pope, as their only 
 lawful lord, hud, indeed, been constantly maintained by him. 
 But, then, he neither knew how to rule nor to fight; and, 
 although appointed Senator by the Pope, and sent back to 
 Rome after his fall, he was soon ruined through his own 
 vanity and indiscretion. Then it was that Cardinal Albornoz 
 (1353 1368), who had been sent from Avignon, showed that 
 he was equally great as a warrior and a statesman, and gra- 
 dually freed the towns and territories of the Papal States 
 from their tyrants. At the same time, he became, through 
 " the Aegidian Constitutions," which subsisted down to the 
 latest time, the legislator and creator of public law in the 
 Romagna. 
 
 The arbitrary conduct and oppression of the French 
 Legates soon provoked a universal revolt. Within nine 
 days, in the year 1376, eighty towns and villages of the 
 Papal States, excited by the Florentines, who were imbittered 
 against Gregory XL, rose in insurrection, and either declared 
 themselves to be free, or called back amongst them the 
 tyrants who had been deposed by Albornoz. At that time, 
 too, revolted Perugia a city which had long jealously pre- 
 served its freedom, even though its Guelph and well-disposed 
 inhabitants called themselves " the people of the Church." 
 The city had only submitted to the Pope since 1370. After 
 its revolt it was able to conclude a peace with the new Pope 
 on its own conditions. 1 At that time grass was growing in 
 the public streets of Rome, and the number of its inhabitants 
 was only 17,000. 
 
 The great revolt had enkindled a war which, according to 
 the manners of the times, was carried on by a profuse appli- 
 cation of ecclesiastical censures, combined with the employ- 
 1 MARIOTTI, " Memorie di Perugia," 1806, p. 81. 
 
 AA
 
 354 DISRUPTION OF THE PAPAL STATES. 
 
 merit of foreign, brutal, barbarous, and mercenary troops. 
 And then broke out, after the death of Gregory XI. (who 
 had lately come to Rome from Avignon), that momentous 
 schism in the Church, the consequences of which are incal- 
 culable, and the effects of which are felt to the present day. 
 " A Roman or an Italian at least will we have ! " exclaimed 
 the people, before the windows of the Conclave. " We, 
 Frenchmen will not let escape from our grasp the prize of 
 the Pontificate, with all that depends upon it," thought in 
 silence the French Cardinals; and, in opposition to the Italian 
 Urban VI. elected that Cardinal Robert of Geneva, to whose 
 hands was still adhering the blood of the luckless inhabitants 
 of Cesena. With France, nationality was of more avail than 
 the right and weal of the Church. The anti-Pope was 
 recognised, and therewith the curse of schism was brought 
 down upon the whole of Europe. The entire of Christendom 
 and the Papal See, in their incapacity to help themselves 
 and the Church, felt now the consequences of the Empire 
 having dwindled into a shadow, and the office of " Protector 
 of the Church and the See of St. Peter" having become a 
 mere empty title ! 
 
 The utter shattering of the Papal States into fragments 
 was then at its acme : the old leaders again reappeared ; 
 republics were formed, or new rulers sprung up in many 
 places; and then Urban's successor, the money -needing 
 Boniface IX., sold to the tyrants and republics, for im- 
 mediate payment and a yearly tribute, the sovereign rights 
 of which they were already in possession. 
 
 When Martin V., at the termination of the schism, was 
 elected as sole Pope, in 1418, and appeared in Italy, he 
 found Rome and Benevento in the hands of the Neapolitans, 
 a republic in Bologna, and the Romagna, with the Marche, and 
 Umbria in the hands of different chiefs. Many places were 
 won back, and again lost through new insurrections ; whilst 
 several of the Princes recognized the Pope. The election of 
 his successor, Eugenius IV., in the year 1431, was a decisive 
 event for the future of the Papal States. He confirmed by 
 oath a statute determined upon in Conclave in accordance
 
 ARBITRARY POWER OF THE BARONS. 355 
 
 with which all the Papal feudatories, vicars, and official per- 
 sons in the Papal States should take the oath of fealty and 
 allegiance, not to himself alone, but also to the College of 
 Cardinals, to which, in cases of a Papal vacancy, the sove- 
 reign authority of the country belonged. At the same time 
 he bound himself to leave to the Cardinals the half of all the 
 revenues he received ; and he obtained, by this means, the 
 sympathy and co-operation of the College in the exercise of 
 all the more important rights of his sovereignty. 1 This was 
 a new constitutional law for the Papal States, and a very 
 comprehensive limitation of the temporal power of the Pope 
 was thereby created. It was, however, a matter that lasted 
 but for a very short time. 
 
 When the Spaniard Alphonzo Borgia, with the name of 
 Callistus III., mounted the Papal throne in the year 1455, 
 he found eight families of princes in possession of their fiefs 
 the Manfredis in Faenza and Imola, the Ordelaffis in Forli, 
 Alexander Sforza in Pesaro, Domenico Malatesta in Cesena, 
 Sigismondo Malatesti in Rimini, and Frederick of Monte- 
 feltro in Urbino, the Baranos in Camerino, and the Estes in 
 Ferrara. All the other chiefs had been previously set aside. 2 
 In Rome and the Campagna the Popes of this age, like their 
 predecessors, were able to do very little. To the arbitrary 
 power and mutual hostilities of the Barons, who still per- 
 petuated a state of open, unbridled violence, and who had 
 their relations and adherents amongst the Cardinals, the Popes 
 had no armed power to control or oppose. And then came 
 frequent and short Pontificates, whilst the constant inter- 
 ruptions of the Conclave would permit no thorough and per- 
 manent measure to be adopted. 
 
 A centrifugal impulse, a tendency to fragmentation, to the 
 formation of many petty sovereignties, had been, for a cen- 
 tury and a half, so predominant in Italy, that now at the 
 close of the fifteenth century the Popes themselves were 
 
 1 See RAYNALD, ad a. 1431. 
 
 2 See RIGHI, "Annali di Faenza," 1840, ii. 204; " Compendio della 
 Storia d'lmola," 1810, 241. UGOLINI, " Storia del Conti e Duchi 
 d'Urbino." Florence, 1859, i. 340, &c. 
 
 AA2
 
 356 KESTORATION OF THE PAPAL STATES. 
 
 seized with it. First amongst them, Sixtus IV. made one of 
 
 his nephews Lord of Imola and Forli, and another Prince of 
 
 Sinigaglia and Mondovio. The statute of 1431, providing 
 
 for the rights of the Cardinals, proved itself to be, in such 
 
 cases, utterly inoperative. Then came Alexander VI., and 
 
 his son Cassar Borgia, to overturn all the principalities in the 
 
 States of the Church, with the single exception of the Duchy 
 
 of Montefeltro. Even the powerful barons of Rome and of 
 
 the Campagna were expelled. Alexander wished to make 
 
 his son prince over a considerable patrimony in fact, of one 
 
 that would comprise the greater part of the Papal States. It 
 
 was not to be accomplished. Julius II. took away from 
 
 Borgia all that had been bestowed upon him. The work of 
 
 restitution so commenced was persevered in. The Pope 
 
 forced the Venetians to yield up to him those portions of the 
 
 territory of the Romagna they had won in war ; he struck 
 
 down the dominion of the Bentivogli in Bologna, and of the 
 
 Fredduccini in Fermo; and thus became after Innocent III. 
 
 and Albornoz the third founder and restorer of the Papal 
 
 States. It was as a warrior and conqueror that the grey-haired 
 
 Pope won back Parma, Piacenza, and Reggio. JN r ot long 
 
 before then, every puny chieftain with a couple of castles and 
 
 a hamlet could set at defiance the temporal power of the 
 
 Pope ; whilst now it excited the greatest respectj even from 
 
 the mightiest States. 
 
 A well-ordered and united government had never long 
 existed in the territory of the Papal See ; and now, as that 
 which had been combined together, in consequence of the old 
 disruptions, was only conjoined but loosely, or did not at all ad- 
 here, so there sprang up, as suddenly as if they started out of 
 the earth, several little chiefs and small tyrants. This was the 
 case especially in the Marches. With the exception of one 
 or two, Leo X. drove out all these petty chiefs, or had them 
 executed. He, being bent, above all things, upon the 
 aggrandisement of his house the Medici took the Duchy 
 of Urbino from its Duke, Francesco Maria della Rovere, 
 in order that he might bestow it on his nephew, Lorenzo de
 
 CONSOLIDATION OF THE STATE. 357 
 
 Medici. After Leo's death, however, Delia Rovere again 
 reconquered and regained his Duchy. 
 
 Ever since the close of the fifteenth century there was a 
 transition going on all over Europe, from the manners and 
 circumstances of the mediaeval to those of modern times : 
 the change was coming in some places with a slow, and in 
 others at a speedy pace. And so too was it with the Papal 
 States. There began now to be carried out two objects that 
 were in accordance with the spirit of the age. The first was 
 an endeavour to draw more closely together the political 
 bands, so as to make the whole State more uniform; and 
 next to extend and exalt the Papal authority, even to the 
 degree of its becoming an unlimited power. This appeared 
 so much the more necessary because the old, and now quite 
 senseless, factions of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines were 
 still maintained, especially amongst the country people, and 
 led to the perpetration of numerous crimes and acts, of 
 violence. Leo X. had, for the most part, confided the 
 government to Florentines, his countrymen, who, princi- 
 pally for the sake of getting money, practised the greatest 
 oppressions. The cities sent ambassadors, one after another, 
 to make complaints. They did so in vain. At Rome they 
 were far more intent upon taking away the freedom which 
 many towns still possessed ; and such an intention was 
 carried into full effect at Ancona, by Clement VII., 1 when 
 he, by a sudden invasion and military occupation, got posses- 
 sion of it in 1532. A similar purpose was accomplished by Paul 
 III. in the year 1540, in Perugia, when the town, having re- 
 volted on account of the raising the price of salt, was then 
 compelled to submit, and lost all its rights and liberties. 2 In 
 a similar manner had Ravenna, Faenza, and Jesi been pre- 
 viously punished. Since the middle of the sixteenth century 
 all had been completely subjected in the Papal States : cities 
 and barons yielded an unconditional obedience. And yet 
 the nepotism of some of the Popes led them, in harsh con- 
 trast to the prevailing tendency of the times towards a con- 
 
 1 " Relazioni degli Ambasciatori Veneti," vii. 55. 
 
 2 MARIOTTI, pp. 113-160.
 
 358 PAPAL WEAKNESS AGAINST FOREIGN COURTS. 
 
 solidation of the State, to its dismemberment. Thus Paul 
 
 III. made his son, Luigi Farnese, Duke of Parma and 
 Piacenza; and that territory has been lost irretrievably to 
 the Roman See. Paul IV. despoiled the Colonna family of 
 the Duchy of Palliano to bestow it upon his nephew, Caraffa, 
 who was, soon after the death of his uncle, subjected to legal 
 punishment by the late Pope's successor, Paul IV. And 
 herewith came to an end that species of nepotism which 
 aggrandised the kinsmen of a Pontiff at the expense of the 
 Papal States. After having lasted from the reign of Sixtus 
 
 IV. to that of Paul IV., then came Pius V., who prohibited, 
 in the most emphatic manner, every endowment of what was 
 a property belonging to the Roman Church, no matter under 
 what title or pretence soever it might be made; 1 and he 
 forewarned by excommunication all who should but advise 
 its being done : and the law forbidding these, as well as every 
 temporary alienation, he had subscribed by all the Cardinals. 
 From this time there occurred two important events in the 
 exterior history of the Papal States the lapse of Ferrara, 
 by the death of Duke Alphonso II., in the year 1596, and of 
 the Duchy of Urbino, in the year 1631. 
 
 With the eighteenth century came times in which the 
 Popes had bitter experience of their weakness and helpless- 
 ness, when opposed to foreign Courts times in which the 
 States of the Church, so far from aiding to serve the Papal 
 independence, were, on the contrary, regarded and treated 
 as the very means by which a Pope could be forced to adopt 
 measures which otherwise he never would have assented to. 
 The Bourbon Courts imitated the example of Henry V., 
 who, by laying waste the Roman territory, forced Pope 
 Paschalis II. to yield up to him the " Investiture," for the 
 maintenance of which the Papacy had been for thirty years 
 contending. One might have considered it as an impossibility 
 that a Pope would have laid a hand upon the destruction of 
 a Society, against which no substantial or proved accusation 
 existed, and with the downfall of which (apart from other 
 reasons) was involved the ruin of the mightiest and most 
 1 Bulk " Admonet nos," 29. Mart., 1567.
 
 SPOLIATIONS OF THE BOURBONS. 35i> 
 
 flourishing missions amongst the heathens, and at the same 
 time the Church itself rendered the poorer by so many 
 thousands of souls. But the Bourbon Courts knew well 
 how to obtain what was apparently impossible. They caught 
 hold of the Roman See by the Papal States. They seized 
 upon Avignon and Venaissin, Benevento and Pontecarro, and 
 threatened at the same time to take Castro and Ronciglioni. 1 
 And when they had tormented to death the steadfast Cle- 
 ment XIIL, they managed, through their adherents 
 amongst the Cardinals, that the man who offered to be 
 the accomplisher of their will should be placed in the chair 
 of the Apostles. And when two Popes, one after the other, 
 Pius VI. and Pius VIL, calmly abiding in their own coun- 
 try, allowed themselves to be made prisoners by French 
 authorities, to be dragged away to France, and to be thrown 
 into prison, then, indeed, a comparison might well be insti- 
 tuted between times past and present. An Alexander III., 
 or an Innocent IV., would have passed over into Sicily, and 
 there, unattainable by Gallic tyrants, they would, under 
 English protection, have continued to govern the Church. 
 Not so the two Piuses. Both were excellent, conscientious 
 men ; but they regarded the quality of a territorial prince 
 more highly than that of the head of the Church. They 
 would not forsake their dominions and their people ; they 
 preferred, like the Roman senators of old, to await the 
 Gauls, seated in their chairs, and the world knows how 
 they were treated ! 
 
 At the close of the eighteenth century happened a circum- 
 stance, such as had not occurred during a thousand years. 
 Pius VI., in the treaty of Tolentino, of 1797, had to resign 
 to France not only Avignon and Venaissin, but also the 
 three legations, Ravenna, Ferrara, and Romagna. For him 
 remained Rome, the Patrimony, Umbria, and, he was per- 
 mitted to hope, Ancona to be restored to him. It was, how- 
 ever, easy to foresee that the remainder would soon be taken 
 out of his hands. But Pius had recognized, as a matter 
 of fact, that there were cases in which the Pope, although 
 1 THEINER'S " Geschichte Clemens XIV.," i. 97.
 
 360 INTERNAL CONDITION. 
 
 not the proprietor, but merely the depository or trustee 
 of the Papal States, might nevertheless alienate a part of 
 them that is, where the actual mission of the State can, 
 apart from the portion that has been alienated, be still car- 
 ried on. 
 
 INTERNAL CONDITION OF THE PAPAL STATES PREVIOUS 
 TO 1789. 
 
 Macchiavelli's remark, that " the Papal States stood in no 
 need of any defence against external foes, because they were 
 protected by religion," is an observation that has, at subse- 
 quent periods, been frequently repeated. There appeared to 
 be a great advantage in the fact ; for a country so situated 
 could require no standing army, and no costly expenditure 
 upon the maintenance of fortresses; whilst its inhabitants, 
 feeling themselves in full possession of undisturbed security, 
 might, free from peril, devote their lives to industrial pur- 
 suits. 1 From the time that Paul IV. had compelled King 
 Philip of Spain formally to engage in a war, which was car- 
 ried on with the greatest aversion by the latter, no portion of 
 the Papal States had ever been intruded upon by an enemy, 
 until Urban VIII., misled, like Paul IV., by his nephews, 
 brought on the unmeaning war of Castro, which, ending with 
 a dishonourable peace, became, through increased taxation, 
 by the accumulation of debts, by the impoverishment of the 
 country, and by the hateful employment of spiritual com- 
 bined with temporal weapons, a long-enduriug calamity for 
 the Papacy and the country. 2 
 
 A distinction has been drawn between two periods of 
 nepotism of what were called " the great" and " small " 
 nepotisms. In the former, Popes wished to found large 
 principalities for their families ; .in the latter, which began 
 
 1 " Relaz. Venet.," vii. 407. 
 
 1 Cardinel Sacchetti expresses himself in very strong terms upon these 
 results in a letter addressed to Alexander VII. This document has been 
 frequently reprinted. It is last published by MASSIMO D'AZEGLIO, " La 
 Politique et le droit Chretien." Paris, 1860, p. 165.
 
 NEPOTISM. 361 
 
 with Gregory XIII., and the bull of Innocent XII., but 
 ended with the death of Alexander VIII. (1691), the 
 exertion made was to raise the Papal families by means of 
 rich endowments, and by elevating them in rank to an 
 equality with the first and noblest houses of the land. Thus 
 the Buoncompagnis, through Gregory XIII., the Perettis 
 through Sixtus V., the Aldobrandinis through Clement VIII., 
 the Borgheses through Paul V., and the Ludovisis through 
 Gregory XV. ; but the enrichment of the Barberinis, through 
 Urban VIII., surpassed everything that had previously occur- 
 red. At the same time it frequently happened that a kinsman 
 was, as " Cardinal Padrone," entrusted with the supreme reins 
 of government. For a considerable time it was thought that 
 a Cardinal's nephew could not possibly be wanting in the 
 Papal Courts. If a successor to the See called the nephews 
 of the antecedent Government to account, and prosecuted 
 them, the memory of the preceding Pope would become dis- 
 honoured, and a wound inflicted upon the authority of the 
 Pontificate. The Popes of the eighteenth and nineteenth 
 century have, on the whole, kept themselves clear of these 
 faults and gross abuses. Pius VI., with his Braschis, forms 
 the only exception. Nepotism on the part of the Popes is 
 now extinguished, and lives only in history. But it is other- 
 wise with the nepotism of Cardinals and the " Prelati." 
 
 Had the Statute of Eugenius IV. remained in force the 
 College of Cardinals would have constituted a beneficial 
 restraint in the affairs of the Government. Nepotism could 
 not have become so injurious ; whilst favoritism, and such 
 deeds as those of a Camillo Astalli, Mascambruni, Don 
 Mario, and a Coscia would have been prevented, or would 
 have been rendered less pernicious. The country and its 
 interests would also have had in the Cardinals authorised 
 advocates and representatives. But that Statute had speedily 
 become a mere dead letter. The Popes felt themselves to be, 
 and acted as, completely absolute rulers. And even when 
 Paul IV. announced to the Cardinals his spoliation of the 
 Colonnas for the benefit of his nephew, and the war in which 
 he had engaged against Spain and the Emperor, they listened
 
 362 FREEDOM OF THE CITIES. 
 
 to him with downcast eyes, but did not venture to say a 
 word in opposition to his proposed policy. Since then the 
 College has remained completely passive as a corporation. It 
 serves merely to listen to Allocutions upon momentous 
 events, and to be witnesses to the publication of treaties and 
 important arrangements, to undertake the election of the 
 Popes, and to represent the supreme power during the 
 vacancies of the Papal chair. The newly elected Pope 
 enters at the instant into the full enjoyment of a sove- 
 reignty, the boundlessness of which has not its like in 
 all Europe. Paruta describes, in the year 1595, the relations 
 between the Pope and the Cardinals : " Since Pius II.," he 
 says, " the authority of the Cardinals has been so depressed, 
 that the Popes have attracted all to themselves. At present 
 particular affairs are laid before the College only in the form 
 of a promulgation, and not to ask its advice ; and if, in rare 
 cases, the Pope should ever desire their counsel, or rather 
 appear to desire it, they confine themselves merely to the 
 laudation of whatever has been proposed by the Pope." 1 
 
 In the beginning of the sixteenth century, and under 
 Julius II. especially, the cities enjoyed great freedom. The 
 Pope was desirous, says Guicciardini, of acting in such a 
 manner as to inspire the people with an attachment to 
 churchmen ; so that at Bologna, when taking the oath of 
 allegiance, upon its passing over to the Papal Government, 
 it was regarded as a transition from the servitude which 
 hitherto had existed (under the Bentivoglios), into a state of 
 freedom, in which the citizens, in the peaceful possession of 
 their native land, would be allowed to take part in its 
 government as well as in its revenues. 2 And a contemporary 
 of Julius, Macchiavelli, describes it as a peculiarity of the 
 Papal States, that the sovereign was not required either to 
 defend or rule over his subjects ; whilst they, on their side, 
 had no desire to be ruled, yet never thought of separating 
 from him. 3 
 
 In the course of the sixteenth century there was first 
 
 1 "Relaz. Ven.,"x. 413. 
 8 Lib. vii., c. 1 ; lib. ix., c. 5. " II Principe," c. 11.
 
 STANDING CONGREGATIONS. 363 
 
 formed an actual government of the State by ecclesiastics; 
 and at the same time the administration was centralized in 
 Home. Before 1550 there were laymen acting as chiefs in 
 the administration. This at least very frequently happened 
 in the Romagna. But it is remarkable that the cities them- 
 selves often preferred "Prelati" as temporal governors, and 
 expressly desired to have them. Fermo, until the year 
 1676, maintained its right to have a relative of the Popes for 
 its governor ; and afterwards in his place came a congrega- 
 tion of Prelati merely for this district. Bologna maintained 
 many privileges, and especially that of having a President of 
 its own in Rome, who sometimes offered an active and per- 
 severing resistance. Upon the whole, however, there was 
 (at least since the end of the sixteenth century) no more of 
 corporate or individual independence either in the cities or 
 amongst the noble vassals. Of the city of Rome, it is said, 
 by Cardinal de Luca, that it presented merely the shadow of 
 a municipal government. 1 It is, however, admitted that some 
 of the large cities were allowed to govern themselves in a 
 tolerably independent manner, and that the lords of the soil 
 had also, within their own territories, full power of 
 action. 2 
 
 Sixtus V., who has been regarded as the chief founder of 
 the modern system of the Papal Government, estab- 
 lished the institution of Standing Congregations, which 
 was well calculated for that time, when it was an 
 object to raise a barrier against nepotism and favorit- 
 ism, and to have an Institution which would possess both 
 uniformity and stability in the management of the public 
 business, and be able to restrain the worst excesses of arbi- 
 trary authority. In connexion with this institution was 
 developed "the Prelature" the formation of a class of a 
 
 1 "Dottor Volgare," lib. xv., c. 34. 
 
 2 The Venetian Relation of 1615 (" Cod. Ital.," p. 358) remarks that 
 in Rome there still remained the form of an independent municipal ad- 
 ministration ; but that all these were things " che servono piuttosto per 
 apparenza, che per assistenza di governo." Its regulations were alto- 
 gether dependent upon the will of the Pope.
 
 364 OPPRESSIVE NUMBER OF OFFICIALS. 
 
 superior or higher order of officials in the Papal State. The 
 commencement of this class is placed in the time of Gregory 
 XIII. In the former periods ecclesiastical officials were 
 named "Curiales." In a closer view of this body, the 
 "Prelature" might be regarded as "a noviciate" a pre- 
 liminary state of preparation, and a nursery for the occupa- 
 tion of the higher offices in the State. Those who entered 
 it had to prove they were possessed of an income of 1,500 
 scudi and thus all persons without means were excluded 
 from this class, and the career which it opened to its 
 members. 
 
 A serious burden upon the country was the great number 
 of Roman officials, whose places some of the Popes, when 
 they found themselves in financial difficulties, had created 
 merely for the purpose of selling them. The duties they had 
 to discharge were insignificant, and some of them were 
 merely titles without any office whatsoever. The purchasers 
 paid either a yearly contribution or a lump sum at once, and 
 could also sell their appointments again. There was no fixed 
 salary attached to these appointments; but the occupiers 
 received the profits and fees of their offices. In the year 
 1470 there were already 650 purchasable places. Afterwards 
 Sixtus IV. created a whole College, merely to sell the 
 places ; and at a later period succeeding Popes, and Leo X- 
 in particular, imitated this example, There were under 
 Paul IV. so many as 3,500 such places. With reference to 
 this matter persons tranquillised their conscience with the 
 consideration that by such means were obviated the neces- 
 sity of burdening the people with new taxes. It was, in 
 fact, a system of disguised loans in the form of annuities. 
 The consequences made themselves chiefly felt in matters 
 affecting ecclesiastical jurisdiction, for the purchases had 
 main reference to the produce of Departments interested in 
 Benefices and Dispensations. And in the administration of 
 the Papal States its effects were also felt, for the Government 
 situations were also sometimes sold ; l and the mere exist- 
 
 1 SABACINI, " Notizie storiche della citta d'Ancona," p. 335, mentions 
 that the Governorship of Ancona was sold to Benedetto Accolti, for the 
 yearly payment of 20,000 scudi
 
 IMMUNITIES OF THE CLERGY. 365 
 
 ence of a numerous class of officials who had purchased 
 their appointments, and regarded them as articles of trade, 
 could not but introduce at last a grovelling, griping spirit 
 into the whole administration. 1 It was one of the merits of 
 the excellent Innocent XII., that, in the year 1693, he 
 abolished the selling of places, by restoring the purchase- 
 money to the buyers. 2 But, assuredly, he could not do away 
 with the consequences of a custom that had existed for more 
 than two hundred years, and the results of which have been 
 felt down to the most recent times. 
 
 The ecclesiastics formed at Rome, in many different ways, 
 a superior and privileged order, and such as cannot be found 
 in any other country in the world. As clergy and laity were 
 thus separated by a broad and deep chasm from one another, 
 the laity were filled with jealousy against the clerical 
 order, thus placed in a position so superior to their own, and 
 defended on all sides by inviolable privileges ; and the con- 
 sequence was that the feeling of jealousy often became one 
 of decided aversion. On the one side, it was frequently 
 maintained in the sixteenth century that there prevailed 
 amongst the people a decided dislike to a government by 
 priests; 3 and on the other side it was remarked by the cele- 
 brated statesman and historian, Paolo Paruta (a seriously 
 religious man), in the year 1595, that the preservation of the 
 rights and immunities of the clergy was regarded as the first 
 and most important of all affairs. He had, he says, fre- 
 quently observed, and not without wonder and vexation, 
 that even "Prelati," leading very unspiritual lives, were 
 highly esteemed and rewarded, if they but defended the pri- 
 vileges of the ecclesiastical order against the laity ; and that 
 it was sometimes made a matter of reproach to a " Prelato" 
 
 1 MURATORI, " Annali," a. 1693, xvi. p. 237. Ed. Milan. 
 
 2 u Per la qual cosa si viene a riempire la corte d' uomini mercenarii e 
 mercanti . . . non avendo detti mercenarii d'offici involto 1'animo 
 che in cose meccaniche e basse. ... si che tolta 1'economia este- 
 riore ogni altra cosa si reduce a deterioramento." Thus writes the Vene- 
 tian ambassador Grimani, under Clement IX. "Tesori della corte 
 Rom.," p. 426. 
 
 * " Governo dei preti," an expression since then frequently made use of.
 
 366 A STRIKING CONTRAST. 
 
 that he favoured the laity too much. It seemed, he says, as 
 if the clergy and laity did not belong to one and the same 
 flock, and were not included in the one Church. 1 
 
 It was further noticed that Popes were no longer taken 
 from the regular clergy (from Sixtus V., who died 1590, 
 Benedict XIII., in 1724, was the first monk who sat in the 
 Papal chair) and that since government by nepotism had 
 become customary, the regular clergy were seldom promoted 
 or employed. All was in the hands of the secular clergy, 
 and especially of those who did that which the regulars 
 could not do serve "the nephews" or who appeared better 
 adapted for office by their juridical studies. 2 
 
 A very striking contrast was presented between the spi- 
 ritual and temporal government of the Popes. The first 
 bore throughout the stamp of dignified stability, resting upon 
 fixed rules and ancient traditions ; whilst the government of 
 the country was, on the contrary, a prey to continual changes 
 of men, manners, and systems. 3 In comparison with the 
 reigns of worldly princes, the pontificates were short. On 
 the average, the reign of a Pope did not last more than nine 
 years. 4 It seldom happened that a new Pope continued in 
 
 1 " Relaziom Venete," x. 375. 
 
 2 Grimani, who describes these circumstances, maintains, " Nelle con- 
 correnze un pretuccio ignorante e vizioso otterra il premio sopra il religiose 
 dotto e dabbene," and ascribes, amongst the injurious consequences of the 
 system, the great want then felt of men of talent to occupy official posi- 
 tions in the Papal States. With the cessation of nepotism (since Inno- 
 cent XII.) circumstances in this respect must have improved. 
 
 8 The Relation ("Cod. Ital.," p. 358), "della qualitk e abusi della 
 Corte di Roma," f. 127, remarks, u The constant changes in the Govern- 
 ment astonish every one that comes to Rome, so much so, that some sup- 
 pose the cause of it is to be found in the air, the climate, or the town 
 itself." The fact, however, is universally remarked. Thus it is spoken 
 of in an instruction to the Spanish Ambassador at Rome in the seven- 
 teenth century, and which is annexed to the work, " La monarchia di 
 Spagna crescente e calante," 1699, p. 7. " Questa corte (the Roman 
 Court) e variabilissima, e cosi bisogna, come il buon piloto, mutar le vele 
 conforme al vento che soffia," &c. See also CANTU, " Storia degli 
 Italian!," v. 660. 
 
 4 Thus, for example, in two centuries (from 1589-1789) there were in
 
 CHANGE OF OFFICIALS. 367 
 
 temporal affairs the system of his predecessors. He came to 
 power under a lively impression of the discontents that had 
 been aroused by certain evils of the previous administration, 
 and was therefore so much the more inclined to produce a 
 favourable impression for his own government by the adop- 
 tion of opposite proceedings. Thus it has been remarked, 
 with respect to the cultivation of the Roman Campagna, 
 that every Pope followed a different system; and the conse- 
 quence has been that in that which was the main point to be 
 achieved nothing has been done. 
 
 / Beyond all other things to be remarked upon is the fact 
 that persons were changed under every new Pope, which led 
 to the most influential offices never remaining long in the. 
 same hands and thus were men gifted to be statesmen, and 
 with an aptitude for business, either prevented from having 
 time to acquire due knowledge and experience, or if they 
 had acquired both, then they were not afforded the oppor- 
 tunity of turning them to practical account. Paruta alludes 
 to the great disadvantage which this custom brought along 
 with it. The new Popes were usually distinguished for their 
 piety or learning; but they were unpractised in affairs of 
 State, 1 and therefore needed so much the more old and ex- 
 perienced ministers, and a firm, permanent council. Instead 
 of this, there appeared to be nothing mpre pressing for the 
 new Popes to do than to fill the principal offices with their 
 nephews, favourites, and fellow-countrymen. 2 Clement IX. 
 
 France five Kings, in Germany nine Emperors, in Spain seven Kings ; 
 but in Rome, twenty-three Popes. 
 
 1 It is remarkable that the recent practice should be so different on 
 this point from what prevailed in the Middle Ages, and when the Papal 
 election was free from foreign influences. In the eleventh, twelfth, and 
 thirteenth centuries, persons were constantly elected as Popes who had 
 already filled, under one or two preceding Popes, the most important 
 offices in the Roman Church. On this ground were elected Gregory 
 VII., Urban II., Gelasius II., Lucius II., Alexander III., Gregory VIII., 
 Gregory IX., Alexander IV. The Cardinal-State-Secretary is now 
 peculiarly " the Government," and yet it is regarded as a regular rule 
 that he is never to attain to the Papal dignity. 
 
 2 u Relazioni Venete," x. 420.
 
 368 MANAGEMENT OF THE FINANCES. 
 
 was the first who, to the great vexation of his countrymen at 
 Pistoja. departed from this custom ; and, with the exception 
 of a few high offices, retained in their position all those who 
 had been appointed by his predecessor. 1 
 
 The management of the finances of the Popes, since the 
 beginning of the sixteenth century, appears in an unfavour- 
 able light, if we consider the figures and the expedients 
 resorted to. Despite of the multiplied taxes, which were so 
 much the more oppressive, as the prosperity of the population 
 was by no means on the. increase, 2 the National Debt was 
 continually increasing, whilst Popes, by the erection of the 
 " Monti," as well as by the sale of offices, were adding to an 
 alienation of the revenue. It was remarked that since 
 Sixtus V. the Popes left nothing to their successors but 
 debts. 3 They had amounted, under Clement VIII., to 
 12,242,620 scudi, or 17,751,799 rix dollars that is, three- 
 fourths of the entire revenues of the State were required 
 for the payment of interest. Innocent X., in 1685, left a 
 debt of 48,000,000 scudi. The motive for such a heavy 
 burden on the State (apart from the two useless Italian wars, 
 and what was squandered in nepotism and favouritism) was 
 one well calculated to increase the renown of the Popes. 
 They could not withdraw themselves from the obligation of 
 supporting the Catholic powers in the religious struggles of 
 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and especially from 
 furnishing contributions in money, troops, and ships for the 
 wars against the Turks. They had the task in Italy, in 
 common with the Venetians, of serving as the bulwark of 
 Christianity a task that had been transmitted to them from 
 their predecessors and to maintain it against its hereditary 
 
 1 GRIMANI, " Relaz. in den Tesori," p. 417. 
 
 * Of Clement IX. it is remarked by MURATORI (xvi. 92), " He was 
 continually thinking of the means whereby he might relieve his people of 
 many of the taxes imposed upon them by his predecessors. He insti- 
 tuted a congregation for that purpose, but it was found, on account of 
 the State debts, to be an undertaking impossible to bring to a successful 
 issue." 
 
 3 GRIMANI, " Relazione," in the " Tesori della Corte Romana," 1672, 
 p. 429.
 
 DISCONTENT OF THE PEOPLE. 369 
 
 enemy in the East. France, and the Poles, especially Hun- 
 garians, the Imperial Court, and most frequently of all the 
 Venetians, sought for and received large sums of money. 
 All who were persecuted and despoiled in the south-eastern 
 countries turned first to the Popes for aid, and regularly ob- 
 tained from them generous assistance. 1 The burdens which the 
 population had at that time to bear were imposed upon them 
 as victims to the general weal of Christendom. But their 
 sacrifices brought with them two evils. First, there was in 
 the country no species of industrial pursuit in a thriving con- 
 dition, and the cities, with few exceptions, remained small 
 and poor : next, everything that was used came from abroad, 2 
 and thus the land, despite of the excellence of its natural 
 productiveness, became constantly poorer. The administra- 
 tion of finances was, as a matter of course, managed in secret, 
 for there was not even a word said of a publication of the 
 accounts ; and as none but a Cardinal could be a Treasurer, 
 he, by reason of the privileges of his position, was above all 
 responsibility! The people felt the pressure of increasing 
 taxation, and were continually becoming more dissatisfied with 
 a " Priest Government." Their discontent must, in Paruta's 
 time (about the year 1595), have assumed a very serious 
 aspect. 3 The evil became still greater in the following cen- 
 
 1 RANKE ("Die romische Papste," i. 422) says: "The Popes wished 
 to govern their principality as if it was a large property, from which a 
 portion of the rents should be applied for the benefit of their own 
 families ; but the main part be especially allocated to the necessities of 
 the Church." What he says with reference to a care for their own 
 families can only be applied to Pontiffs before 1691, and, even then, is not 
 applicable to them all. It is particularly not so to Clement IX., who 
 might be called " admirable," if he had not been somewhat indolent and 
 apathetic. 
 
 2 This is particularly dwelt upon in the Venetian Relation of the year 
 1615 (in " Cod. Ital.," f. 45, of the Munich library), " Quasi tutte le 
 cose, che si usano, sono portate da paesi forastieri," &c. 
 
 8 " Relaz. Ven.," x. 396. Of the "gravezza quasi insopportabile dell' 
 imposizion," Tiepolo had already spoken about the year 1570 ; see RANKE, 
 i. 421. In the year 1664, Cardinal Sacchetti again complains of " il 
 numero innumerabile delle gabelle," &c. We learn from Pallavicini that 
 the people ascribed the pressure of taxation to nepotism, the dotation 
 
 BB
 
 370 DISORDERED STATE OF THE FINANCES. 
 
 tury ; and, even though we should regard as an exaggeration 
 the assertion of Cardinal Sacchetti, that in the year 1664 
 the population had been diminished by one-half, still it is 
 positively true that numbers, to escape the burden of taxation, 
 had emigrated. 
 
 In the year 1670, the debt had increased to 52 million 
 scudi, and absorbed even the dataria rent, which otherwise 
 should, as usual, have been appropriated to the necessities of 
 the Papal Court. Under Clement XII., the deficit was 
 120,000 scudi. It was better at the time of the death of 
 Benedict XIV., in the year 1758. The deficit had then 
 been reduced by more than one-half, but the interest on the 
 public debt swallowed up the half of the income. After 
 this, the storm of the French Revolution burst over the 
 Papal States ; and then there was a Roman Republic, which, 
 after the capture of Pius VI., dragged on for a few years a 
 miserable existence ; and with it came a state bankruptcy, 
 which set aside the paper money created by Pius VI. 1 
 
 In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the condition 
 of the country is usually described in gloomy colours. The 
 foreign ambassadors believed " that, if a temporal monarch 
 had the government of the Papal States, they might be 
 raised to a high degree of prosperity, and even of wealth ;" 2 
 as all the conditions for attaining both were to be found in 
 the soil and the population. The causes assigned, in expla- 
 nation of the general decay, are very various. Above all 
 things was, as a matter of course, the constantly disordered 
 state of the finances, which was now, indeed, not merely 
 ascribed to nepotism and favoritism, but the grounds for which 
 were found to lie much broader and deeper. To the drainage 
 of money occasioned by the absence of domestic manufac- 
 tures, there was to be added that which passed away into 
 foreign countries, as payments upon the interest of the debt, 
 
 and enrichment of Papal families " Populus, qui prse multis vectigalibus 
 humeris sibi ferre videbatur recentiores pontificias domos tot opibus 
 onustas," &c. In the MS. Life of Alexander VII. 
 
 1 COPPI, u Annali d'ltalia." iii. 219. 
 
 1 So says the " Venet. Relation" of 1615.
 
 LAWS CONCERNING TRADE. 371 
 
 as the chief creditors were Genoese and Florentines. 
 According to the remark of the President de Brosse, 1 pay- 
 ments to the Church in Home, that came from foreign 
 countries, were never sent in cash, but in bills upon bankers, 
 who immediately met with them the demands of the foreign 
 creditors of the state. 
 
 The laws concerning trade were so inconceivably perverse, 
 that the suspicion was expressed that they had been 
 purposely calculated for the suppression of skill, and the 
 destruction of industry. As to the absurd duties levied in 
 the interior of the country, they operated in the same 
 direction. 
 
 To these must be added the arbitrary proceedings with 
 respect to the corn-trade, (the institute of the " Annona,") 
 and the introduction of monopolies in the most important 
 necessaries of life : matters concerning which there had 
 been long and frequent complaints. 2 There was, too, a 
 
 1 " Le President de Brosse en Italic, lettres," &c. Paris, 1858, ii. 
 452, et seq. These letters were written in 1739 and 1740. 
 
 2 The author, in a subsequent passage, again refers to the baleful effects 
 of the Roman u Annona," or Corn Law. Mr. Lyons, in a letter ad- 
 dressed to the Marquis of Normanby, from Rome, July 30, 1856, makes 
 some remarks on the same subject: "I have," says Mr. Lyons, "the 
 honour to transmit to your Lordship two printed copies and a translation 
 of an Edict published yesterday, by which the exportation, from these 
 States, of corn of all kinds, is suspended until further orders. The second 
 paragraph of the Edict, declaring that the circulation of corn within the 
 State remains perfectly free, is supposed to have been occasioned by an 
 absurd and mischievous Notification, issued, on the 22nd instant, on his 
 own authority, by Monsignor Amici, the lately appointed Extraordinary 
 Papal Commissioner for the four Legations, and Pro-Legate of Bologna. 
 This Notification is couched in language more calculated to excite and to 
 justify than to allay the popular irritation, and contains a number of 
 minute and vexatious regulations, intended for the prevention or punish- 
 ment of the imaginary offence of ' engrossing,' or buying up large quan- 
 tities of corn. The prejudices and ignorance of the mass of the people in 
 these States on the subject of the corn trade may, perhaps, require to be 
 treated with a gentle hand ; but it might have been expected that the 
 acts of a public functionary, in the high situation occupied by Monsignor 
 Amici, would have been directed rather towards correcting them than 
 towards fostering and sanctioning them. The Government at Rome has 
 
 BB 2
 
 372 DEFECTIVE CHARACTER OF THE GOVERNMENT. 
 
 complete absence of all representation of the interests of the 
 people. An individual city might make its wishes and 
 complaints known in Rome ; but then anything analogous 
 to a provincial representation in the Papal States, much more 
 a representation of the whole country, was never even thought 
 of. 1 
 
 The President de Brosse considered that the administra- 
 tion of the Papal States (about the year 1740) was the 
 most defective of any in all Europe, but, at the same time, 
 the mildest. The mildness degenerated into weakness and 
 negligence, and so contributed to the impoverishment of the 
 country, by permitting all things to go to decay, in the hands 
 of aged and infirm sovereigns. He likesvise thought that the 
 Pope would be one of the richest monarchs in Europe, if he 
 raised as much money from his subjects as other sovereigns, 
 and if his finances were tolerably well managed. 2 Such was 
 the opinion also entertained in Italy, with reference to the 
 defective character of the Papal government. Becattini, in 
 his eulogistic biography of Pius VI., confesses : "That, with 
 the exception of Turkey, the country beyond all others the 
 worst governed was that of the Papal States. The .baleful 
 
 disapproved Monsignor Amici's Notification ; but his proceeding does not 
 afford a favourable specimen of the enlightenment, or of the administra- 
 tive capacity of the ecclesiastics selected for high civil employment. 
 The practice adopted by the Papal Government of regulating 
 the corn trade by successive temporary Edicts, issued according to the 
 circumstances of the moment, has, in addition to its inherent evils, the 
 great disadvantage, in these States, of giving rise to all kinds of suspicion 
 against those in power. Every change is popularly attributed to direct 
 corruption, or to a desire to favour the speculations of particular persons, 
 supposed to be connected by ties of family or interest with men high in 
 office. Whether these accusations are, in truth, founded or unfounded, 
 there can be no doubt that they are believed in to an extent which 
 materially injures the reputation and authority of the Government." 
 " Despatches from Mr. Lyons respecting the Condition and Administra- 
 tion of the Papal States." London, 1860, pp. 26, 27. 
 
 1 " Gegenwartiger Zustanddes piipstlicheu Staats." Hehnstadt, 1792, 
 p. 217. See the " Riflessioni" of Cardinal Buoncompagni, in the year 
 1780, partly translated in LE BRET'S " Magazin," ix. 452-527. 
 
 2 u Lettres familieres," ii. 452, 465.
 
 ABSOLUTE POWER OF THE POPES. 373 
 
 annona, or corn-law, the tormenting and demoralising " vic- 
 tualling tribunals," the want of manufactures, the increase of 
 smuggling caused by the high duties on imports ; the 
 enrichment of state-farmers (farmers-general), to the great 
 injury of the public treasury ; and the number of homicides : 
 such were the circumstances pointed at as characteristics of 
 the condition of the Papal States. 1 And one is, in fact, in 
 considering them, strongly reminded of the expressions of 
 the old chancellor, Clarendon. 2 The mildness of the Papal 
 government has also been lately remarked upon by an 
 Englishman very familiar with Italian history. 3 
 
 Strangers who have been in the country, and who have 
 taken the trouble to acquire a knowledge of the manner in 
 which its government has been carried on, have most gene- 
 rally been at first astonished at the absence of all restraints 
 upon, and then the omnipotence of, the sovereign. Thus 
 speaks Grosley, who visited the Papal States about the year 
 1760, 4 "The Papal is the most absolute of all the govern- 
 ments in Europe. Of all the restrictions that are to be 
 found in monarchical states, such as fundamental laws of 
 the realm, a coronation oath, regulations made by prede- 
 cessors, national or provincial assemblies, powerful corpora- 
 tions of all these there is to be found not one in the Papal 
 States." One looks with wonder at an institution like to 
 that of " the Uditore Santissimo" which, in the name of the 
 Pope, can interfere arbitrarily in the administration of 
 justice, in every department, and can withdraw both suits 
 and suitors from the jurisdiction of the regular judges ! 
 Upon a closer examination it is, however, found that this 
 absolute power is much modified by custom by that, above 
 
 1 CANTU, " Storia degli Ital.," vi. 126. 
 
 2 u He observes, that of all mankind none form so bad an estimate of 
 human affairs as churchmen." HALLAM'S "Constitutional History of 
 England," iii. 330. 
 
 3 u Whatever objection there may be to the Papal sway, it cannot, in 
 fairness, be regarded as otherwise than mild." DENNISTOUN'S " Memoirs 
 of the Dukes of Urbino," 1851, iii. 233. 
 
 4 " Observations sur 1'Italie." Paris, 1774, ii. 329.
 
 374 THE POPE AND NAPOLEON I. 
 
 which a Pope never, or scarcely ever places himself that it 
 is also modified by many considerations, and by the utmost 
 possible forbearance towards persons; a forbearance that 
 has become a principle of government so that, in truth, 
 this mild despotism is found to exist more in appearance, 
 and in theory, than in fact, or practical life. 
 
 THE PAPAL STATES FROM 1814 TO 1846. 
 
 When Napoleon I. despoiled Pope Pius VII. of the Papal 
 States, his primary and principal motive for so doing was 
 not because he desired to have possession of the country, 
 but because he would not allow the Pope to be in that position 
 of independence which the government of those states 
 secured to His Holiness ; and because the Emperor wanted 
 to make of the Pope an instrument wherewith nations might 
 be subjected to the imperial sway. Napoleon has acknow- 
 ledged this. " I did not despair," he says, " of obtaining by 
 some means or other the guidance of the Pope for myself, 
 and then what an influence it would have been!" 1 He 
 wished to establish the Papal Court at Paris to make it a 
 French and Imperial Institution, and by these means to get 
 possession of the Papal influence over all Catholic popula- 
 tions and so be a ruler over their souls as well as their 
 persons. 2 He did not succeed in this ; for the Pope, although 
 a captive, and, according to the captor's own expressions, 
 " gentle as a lamb, and an angel in goodness," would neither 
 be led, nor allow himself to be made use of. The momentary 
 weakness which the tortured, enslaved, and outwitted Pius 
 had manifested in his signature to the Concordat of Fon- 
 taiuebleau, in the year 1813, with an implicit renunciation of 
 his temporal powers, was very speedily repaired ; and at the 
 end of a few months he was able, as a steadfast sufferer, and 
 
 1 " Memorial de Ste. Helene," v. 326. 
 
 2 u S'en servir comineunmoyen social pour reprimer 1'anarchie, consolider 
 sa domination en Europe, accroitre la consideration de la France et Tin- 
 fluence de Paris, objet de toutes ses pensees." " Memorial de Ste. Helene," 
 1. c.
 
 PAPAL ADMINISTRATION. 375 
 
 now peaceful victor, to return, and pass through the provin- 
 ces of his restored dominions to his capital, amid the most 
 sincere expressions of joy from the whole people and from 
 those, too, of the Romagnole, that had been so long separated 
 from him. His return was a grand triumphal procession. 
 
 The whole of the Papal States, such as he had never 
 before possessed them, were transferred to him by the Treaty 
 of Vienna ; and, in the person of Consalvi, he had at his com- 
 mand a statesman of rare endowments, to aid him in solving 
 the difficult problem of re-establishing in part the traditional 
 mode of Papal administration, instead of the French hitherto 
 existing. 
 
 That the form of the solution should have entangled the 
 State and the Papacy in new and insoluble difficulties, or 
 such difficulties as up to the present time never have been 
 solved, was a fact that could only be subsequently learned by 
 experience. 
 
 In the preliminary observations to the " Motu Proprio " of 
 6th July, 1816, by which was regulated the government of 
 the Papal States, Consalvi declared -" That formerly an ag- 
 gregate of various customs, laws, and^privileges had existed 
 in the State ; and that it was an advantage and a Divine 
 dispensation, that by the interruption of the papal reign, and 
 during that interregnum all those inequalities should be re- 
 moved, and unity with uniformity introduced. For," as he 
 said, " a government was so much the more perfect the more 
 it approached to a system of unity." 
 
 This statesman did not take into consideration that an ab- 
 solute government can only be rendered endurable, and can 
 alone be saved from sinking under the burden of its enor- 
 mous responsibility, when it not merely tolerates and ac- 
 knowledges a variously organized life, protected by custom 
 and precedent, but also permits it to move freely within its 
 subordinate sphere. His lauded unity and uniformity were 
 destructive, and he also had to acquire by experience a 
 knowledge of the fact that it is far easier to destroy than it is 
 to construct or to create, in the management of public affairs, 
 the spirit, strength, and vigour of a healthy existence.
 
 376 CONSALVI'S INSTITUTIONS. 
 
 Thus, there was not a single one of the old municipal and 
 provincial institutions re-established. The Gonfaloniere and 
 the Anziani of the Communes, retained no more their indepen- 
 dent positions ; and even Kome and Bologna had but a sha- 
 dow of municipal government. The local laws and statutes 
 which, in sooth, granted very various, and, for the purposes 
 of justice, very inconvenient privileges, as well as all the 
 rights of the Communes, with exemptions and immunities, 
 were abolished. Consalvi entered, therefore, willingly upon 
 the inheritance which the Revolution had left to him as an 
 incarnate Napoleonised government ; and he was thankful to 
 the latter, because it had prepared the way so energetically 
 and unsparingly for his administration, and so completely 
 smoothened a path for him and yet, he in one respect de- 
 parted completely from the French system, by again placing 
 power in the hands of " ecclesiastics." The Papal States were 
 to be an absolute government by officials, in accordance with 
 the French pattern, but then the highest orders of officialism 
 were reserved for the " Prelature." This form of a clerical, 
 omnipotent, bureaucratic, administering, governmental offi- 
 cialism, was essentially a novelty, far and away different from 
 the state of affairs in the olden time, and, above all, absolutely 
 different from what existed during the Middle Ages. Now, 
 the whole of the kingdom was divided into seventeen Dele- 
 gations, or Legations, where a cardinal was placed at the 
 head of affairs. The Delegati, corresponding in position with 
 the French Prefects, must be members of the Prelature. 
 They had to decide upon everything; and to assist them, they 
 had merely a deliberative council, the members of which 
 were nominated at Rome. To these Delegatl belonged the 
 appointment of the magistrates who carried on the govern- 
 ment of the Communes, nnd amongst whom sat clergymen, 
 who took precedence of the lay members. Below the Delegati 
 were persons named Governatori, but having an inferior juris- 
 diction. In Rome, the old supreme authorities were again 
 re-established the Congregations delta Consulta, del buon 
 Governo, economica, dell' Acque, degli Studii; and then the 
 Camera Apostulica, endowed with the most heterogeneous at-
 
 COMPLICATED SCHEME OF GOVERNMENT. 377 
 
 tributes, and divided into twenty-one subordinate depart- 
 ments, or Circles, with a Cardinal Camerlingo (chamberlain) 
 and Tesoriere, or treasurer. To these were to be added fif- 
 teen different courts of judicature. At the head of the Go- 
 vernment, both spiritual and temporal, was placed the Car- 
 dinal State-Secretary. The nursery-school from which the 
 Government took its officials was from that class of Roman 
 Abbdtes, who, with insufficient judicial and without any poli- 
 tical economic knowledge, were better taught than educated, 
 and might more fitly be entrusted with the arrangement of 
 ecclesiastical ceremonies than with the management and in- 
 terests of everyday life ; but who, relying upon the favour 
 and patronage of a Cardinal or " Monsignore," could win for 
 themselves even in Rome but very little respect, and in the 
 provinces were, for the most part, objects of the smallest love 
 and regard. Of all the systems of government established 
 in Europe, the Roman was indisputably the most complicated 
 so much so, that in some cases a circumlocutory and time- 
 wasting correspondence must be carried on preliminary to 
 the ascertainment of the simple fact as to which one of the 
 several authorities a matter should be submitted for its set- 
 tlement. And by some of these authorities, meanwhile, 
 would it be observed that it was only in accordance with its 
 name and title that they could take any cognizance of it. 
 
 And yet, some of the institutions of Consalvi proved 
 themselves to be both judicious and beneficial; as, for in- 
 stance, the DeJegati placed by the side of the permanent go- 
 verning Congregazioni, an imitation of the French Prefectoral 
 Council. It was also generally recognized that the Tribunal 
 of the Sacra Ruota was an admirable court of judicature, 
 with an exemplary mode of legal procedure. 
 
 In the German Ecclesiastical States the spiritual was 
 separated from the temporal government ; but in the Papal 
 States they were intermingled with each other. This was 
 declared to be an indispensable necessity. It was maintained 
 that the double position of the Supreme Head must be re- 
 peated and imitated amongst those of inferior rank. 1 There 
 1 RANKE, in his u Historisch-politischen Zeitschrift," i. 682.
 
 378 FINANCIAL AFFAIRS. 
 
 is as little of propriety in the fact, as there is of justice in the 
 assertion. Because a king is at the head of the military de- 
 fences of a country, as its commander-in- chief, and at the 
 same time the head of the civil government, must it also 
 necessarily follow that there should be the same combination 
 of military and civil life amongst all the subordinates of his 
 government ? On the contrary, it is well known that in 
 every properly-regulated State, the most complete separation 
 of the civil from the military administration is maintained 
 without the slightest difficulty. And so also could it be in 
 the Papal States the spiritual could be dissevered from the 
 political, the ecclesiastical divided from the civil ; and, de- 
 spite the union of both in the one Head, they might very 
 well be distributed amongst different members of the same 
 nation. 
 
 Financial affairs were found by Consalvi to be in a state 
 of the most absolute ruin. They had been so of old ; and 
 their condition was to be traced to transactions in preceding 
 centuries, to the robberies of the French, and the urgent 
 necessities of the Napoleonic domination. In 1846, the de- 
 ficit amounted to 1,200,000 scudi, or 1,740,000 rix dollars. 
 At the same time the revenue had, in consequence of the 
 French system of government, been nearly trebled. It was 
 a matter of course that the taxes imposed by the French 
 must be substantially maintained. 
 
 The whole body of the French system of administering 
 justice, in all its branches, with its modes of procedure, was 
 put an end to by the Papal Delegate Rivarola, previous to 
 the Pope's arrival at Rome ; and, at the same time, all pro- 
 vincial statutes and peculiar municipal privileges of cities 
 were abolished. The vacancy thus created was filled up by 
 the Canon Law and Papal constitutions of the olden time 
 making altogether an incomprehensible, confused, and partly 
 self-contradictory conglomeration of enactments. A calamitous 
 confusion in all branches of the administration of justice was 
 the immediate consequences of this change. And this con- 
 fusion was increased by the rivalry of the Episcopal Courts, 
 which drew before their bar every matter in which a clergy-
 
 AUSTRIAN DOMINATION. 379 
 
 man was concerned. Then, too, were re-established the old 
 tribunals of the Fabbrica di San Pietro for all religious legacies, 
 and the Cherici di Camera for all matters connected with the 
 domain lands. Then new codes were promised. Upon the 
 whole, the power of ecclesiastics in temporal matters became 
 infinitely greater than it ever had been before. So many 
 barriers to it had been struck down ; and, in addition, every- 
 thing connected with education, and a very rigid censorship, 
 (the last being most reluctantly endured by the higher classes,) 
 were vested in the hands of ecclesiastics ! 
 
 And yet, notwithstanding all this, Consalvi was regarded 
 by the numerous and powerful party of the Zelanti (the 
 zealots), to which the majority of the Cardinals belonged, as 
 a dangerous innovator ! so much so, that Cardinal Mattel, 
 Dean of the College, and Prince of Velletri, caused a pro- 
 clamation of the State-Secretary's to be torn down in Velletri 
 by his own bailiffs ! 
 
 Italy was treated like Poland at the Congress of Vienna : 
 it was regarded as "a geographical expression." Nations, 
 their wishes and their wants, were not there taken into con- 
 sideration. Austria then dominated not only where her own 
 interests and sympathies were involved, but her word of 
 command influenced and controlled the other Italian States. 
 Nought was to be conceded to the people, in the form of 
 rights and institutions, but what appeared to be conformable 
 to the interests of the Austrian Bureaucracy as those in- 
 terests were then comprehended at Vienna. The conse- 
 quence was that in the course of a few years Italy was 
 covered over with a net of secret societies. The cherished 
 desire of the higher classes was to shake off the yoke of 
 Austria. The French had, when in Spain, been able to win 
 a party for themselves the " Af rancesados ;" but Austria 
 could never once gain for herself a similar party in Italy. 
 The occupiers of lands in the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom 
 might rejoice at living in security under a well-regulated 
 government; but in the cities all were Anti- Austrian, and 
 all for " national independence." The youths studying in the 
 Universities were soon drawn into the whirlpool of a secret
 
 380 LEO XII. 
 
 and mighty movement. And then came literature, with its 
 irresistible weight, to impart its influence. Every prohibition 
 of a book produced a greater sale for it ; and persons were 
 more eager to read an author, and reposed more confidence 
 in what he wrote, once he had become an object of political 
 persecution. The secret societies the Carbonaris, Adelfis, 
 Guelphs, Sublime Masters those, who had formerly made 
 themselves partly known by their anti-Xapoleon tendencies, 
 now rendered their existence from time to time remarkable 
 by a political assassination or by an assassination to which 
 a political colouring was given. Consalvi, hated by two 
 opposite parties by those resolved upon a political revolu- 
 tion, and by the Zelanti must be overthrown, and a Spanish 
 Cortes Constitution, or something like it, proclaimed. The 
 flame was, however, then opportunely smothered by the 
 speedy suppression of the insurrection in Naples and Pied- 
 mont. 
 
 With the death of Pius VII., and the elevation of Leo 
 XII., came to an end the ministry of Consalvi a virulently- 
 vituperated individual. 1 Under the new Pope, Leo XII. 
 (the elect of the Zelanti), an opposite system to that which 
 had hitherto prevailed came into operation. Leo had been 
 chosen partly on account of his opinions, and partly also be- 
 cause he was sickly, frail, and had the appearance of one 
 likely to die very soon. 2 He made Cardinal della Somaglia 
 his minister a man eighty years of age, and not of active 
 habits. And so, at a most difficult and perilous period, when 
 there was much required to be done, to be regulated, to be 
 created, the destiny of the country was placed in the hands 
 of two grey-haired valetudinarians, weary of life, and just 
 dropping into the grave ! The Pope had been pressed, at 
 
 1 For an opinion of the Romans respecting him, see COPPI, " Annali," 
 vii. 334. He is there reproached as having been " corteggiatore degli 
 stranieri potenti ed imperioso sui sudditi pontificj." 
 
 2 This is said by the French Consul in his despatch in ARTAUD, 
 " Hist, de Leo XII.," i. 130, and by Chateaubriand himself in his 
 " Memoires," viii. 215, ed. de Berlin. Delia Genga was, in fact, not 
 elected until after Austria had interposed its veto upon Cardinal Severoli.
 
 UNPOPULARITY OF HIS GOVERNMENT. 3S1 
 
 the commencement of his reign, to nominate a Congregation 
 of Cardinals for affairs of State ; and they, it was thought, 
 would be able substantially to carry on the government ; but 
 Leo soon put an end to this expectation by the declaration 
 that he only intended to summon them occasionally, and 
 then merely for the purposes of consultation. 
 
 The weak, sickly Pope toiled on incessantly. The tendency 
 of his measures, opposed to those of Consalvi, was in 
 accordance with the wishes of the Zelanti. The Provincial 
 Councils, one of Consalvi's best institutions, were again 
 abolished ; and not only was the Inquisition re-established, 
 but there was also introduced an extensive spy-system, both 
 for the supervision of the conduct of officials, as well as the 
 morals of the population. 1 It was the firm belief of Leo 
 that safety alone was to be found in the restoration, so far as 
 it was possible, of ancient institutions and manners. There- 
 fore was everything connected with instruction more abso- 
 lutely than before transferred to the clergy; "inoculation" 
 was put an end to, and the immediate result was a greater 
 number of deaths. Even the Latin language was again 
 introduced into the proceedings of some of the courts ; and 
 Leo's Government became the most unpopular that there had 
 been in Rome for a century ; and the people made him feel 
 this, by the cessation of the usual plaudits that are given to a 
 Pope when he appears in public. 
 
 And yet Leo was animated with the very best intentions. 
 He felt the untenableness of the new circumstances and 
 institutions ; but he fell into an error as to the proper remedy 
 to be applied, and in making the attempt to breathe 
 fresh life into that which was dead and gone by for ever. 
 He recognized clearly enough that the whole system of 
 officialism was rankling and rotting with a grievous defect, 
 and that in such a circumstance lay a serious danger for the 
 existing order of things. He had long before then remarked 
 that a clerical official organism must be destitute of a rigid 
 
 1 COPPI, " Annali," vii. 337. I may here remark that Coppi, so often 
 referred to by me, is an esteemed Roman clergyman, who has often been 
 consulted upon affairs of State, as he himself mentions, vii. 146.
 
 382 LAY GOVERNMENT OFFICERS. 
 
 and settled discipline, mainly because its members are priests, 
 and, therefore, endowed with the privileges of their order ; 
 that there is no law and no means by which they could be 
 kept in check ; and that they were alone to be operated upon 
 by a hope of promotion. 
 
 "Rome," says the French Ambassador, in a dispatch of 
 the year 1823, 1 "is a republic in which every one is a lord 
 in his SiKdGTripiov. Consalvi had tried to change this ; but 
 upon the first rumour of his downfall, all these little autho- 
 rities instantly re-established themselves." In a Government 
 so constituted as that in which ecclesiastics hold. all the higher 
 appointments and offices of honour, and in which to laymen 
 alone is permitted the retention of a number of small situa- 
 tions, inferior places, and lower pay, there must ever be want- 
 ing that moral motive power, without which modern bureau- 
 cracy cannot exist : it combines a feeling of official honour, 
 with the influence of a corporative spirit things through 
 which the multitude, who may not be actuated by high 
 religious feelings, will yet be impelled strictly to adhere to 
 the path of duty, and faithfully to discharge all the require- 
 ments of their respective positions. Thus the lay government 
 officer (and the Italians are but too well-inclined so to act) 
 has regarded his situation as a maintenance, as a benefice for 
 himself, and of which he ought, for the advantage of himself 
 and his family, to make out as much pay and profits as he 
 possibly could. Leo sought a remedy against such an abuse, 
 in the establishment of a " Congregazione di Vigilanza"* 
 whose duty it was to receive and examine into all accusa- 
 tions that might be preferred against the Government 
 
 1 In ARTAUD, " Hist, de Leon XII.," i. 134. 
 
 * " Bisogna far per la famiglia," is a common saying amongst the lay 
 officials. I was told, by a distinguished individual in Bologna, that it ia 
 their excuse for every act of corruption and embezzlement. There, too, 
 is to be heard another common saying, characteristic of a glaring want 
 in administrative discipline, " Da noi, Tuna meta commanda e 1'altra non 
 ubbidisce." This naturally may be said in a State where the ecclesiastics, 
 as formerly in some lands, and still, for example, in Hungary, the 
 nobility, regard themselves as a privileged, and therefore as the governing 
 class.
 
 SECRET SOCIETIES. 383 
 
 officers, and which the Pope declared, to his great grief, he 
 had found to be both numerous and well founded. Its 
 only result, as Coppi remarks, was, that the spy system, 
 with its deleterious consequences, was much increased. 1 
 
 The newly-elected Pope, in 1829, nearly resembled his 
 predecessor. The pure and pious Castiglioni, or Pius VIII., 
 was a sickly, tottering old man, who had but a few months 
 to live. Still, he instantly suppressed the " Congregazione 
 di Vigilanza" and the spy system, which his predecessor had 
 organized. He earned praise by having done so little, when 
 Leo had done so much. The secret societies had meanwhile 
 threatened to make an attack on the Papal States. In the 
 Romagna several political assassinations were perpetrated ; 
 and the Cardinal Rivarola, having been, on that account, 
 dispatched thither, had 508 persons capitally convicted, 
 amongst whom were 30, nobles, 156 occupiers of land, or 
 shopkeepers, 74 employes, and 38 soldiers ; but on none of 
 these was the punishment of death inflicted. And yet, all 
 that had been so accomplished was but to crush a single head 
 of the hydra, and then soon to see others and new rise up 
 in its place! 
 
 The mischief of secret societies, which, for nearly the last 
 fifty years, has been the greatest national plague of Italy, is 
 generally regarded as being an Italian, and peculiarly a 
 Southern Italian, malady. But, first, it is to be observed 
 that, in a country where there is a complete subjugation of 
 the press, and where a suspicious police dominates over a 
 people dissatisfied with their condition, the formation of 
 secret societies is as much in accordance with natural 
 circumstances, as that there must, in the human body, 
 if ('av07j/tara) pustules upon the skin be violently driven 
 in from the surface, interior sores inevitably produced. 
 Secondly, the formation of a secret society is the natural 
 production of that impulse towards social activity, which an 
 intellectual and lively population feels, when placed in a 
 position where the necessaries of life are easily, and with 
 little trouble, attainable. Now, when the Italians found that 
 1 COPPI, vii. 374.
 
 384 OUTBREAK IN THE PAPAL STATES. 
 
 they were excluded from the regular gratification of this 
 impulse, through their exclusion from a participation in public 
 affairs, and cut off from all opportunity of discussion, through 
 the operations of the censorship, so they sought to indemnify 
 themselves through the occupation and personal importance 
 which the membership in a secret lodge conferred upon them. 
 It must, however, in truth, be said that these combinations, in 
 which even morally professing individuals eagerly entered, 
 became but too often so many cloacas of the worst corrup- 
 tion, and a curse to the entire country. This system of 
 secret associations rendered the present time intolerable, 
 and the future hopeless ; whilst it forced those in authority to 
 have recourse to measures of rude violence, in the place of 
 carrying on a peacable and well-ordered government. The 
 Papal authorities, in the difficult position in which they found 
 themselves placed, had recourse to a very hazardous remedy : 
 they promoted the establishment, of the Sanfedisti, a volun- 
 tary, but, at the same time, a non-legal association, composed 
 mainly of the poorest and lotoest classes, which soon got 
 beyond their control, and, in some districts, became, in fact, 
 master over the Government. 
 
 The successor, at the close of the year 1830, of the deceased 
 Pius was a Carmelite monk, Mauro Capellari, who was 
 made a Cardinal in 1826, and who, up to the time of his 
 election as Pope, had lived a total stranger to state affairs. 
 Gregory XVI., a monk, a scholar, and an author, was, to the 
 end of his days, devotedly attached to literature ; but his 
 knowledge of ecclesiastical affairs was as solid as his compre- 
 hension of worldly matters was slight. And so reigned 
 over the Papal States a series of Popes, who, in all that 
 related to the Church and its concerns, were not merely 
 faultless, but pre-eminently excellent ; and yet, as temporal 
 princes, possessed naught beyond their just intentions. 
 
 The Revolution of July in Paris acted as a signal for 
 popular insurrections ; and in the course of a few weeks the 
 greater part of the Papal States, as well as Modena and 
 Parma, were in a flarne. The outbreak took place whilst the 
 Conclave was still sitting. The people were won over to the
 
 MEMORANDUM OF THE GREAT POWERS. 385 
 
 cause of the insurrection by the removal of the imposts upon 
 salt and flour; and the insurgents, confident that France 
 would not permit any intervention on the part of Austria, 
 hastily gathered together a Congress of popular representa- 
 tives, by whom it was declared " that the Pope was deprived 
 of his temporal sovereignty." Rome remained loyal ; but 
 outside of Rome the Papal officials in most places abandoned 
 their posts hastily and recreantly a proof in itself how 
 insecure is the basis upon which rests a State destitute of all 
 popular institutions. The revolution was as short-lived as a 
 child's game. The bloodless advance of the Austrians re- 
 placed, with very little trouble, the old government, upon 
 the condition of a general amnesty, with the exception of 
 thirty of the insurgent leaders. 
 
 A Conference of the Great Powers, in which Prussia, 
 Russia, and England participated, presented to the Pope, on 
 the 31st May, 1831, the celebrated Memorandum upon 
 which a great portion of the history of the Papal States has 
 ever since then turned. That Memorandum recommended, in 
 the first place that improvements should be introduced, not 
 only into the provinces that had revolted, but also into those 
 that had remained loyal, as well as into the capital itself; 
 secondly, that the laity should be admitted into all offices 
 connected with the Government and the administration of 
 justice. Further, that there should be an independent local 
 administration of the communes, through Elected Councils, 
 a restoration of the Provincial Councils ; and, finally, 
 " internal security against the changes incident to an elective 
 sovereignty." 1 
 
 Coppi, who was charged to draw up a plan of reform in 
 correspondence to these requirements, states that Gregory 
 and the majority of the Cardinals rejected every important 
 change ; that they were for maintaining the old monarchical 
 and ecclesiastical principles, and for conceding nothing to the 
 popular or lay party " because if anything were voluntarily 
 conceded there would be no right afterwards to recall it." 2 
 
 1 See u Memoires de Guizot," 1859, ii. 432. COPPI, viii. 143. 
 
 2 COPPI, viii. 148. 
 
 CC
 
 386 NECESSITY FOR REFORM ACKNOWLEDGED. 
 
 Two things in particular were absolutely not to be assented to : 
 there was to be no election of Communal and Provincial 
 Councils, and there was to be no lay Council of State by the 
 side of the Cardinal College. 
 
 The Cardinal Secretary of State, Bernetti, who had, at 
 first, spoken of "a new era commencing with the existing 
 Pontificate," addressed a despatch to the French Ambassador, 
 in which was announced that which, in the general expecta- 
 tion of many, was about to be accomplished, without, how- 
 ever, specifically binding himself as to any fixed institutions 
 or positive changes. But still there was promised " the new 
 establishment of a government, with complete publicity as to its 
 acts; such an improvement in the administration of the finances 
 as no longer to afford an opportunity for suspicion as to their 
 allocation; and the introduction of conservative institutions." 1 
 The Government was afterwards bitterly reproached, both at 
 home and abroad that, although fifteen years of the Pontifi- 
 cate had parsed away since these promises had been made, 
 yet not one of them had been fulfilled. 
 
 An attempt was, on one occasion, made to sustain the 
 Government by the enlistment of 5,000 Swiss, since reliance 
 could no longer be placed on the native soldiers ; but the 
 English plenipotentiary, Seymour, now declared, " That the 
 financial condition of the Roman Government did not capaci- 
 tate it to take into its pay so many foreigners, whose 
 services could be required solely for the purpose of keeping 
 down a whole discontented population : and since his govern- 
 ment could no longer entertain the hope that any good 
 could be effected through it in Rome, he had received in- 
 structions at once to leave the city." 2 
 
 And yet there can be no question as to the fact that 
 Gregory candidly acknowledged the necessity for compre- 
 hensive reforms. I. Bernardi has recently declared that, to 
 his astonishment, he heard, in "the year 1843, the following 
 words come from the lips of the Pope himself : "The civil 
 administration of the Roman States stands in need of great 
 
 1 GUALTERIO, " Document!," i. 94. 
 * Ibid., i. 102.
 
 OPPOSITION TO BE ENCOUNTERED. 387 
 
 reform. I was too old when I was elected to be Pope. T did 
 not expect to live so long, and had not the courage to begin 
 the undertaking. For whoever begins it must carry it through 
 thoroughly. I have now only a few years to live perhaps 
 only a few days. After me they will choose a young Pope, 
 whose mission it will be to perform those acts without which 
 it is impossible to go on." 1 
 
 But in such matters as these, even the most resolute 
 will of a Pope, when he has only a few by his side, and in 
 the different departments of the public service, entertain- 
 ing his own views, he can neither do much, nor can what he 
 does be maintained for any length of time. Up to this 
 period it had been inexpressibly difficult to carry out certain 
 reforms in the Papal States. A Pope, with the purest inten- 
 tions and most resolute will, must be baffled when he had 
 arrayed against him the still, dogged, combined opposition of 
 those who found their advantage in the maintenance of 
 the old and settled state of things. The Pope must fail 
 when the right men for carrying out reforms are not at hand 
 to assist him. And so formerly had Adrian VI. and Clement 
 VII., notwithstanding their thorough good-will to effect an 
 improvement in ecclesiastical affairs, been able to effect 
 nothing. It happened in Rome, as it was wont to occur in 
 Arragon, whenever the King gave a command that was 
 displeasing to the people : the Arragonese expressed, in a 
 settled form of words, their allegiance to the sovereign and 
 their resolution not to obey him. 2 
 
 The measures of reform sanctioned by Gregory, and which 
 were brought forward in the months of July, October, and 
 November, 1831, were looked to as being something more 
 than one could expect, after the Pope had refused to enter 
 into any fixed engagement. That which was particularly 
 
 1 " Rivista Contemporanea," 1860, Febr.. p. 97. The same things were 
 told to me by a celebrated Roman scholar some time before they were 
 printed in the " Rivista". I have thus not the slightest doubt as to the 
 authenticity of the fact. 
 
 2 " Se obedezca, pero no se cumpla." Let the order be attended to, but 
 not acted upon. 
 
 cc 2
 
 388 UNPOPULARITY OF THE GOVERNMENT. 
 
 sought for was an improvement in the administration of 
 justice. There was, for instance, that monstrous institute of 
 the Uditore Santissimo, the mere existence of which was 
 regarded by every statesman and lawyer as a scandal to the 
 Papal See. It was in 1831 completely put an end to. 1 
 
 As to the population, they, indeed, who had been expect- 
 ing and anxious for other matters quite different from this, 
 were not appeased by these edicts ; and Count Pellegrino 
 Kossi, afterwards the minister of Pius IX., wrote, with 
 reference to what was then passing, in the following manner, 
 to Guizot: " We must yield to no delusion on this subject. 
 A revolutionary spirit, in the sense that the present system 
 of the Roman Government is utterly intolerable to the popu- 
 lation, has penetrated to the very heart of the country. It 
 is only when there has been a complete and comprehensive 
 change in the manner of dispensing law, and that a reform in 
 the entire mode of making laws has been effected, that any 
 hope can be entertained of reconciling the people to the Papal 
 Government." 2 
 
 Scarcely, however, had the Austrians withdrawn their 
 troops, when the uproar broke out anew. The moderate 
 party would have been content to see the Memorandum 
 acted upon ; but they, as it ever happens in revolutions, 
 were speedily overborne by the Radicals ; and the afflicted 
 population welcomed with shouts of joy the Austrians, upon 
 returning amongst them. Then speedily arrived the French, 
 and took possession of Ancona, so that the field should not 
 be left to the Germans alone. The edicts, which had been 
 but a short time before promulgated, were now recalled in 
 Rome, or they were permitted to remain inoperative. This 
 naturally produced general discontent ; and from that time 
 forward the position of affairs every year became worse. 
 The " Papal Volunteers," enlisted out of the lowest classes, 
 exercised a gross terrorism ; political assassinations, com- 
 menced by the revolutionary party, became more frequent; 
 the Government was, in consequence, rendered more sus- 
 
 1 See with respect to it GUIZOT, " Mernoires," ii. 436-442. 
 * GUIZOT, 1. c., p. 449.
 
 A MILITARY COMMISSION ESTABLISHED. 389 
 
 picious and persecuting ; and its whole support was thus 
 placed on the fourfold weapons of the Austrian, French, 
 Swiss, and its own troops, on the Sanfedisti and the Volun- 
 teers. Espionage doubly detestable and dangerous under a 
 priestly government, because the people become thereby sus- 
 picious of the misuse of a religious medium was now gene- 
 rally resorted to. The opponents of the Government had 
 meanwhile, and mainly through the influence of Mazzini, 
 divided themselves into "Liberals" and "Radicals" 
 (the Young Italy party.) The latter were peculiarly and 
 exclusively " the destructives," who wished to annihilate 
 all governments, as well as the Church, and to change the 
 entire of Italy into a single Republic, in accordance with 
 the pattern of 1793. In Middle Italy they were, however, 
 still without influence ; and after fifteen years, although they 
 had seduced a number of students, still, upon the population 
 itself, the real people, they had, according to their own con- 
 fession, made no impression. 1 
 
 In the year 1838, the French withdrew from Ancona, 
 and the Austrians from the Legations. The Swiss troops 
 were gradually increased. The number of 1 7,000 men, which 
 I find given, must either be an exaggeration, or it must com- 
 prise the whole of the military force. Certain it is that 
 these foreign soldiers were a heavy burden upon a failing 
 exchequer, with a yearly deficit of a million of scudi. 
 
 Gregory XVI., old and sickly, became inaccessible to 
 strangers, and those who were about him endeavoured to 
 conceal from his knowledge whatever might be disagreeable 
 for him to hear. His understanding failed him for the com- 
 prehension of state affairs ; and thus all came into the hands 
 of the Secretary of State, Lambru^chini, and of the " Mon- 
 signori," who were acting as Legates and Delegates in the 
 provinces. A standing Military Commission, which decided 
 upon complaints of political transgressions in an arbitrary 
 
 1 In the " Archivio triennale delle cose d'ltalia" (Capolago, 1850, i. 
 191) a Mazzinianer thus writes : " Noi dovevamo confessare che, in 
 quindici anni, non eravamo riusciti che a propagare nella gioventu studiosa 
 la passione politica, ma nel vero popolo mai."
 
 390 TWO MAIN CAUSES OF DISCONTENT. 
 
 manner, maintained, with the help of Swiss regiments, public 
 order: and so contributed, with the deeds of violence com- 
 mitted by the Sanfedisti, to nurture the general discontent. 
 The Government seemed to be unconscious what bitterness 
 of feeling was produced by the conviction that the country 
 was compelled to bear a heavy burden of taxation, in order 
 that pay might be given to foreign soldiers employed for 
 the purpose of keeping the people down, and at the same 
 time of enabling those in authority to refuse compliance with 
 what were the wishes of the nation. 1 
 
 There were at that time two main causes for the spirit of 
 discontent that prevailed, and the desire to shake off Papal 
 domination. The one lay in the hatred against Austrian 
 rule, and the policy of Vienna, which oppressed the whole 
 of the Peninsula, and overpowered the nation. It was 
 believed that the Papal Government was totally devoted to 
 Austrian influence ; and that it was only through means of 
 Austria it could itself be maintained. The other cause lay 
 in internal circumstances, which existed not only from 1824 to 
 1846, but still are again partly to be met with, from the 
 time of the restoration of Pius IX. These circumstances, 
 such as they were and are since 1850, require to be looked 
 at somewhat closely. 
 
 It must, first of all, be remarked that the Papal States, as 
 well as Italy generally, suffer from one great evil and that 
 is a want in the requisite orders of society. There is to be 
 found there no self-independent peasant-proprietor class ; 
 and there is no landed aristocracy. There is but a citizen 
 class in the towns, and patricians ; and these latter, for the 
 most part, incompetent, degenerate, and demoralized indivi- 
 duals. Leo XII. recognized this evil, and intended to elevate 
 a nobility class, by his concession to it of certain rights ; but 
 the attempt failed, as it could not but fail, where there was 
 an ecclesiastical body who, with their prerogatives, over- 
 shadowed the social position of every one else. By the side 
 
 1 The Italians have an energetic proverb, which was, at this period, 
 to be often heard in the mouths of the people : " Pagare il boja che ci 
 frusti."
 
 COMPLAINTS AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT. 391 
 
 of them an independent nobility could not possibly be 
 elevated. 
 
 And yet the people in the Papal States are not, judging 
 of them by those endowments which they possess in common 
 with other Italians, difficult to govern. A German, writing 
 from the Campagna of Rome, in the year 1857, 1 says: 
 " Amongst all those thousands that passed me by, and of all 
 the processions that I came up with after the completion of 
 the festival, I never could observe even the slightest trait of 
 rudeness in their conduct. In fact, the purity of manners of 
 the country people in this district, and especially as regards 
 sobriety, and propriety of behaviour towards women, might 
 well excite the envy of more thoughtful nations. There, for 
 instance, they have not the slightest notion of that doleful 
 practice which is the curse of Ireland, namely, that a land- 
 lord can, whenever he pleases, drive a farmer out of his 
 holding." 2 The rural population was by no means so 
 hostile to the Papal Government as were the townsfolk. 3 
 Complaints were made, not only as to the incapacity and 
 negligence of the Government for not affording sufficient 
 protection to the dwellers in the country around from bands 
 of robbers, but also as to the high and oppressive fees 
 persons were compelled to pay to the ecclesiastical autho- 
 rities, and especially in the Episcopal Courts. This state 
 of feeling was in complete accordance with that of the 
 town populations, who were, in general, indisposed to "priests' 
 government ;" and who, too, had also to endure a number of 
 grievances and annoyances. Beyond all other afflictions, 
 that, however, which was felt to be the most galling was the 
 exclusion of laymen from the higher offices of state ; for all 
 such were absolutely reserved for the " Prelati." The offices 
 in the public service were so distributed between clergymen 
 
 1 " Allg. Zeitung," 5th Jan., p. 75. 
 
 4 HELFFERICH, " Briefe aus Italien," ii. 57. 
 
 * Cardinal Massimo, in his report from Imola in 1845, says, that there 
 was there " una parte ben piccola della classe agricola, noil ancor guasta 
 del tutto nelle campagne," devoted to the Government. u Documenti 
 sul Gov. pontif.," i. 66.
 
 392 EXCLUSION OF LAYMEN FROM OFFICE. 
 
 and laymen, that the former were the rulers, and the latter 
 the mere instruments by whose means the administration 
 was carried on. The Secretaryship of State, the Sacra 
 Consulta, the Camera Apostolica, the Buono Governo, the 
 Congregazione Economica, the Police, the Treasury, the War 
 Ministry, 1 the Legations and Delegations, the management 
 of judicial affairs, and of instruction all! all were in the 
 hands of Cardinals and Prelati. Every lay official was thus 
 made aware that his progress in life was hemmed in by 
 certain barriers he never could pass over ; that, no matter 
 what number of years he had been in office, or how use- 
 ful and faithful had been his services, still he could not 
 obtain promotion to the highest position in his department ; 
 that an ecclesiastic, no matter how inferior in competency, 
 would still be preferred to him ! Human nature in the 
 Papal States is not different from what it is in all other 
 parts of the world ; and so the whole of the lay employes 
 were utterly discontented, and perfectly ready, as recent 
 circumstances have shown, to give in their adhesion to any 
 other form of government. But the very mode in which 
 appointments to public offices were made constituted in 
 itself a subject of grave complaint. The system that pre- 
 vails in other states, where there are long preparatory studies, 
 and repeated examinations, to secure the just distribution of 
 public offices, was unknown at Rome. A layman, to arrive 
 even at the lowest situation, must belong to a religious con- 
 fraternity, or be the protege of a " Prelato? or a Cardinal, or of 
 some order of friars. Thus the official laymen were frequently 
 the compulsory and, but too often, the needy clients of 
 " Prelati" The consequence of all this was that the best, 
 the most intellectual, the most independent, and those who 
 
 1 " Das Kriegsministeriutn," DOLLISGER, p. 572. This statement is 
 not in accordance with the report of Mr. Lyons, who says : " All the 
 Ministers, except the Minister of War (or of Arms, as he is called), are 
 ecclesiastics." And again: ''All the ministers, except the Minister of 
 Arms, are prelates." " Despatches from Mr. Lyons respecting the Con- 
 dition and Administration of the Papal States." London, 1G60, pp. 5 
 and 8. Note by TRANSLATOR.
 
 NEGLIGENCE AND VENALITY OF EMPLOYES. 393 
 
 had a fitting respect for their own reputation turned away 
 from the service, and, by so doing, condemned themselves to 
 a life of torpor and idleness and so, too, added to the masses 
 of malcontents, and, when the opportunity arrived, of 
 conspirators ! 
 
 In a letter to the author, from a German nobleman, whose 
 fame is European, as a keen and profound observer of the 
 condition of foreign nations, and who lived a considerable 
 time in the Roman States, it is observed : " There is a deep 
 depravity of the middle and higher classes, and of the 
 employes who spring from such classes, and whom the Papal 
 Government has done so much to degrade. The negligence 
 and venality of these persons can only be compared to what 
 prevails amongst Russian officials. Amid 5000 officials 
 there are to be found between two and three hundred eccle- 
 siastics. These latter are far better than the others they 
 are almost never corruptible, for the sake of money ; but they 
 are inefficient, without energy, and slothful. And then, as to 
 the lay officials, they are undoubtedly, almost without a single 
 exception, corruptible." 
 
 To these circumstances was to be added the feeling that, 
 from the want of inviolable ordinances, the freedom, property, 
 and honor of individuals were at the mercy of persons armed 
 with power ; for the laws afforded no security, as they could, 
 in particular cases, be set aside by the supreme authorities. 
 Bailiffs, or constables (sbirri), required no special warrant to 
 break into a dwelling, whether they chose to do so by night 
 or by day. 1 The three main causes of discontent with the 
 administration of justice in the Papal States were, the civil 
 jurisdiction of the Bishops ; the privileged exemption of 
 clergymen as to the courts that should have jurisdiction over 
 them, as well as to the dissimilarity of punishments inflicted 
 
 1 AGUIRRE, u LTtalie apres Villafranca," 1859, p. 10. The author is, 
 or was, an inhabitant of the Roman States. He is one of those who 
 wish to maintain the temporal sovereignty of the Pope, and who be- 
 lieve in the curability of existing evils. The picture, however, that 
 he presents of the system of Government hitherto prevailing is a very sad
 
 394 ORDINANCES OF THE CLERICAL POLICE. 
 
 upon them ; and, lastly, by the tribunal of the Inquisition. 1 
 The Bishops, who had their own prisons, decided upon and 
 inflicted pains and penalties in all questions affecting the 
 persons and property of ecclesiastics, in matters concerning 
 relations between the two sexes ; 2 and in cases of blasphemy, 
 and the transgression of the laws respecting fast and festival 
 days. 
 
 The Cardinal and Bishop of Sinigaglia, in the year 1844, 
 issued an ordinance forbidding young men and maidens from 
 sending presents to each other ; and if a father should be 
 found not complying with this order, then it was directed, 
 in cases of transgression, that the father and son, or father 
 and daughter, should be imprisoned for fifteen days. 3 The 
 Bishops, at the Provincial Synod of Fermo, in the year 1850, 
 threatened with punishment every innkeeper who supplied 
 their guests with flesh meat on fast-days, unless they could 
 produce two witnesses, one of whom must be a physician, 
 and the other a curate. 4 
 
 A new and peculiar sort of punishment was devised, and 
 by it 229 persons in the Romagna were, at one and the same 
 moment, made to suffer. This was the " Precetto Politico " 
 of the first class. The person upon whom this punishment 
 was imposed was compelled to reside in his birth-place ; he 
 must be in his own house by a certain hour in the morning ; 
 every fourteen days he must present himself before the 
 police-inspector ; and every month go to confession, and he 
 must shew, by witnesses, that the priest, with whom he had 
 been at confession, was a Father-confessor approved of by 
 the police! and, then, every year, he must make a Spiritual 
 retreat of three days, in a monastery appointed for him by 
 a Bishop ! Neglect of any one of these regulations became 
 punishable with three years of compulsory labour ! In Italy 
 there were many who opined " There are few countries in 
 
 1 MOXTANELLI, u Memorie sull' Italia," ii. 79. 
 * Cause di stupro e di illegitima pregnanza. 
 
 3 This document is printed by GENNARELLI, " I lutti dello stato 
 Romano." Florence, 1860, p. 160. 
 
 4 " Document! sul Governo pontificio," ii. 299.
 
 EDICT OF THE INQUISITION. 395 
 
 Europe where such a commingling of the police officer with 
 religion would be patiently submitted to." 
 
 The Bishops and the Prelati-police have hitherto penetrated 
 too deeply into domestic and family-life ; and yet there was 
 superadded to both the judicial jurisdiction of the Inquisi- 
 tion ! This was, notwithstanding the mildness for which it 
 was famed, 1 still detested and dreaded, because the principle 
 upon which it was based was this: that every one who knew 
 of a misdemeanour being committed was liable to punish- 
 ment, if he did not denounce it ; and, then, he who became 
 the denunciator was shrouded in mystery, whilst the accused 
 was never permitted to know the names either of his accuser, 
 or of the witnesses against him. 2 
 
 In the year 1841, the Inquisitor at Pesaro, Fra Filippo 
 Bertolotti, issued an Edict, by which he required, under a 
 threat of various punishments, excommunication amongst 
 the rest, that every one should give information of all 
 ecclesiastical offences coming to his knowledge ; such, for 
 instance, as that of a person, who had not received permission 
 to do so, eating flesh or using milk upon fast-days ! 3 Foreigners 
 dwelling in the Papal States have, in amazement, asked : 
 "If the servant- men and maid- servants employed in the 
 kitchens of the ' Sanf Uffizio ' would make it a matter of 
 conscience, if they had chanced to cook any meat for their 
 masters on a fast-day, to denounce them, and involve them in 
 legal proceedings ? " 
 
 1 If I am not mistaken, there never was, in the Papal States, since the 
 end of the sixteenth century, a single capital execution enforced through 
 the instrumentality of the Inquisition, or on account of a religious trans- 
 gression. 
 
 2 As a proof of the bitter feeling of the people against the Inquisition, 
 see the letter of the Chevalier Tommaso Poggi of Cesena to the French 
 Ambassador in Rome, Saint-Aulaire, printed by GUALTERIO, "Docu- 
 menti," i. 274. Amongst other things, it is there said, u The innermost 
 secrets of our conscience, and of our families, form the subject-matter of 
 their hateful prosecutions and dark sentences. So little is there a thought 
 in Rome of the Government reconciling itself with the population and 
 public opinion " 
 
 J " Documenti," i. 303.
 
 396 LAW ADMINISTERED BY PRIESTS. 
 
 A clergyman, when he is armed with a double power, the 
 judicial and the adminstrative, must always find the effort 
 exceedingly difficult to reconcile his personal opinion and 
 his subjective judgment upon individuals, and to prevent his 
 tenderness and his inclination from winning an influence over 
 him in the discharge of his official duties. As a priest, he is 
 the servant of all, and the herald of grace, of pardon, of the 
 remission of punishment ; and he therefore too readily forgets 
 that in human concerns the law is " deaf and inexorable," 
 and that tampering with a law to favour one person is an 
 injury to another, or it may be to many others, or it may be 
 to the whole frame of society ; and that he who may thus 
 begin with the best intentions, gradually will find himself 
 placing his own will above what is the strict law. As it is, 
 Italians are but too little disposed either to comprehend or 
 to practise the impartial, passionless administration of the 
 law, without consideration as to its consequences. The path 
 of descent being once trodden, leads him, who has entered 
 upon it, unavoidably to a precipice. For then come the sub- 
 altern lay employes of the Courts, who for the most part 
 are indebted for their appointments to favour and ecclesiasti- 
 cal patronage, and who, receiving a scanty salary, have wives 
 and children to maintain, and before their eyes the example 
 of their superiors, who have been dealing with the law ac- 
 cording to their will and pleasure. Hence follows corrup- 
 tion and arbitrary conduct in law proceedings, which Cantu 
 has declared to have been the characteristics of all legal 
 processes under Gregory XVI. 1 
 
 But still more critical and perilous is the exercise by 
 priests of the powers of a police. Here is an employment 
 which requires things to be done that in a Christian point of 
 view had better be avoided. The police, in an absolute go- 
 vernment, is armed with a po_wer that is essentially omni- 
 potent, and in its contact with others, in the struggle of 
 everyday life, and in a time of political excitement, and nu- 
 
 1 " La giustizia era corruttibile non solo, ma espoeta agli arbitrij de' 
 superior!, e alle interinmabili restituzioni in intero." " Storia deg i 
 Italiani," vi. 684.
 
 ARBITRARY POWER OF IMPRISONMENT. 397 
 
 merous conspiracies, makes a cruel use of its omnipotence. 
 It leaves unpunished things which, judged of according to 
 the Gospel, are mortal sins ; and it punishes others in which 
 a Christian can discern nought that is sinful. Is it then to 
 be wondered at that the people find it impossible to discover 
 what can be a justification for this contradiction between the 
 priestly character and the police-officer's active vigilance ? 
 
 In strong and dark contrast with what was a characteristic 
 of the Papal Government, with that mildness for which it 
 was justly praised has been the arbitrary power of impri- 
 sonment, filling the gaols with captives for whom no one as 
 in other countries would be permitted to go bail. Cardinal 
 Morichini, in his Finance Report, expatiated upon the wretch- 
 ed state of the prisons, and the unavoidable demoraliza- 
 tion of persons confined in them. 1 Even in this matter 
 financial difficulties rendered it impossible to effect a com- 
 prehensive reform. In the doleful times that have passed 
 since 1848, there grew up a system of incarcerating masses 
 of persons in unhealthy gaols, and from that system sprang 
 still greater rancour against the authorities. The " Gover- 
 natore" of Faenza, Luigi Maraviglia, made, in the year 1853, 
 this representation of facts : " A great number of persons 
 have, without a hearing, without process, perhaps, even, with- 
 out the suspicion of crime but merely from precaution 
 been dragged to prisons, where they now are, for a full year, 
 still remaining! More that 450 processes are already pend- 
 ing for four or five years. By such modes of proceeding can 
 no love for princes be implanted in the hearts of the people." 2 
 It is to be understood that such circumstances as these oc- 
 curred without the slightest knowledge on the part of the 
 Pope. Had he been made acquainted with them, his own 
 goodness of heart and love of justice would, most assuredly, 
 have impelled him to oppose and put an end to them. 
 
 For full thirty years misfortune after misfortune has fallen 
 upon the Papal Government in the States of the Church ; 
 but of all these calamities the most lamentable assuredly is, 
 
 1 " Document! sul Gov. pontif.," f. i. 578. 
 
 2 " Document!," i. 42.
 
 398 PRIVILEGED POSITION OF THE PRIESTHOOD. 
 
 that it should be deemed necessary to transfer to ecclesiastics 
 the judicial condemnation and punishment of political offences. 
 When, as it has often happened, the opinions and sentiments 
 of an individual, admitted by the rulers themselves to be 
 those universally prevailing, were brought forward as subsi- 
 diary proofs, and used as grounds for inflicting the severest 
 punishment upon a man, against whom there were not other- 
 wise sufficient proofs for a conviction where these things 
 could be done, there indeed must the breach between the 
 people and the clergy be still further widened. 1 
 
 The exceptional and privileged position of a very numerous 
 priesthood gave rise to another complaint. The Cardinal de 
 Luca had laid down the principle that the enactments and 
 laws of the Pope, as a temporal prince for the clergy, were 
 not binding, if it was not expressly said, or was not to be 
 presumed from the contents, that he had issued the ordinance 
 as Head of the Church. 2 The clergy also had their privileged 
 lt forum," so that, if a priest and a layman were participators 
 in the same crime, they must be tried by two different courts 
 of justice. Even the punishments inflicted upon them were 
 different. Priests convicted of crime had still the privilege 
 of being subjected to a milder punishment than if they were 
 laymen. 3 " An inverse proportion of punishment would be 
 the more righteous," was the opinion expressed by Massimo 
 d'Azeglio. 
 
 A highly critical case of this sort, and one that was hailed 
 by the English journals and periodicals with a malicious joy, 
 whilst it excited a painful surprise in all Europe, was brought 
 prominently before the public in the year 1852. In the law 
 proceedings in London, instituted by the Roman Dominican 
 monk, Achilli, who had become a Protestant, it appeared 
 
 1 See in the second volume of the " Document! sul Governo pontificio," 
 the printed acts of the prosecutions and sentences, passim. 
 
 2 " Dottor volgare." lib. xv., c. 1. 
 
 3 Thus runs the definition of the law: " Ove pero possa aver luogo la 
 pena stabilita pei laici, si accorda loro (ai cherici) nei delitti communi 
 un grado di minorazione di pena." And " Se la pena stabilita della legge 
 e 1'opera o la galera, trasmettono il condannato al luogo ove trasmetterebbe 
 il Tribunale Ecclesiastico."
 
 CHANGE IN THE POLICY OP ENGLAND. 399 
 
 that he was a man who had been charged with shameful 
 crimes, such as in Germany would have assigned him to an 
 infamous punishment in a convict prison, but that, having 
 been arraigned before the ecclesiastical courts in Rome, he 
 was there treated with an indulgence such as it would be 
 impossible to meet with in any other country; and it 
 also appeared that, despite of the condemnation upon him 
 by the Provincial of his Order, he had been taken as an as- 
 sociate and attendant in visitations, and that he was after- 
 wards made a Professor in the College of Minerva, at Rome, 
 and then sent as a preacher to Capua !' 
 
 And here a passing remark may be permitted to the 
 author. Surprise has frequently been felt with respect to 
 the complete change that has taken place in the policy of 
 England, with reference to the Papal States in particular. 
 England had energetically co-operated in the restoration of 
 those States to Pius VII. For a long time, the Roman 
 Government regarded the English as a kindly disposed and 
 friendly power. Gregory XVI. declared to Lord Nor- 
 manby, in the year 1844, that it was his ardent desire 
 England should enter into direct diplomatic correspondence 
 with the Roman See, and send an ambassador to Rome. 
 In the month of April, 1847, the Papal Nuncio, in Paris, 
 
 1 It was in the " Dublin Review," of June 1850 a Catholic periodical, 
 published under the patronage of Cardinal Wiseman that these facts 
 were first brought to light. Then followed the celebrated prosecution of 
 ; ' Achilli," versus Dr. Newman, by means of which the testimonies of the 
 witnesses to these facts became more widely known. The subject filled 
 for weeks the English journals. The costs of the prosecution against 
 Dr. Newman were defrayed by a general subscription in Catholic coun- 
 tries. The report of the case, published by Mr. Finlason, passed through 
 several editions in a very short space of time. What conclusions were 
 drawn from this case on the side of the Protestants, and what reproaches 
 against the Papal See were grounded upon it, may be surmised from one 
 article (amongst numberless others) published in the " Christian Remem- 
 brancer," vol. xxiv., pp. 401-424. Neither in England nor in Rome was 
 an answer attempted to be given to the scathing, and, under the circum- 
 stances, naturally severe reproaches of the " Times."
 
 400 OPPOSITION TO THE PAPAL GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Fornari, said to the same Lord Normanby, that it was the 
 constant wish of the Roman Government that England 
 might, through such means, afford a more active and ener- 
 getic support, and thereby also promote an improvement in 
 the social condition of Italy. 1 Lord Palmerston, who was 
 then Foreign Minister, sent Lord Minto to Rome, with 
 instructions to promise to the Pope the most determined 
 support of England in carrying into effect the Memorandum 
 of the Powers in 1831. At that time, the statesmen of 
 England had no thought of doing anything calculated to 
 hasten the overthrow of the temporal sovereignty of the 
 Pope. But all that is now, in sooth, very much changed. 2 
 Since 1851, the English Government has become the open 
 adversary of the Papal States, and has thrown all the weight 
 of its influence into the scale of Piedmont. It does so 
 under the pressure of public opinion in England a power 
 to which every cabinet there must submit. Even a Tory 
 ministry would be compelled to pay attention to the potency 
 of this popular feeling in its Italian policy. The public 
 opinion now prevailing there has been formed, fashioned and 
 moved by the statements of English individuals re?iding in 
 the Papal States, which statements have appeared in the 
 daily papers ; as well as by the work of Farini, which has 
 been translated into English by Mr. Gladstone, the Chan- 
 cellor of the Exchequer. 3 And now the will of the entire 
 nation, and the policy of its government, are alike arrayed 
 in a most hostile manner against the maintenance of the 
 Papal State. With a portion of the population and it is 
 only a portion the Protestant hatred against the Papal See 
 has been sharpened into still stronger animosity, on account 
 of the rage excited by two recent measures of Rome first, 
 
 1 See the Blue-book, " Correspondence respecting the affairs of Italy," 
 1846-47. London, 1849, pp. 36, 38. - 
 
 * See Lord Minto's report of his interview with the Pope, January, 
 1848. " Correspondence," Part ii., 1848, p. 44. 
 
 " Lo stato Romano, dalT a. 1815, all' a. 1850," 4 vols. Farini's 
 work has been noticed in Rome itself for its preciseness in matters of 
 fact, and trustworthiness. Coppi has made considerable use of it.
 
 CONDITION OF THE PRIESTHOOD. 401 
 
 the establishment of an Episcopacy in England, and, secondly, 
 by the rejection of the Queen's Colleges, with their mixed 
 education in Ireland. The policy of the English Cabinet is 
 also influenced by a wish to see a powerful Italy formed 
 a power capable of maintaining itself upon a firm basis and 
 which, under the guidance of England, may serve as a coun- 
 terpoise to the threatening ascendancy of France. 
 
 As to the state and social condition of the clergy, it has 
 called for a deeply penetrating reformation. That the clergy 
 have been, on the whole, morally blameless, is universally 
 admitted ;' but the conditions for entering upon the priest- 
 hood have been placed upon too low a scale. A person, 
 notwithstanding his thorough want of knowledge, and mean 
 capacity, easily becomes a priest ; and then there have been 
 for those persons such a number of benefices, affording nei- 
 ther sufficient occupation nor a becoming subsistence. The 
 consequence has been that an immense multitude of idle 
 ecclesiastics were to be seen wasting their days in coffee- 
 houses, and loitering in the street, passing their time in an 
 unpriestly manner, so that a reverence for the entire order 
 had very much diminished amongst the population. 2 In the 
 country parts, a great number of the pastors were in a state 
 of lamentable poverty, 3 and for this reason, therefore, as 
 well as from innate dulness, they left the people without in- 
 struction. 4 The higher orders of the laity wish that the pres- 
 
 1 FARIXI, i. 164. See also u Appendice al libro d'Azeglio," 1846, p. 
 57. AGUIRRE, p. 112. 
 
 2 Those who have been in Rome well know what is meant by the ex- 
 pression, " preti di piazza." Something like the same thing is to be seen 
 in Russia. 
 
 * " I curati che sono generalmente poverissimi, ed hanno il peso de' 
 poveri," says Cardinal Morichini, in his Report, p. 575. 
 
 4 " Appendice al libro d'Azeglio," p. 56. The author, a Romagnese, 
 says : "II clero pontificio e il piii ignorante di tutto il clero cattolico 
 salvo poche eccezioni." In other parts of Italy it is, in fact, not one 
 whit better, as bishops grant ordination with a facility of which no one 
 in Germany can have an idea. See what is said upon the incredible 
 ignorance of the Piedinontese clergy, by the distinguished teacher, Pro - 
 fessor DOMENICO BERTI, " Rivista Italiana," 1850, i. 123, 124. 
 
 DD
 
 402 PREVENTIVE CENSORSHIP. 
 
 sure of the censorship was either put an end to, or mitigated. 
 " The state to which we are brought," say intellectually 
 gifted persons in the Papal State?, " is this that in the 
 finest, and, mentally, most richly endowed part of Italy, we 
 are absolutely without any literature nothing now appears 
 but a few volumes on archaeological subjects, and local 
 histories not a line of the slightest importance upon 
 science and general literature." In fact, Leo XII. had, 
 through the Dominican monks, rendered still more severe the 
 existing preventive censorship ; and his timidity compelled 
 him to do this, as his aim was that no publication contain- 
 ing an expression calculated to excite the displeasure of 
 foreign powers, or to give rise to important disputes, should 
 be allowed to be printed, except with the direct sanction of 
 the Secretary of State. 1 People felt themselves cribbed and 
 hemmed in upon all sides. The inhabitants of Forli wished 
 to establish an Agricultural Association. After a long 
 delay, they at last obtained permission to do so, from the 
 " Congregazione degli studi," but it was upon the condition 
 that all the members should first be approved of by the 
 president of the Government ; that they should assemble 
 together for no other purpose than to speak upon agricultu- 
 ral affairs ; and, furthermore, that at each of the meetings 
 there should be read a lecture, which had previously received 
 the approval of the Censorship. 2 The whole project was, of 
 course, on the instant, abandoned. The Government suffered 
 much, too, in public respect, and in the confidence of the 
 people, through the utterly disordered state of its finances. 
 Loans were contracted upon the most unfavourable con- 
 ditionsupon one occasion, a bargain was made with Roth- 
 schild, at 62^ per cent, upon the nominal value. There was 
 a yearly deficit of more than two million of guilders, and, at 
 the same time, gross confusion and disorder prevailed in the 
 palace expenditure. There was scarcely a country in Europe 
 in which there was to be found so fathomless an arbitrary 
 power in financial matters. The treasurer, Tosti, was 
 'regarded as a pattern of the worst finance minister that could 
 1 COPPI, ix. 76. 2 " Document!,'' i. 540.
 
 REPROACHES AGAINST THE PAPAL GOVERNMENT. 403 
 
 by any possibility be ever discovered. When Galli entered 
 into this department of the ministry, in the year 1848, he 
 declared in an official report : " that, as to the past, he could 
 not undertake even the smallest share of responsibility 
 there were so many accounts unsettled, and there were so 
 many vouchers wanting ; and then the authorizations for ex- 
 penditure were partly not to be found, or those that were 
 discoverable were so overladen with charges, additions, 
 and deductions, as to render the authentication of them 
 impracticable." ' 
 
 In addition to all this, it was made a matter of reproach 
 to the Papal Government, in every part of Italy, that it, by 
 means of the lottery, at which priests felt no scruple in taking 
 an active part, had nurtured and incited a vice the rage for 
 gambling to which the common race of Italians are already 
 but too much addicted. Alexander VII. and Benedict 
 XIII. had formerly forbidden lotteries, under pain of ex- 
 communication. Cardinal Morichini, in his report upon the 
 state of the finances, declared it to be urgently advisable to 
 sacrifice the income derived from the lottery, "as a victim to 
 public morality." 2 And joyfully would the Pope have as- 
 sented to this ; but the deficit and the new calamities that 
 befell the country rendered it impossible for him to do so. 3 
 
 The temper of the provinces became still more gloomy and 
 embittered. The cities addressed strongly-worded petitions 
 to the College of the Cardinals. These petitions state : 
 " The intervention of the Great Powers has been of no avail 
 to us. Of their proposals not one has been carried into 
 effect ; whilst the concessions that had been made have been 
 recalled. The people are never, even once, permitted to lay 
 their wishes before the Government. 4 About two thousand 
 individuals have had sentences of condemnation passed upon 
 
 1 AGUIRRE, p. 141. 
 
 2 See what is said upon this point by AZEGLIO, " Raccolta degli scritti 
 politici/' 1850, p. 67. TOMMASEO, u Roma e il mondo," 1851, p. 243, 
 and almost all who have written on the circumstances then occurring. 
 
 * Document! sul Governo pontif., i. 577. 
 4 GUALTERIO, " Document!," p. 184. 
 
 DD 2
 
 404 DEFECTIVE LEGISLATION. 
 
 them ; and of these some are now in prison, or, as outlaws, 
 wander in foreign lands. And in what description of prisons 
 are the incarcerated ? In pestiferous dungeons, where the 
 convicted are huddled up with the unconvicted those charged 
 with political offences with those who have deprived others 
 of property or of life. 1 In our legislation there is neither 
 unity nor harmony. No one can know whether an obsolete 
 or a new law, a ' Motuproprio' or an Edict, will, in any given 
 .case, be brought forward against him or for him. 2 In our 
 Penal Code all is vague, uncertain, and contradictory. A 
 lawless police pushes its arbitrary power to the extremes t 
 point, and meddles in everything. 3 Appointments and pro- 
 motions in the public service are dependent upon the favour 
 and dislike of a few in power ; knowledge, science, ex- 
 perience, and substantial services are of no use to the 
 possessors. 4 We will not be allowed to have railroads ; 
 whilst trade is struck down under an oppressive system of 
 prohibitions. We are exhausted by means of monopolies 
 and tax-farming, which enhance the prices of the indis- 
 pensable necessaries of life, enrich a few at the cost of the 
 State and the people, demoralise one part of the population, 
 and bring down upon the Government the hatred of many 
 thousands. 5 Through the operation of an absurd system of 
 excise, our country has become the classic land of smugglers 
 and contrabandists ; and as to our native industry, it is 
 not permitted, either by law or circumstances, to develop 
 itself. 6 And we are on the road to universal pauperism by 
 the enormous disproportion between our imports and exports. 7 
 
 1 " Appendice al libro d'Azeglio," p. 51. 
 
 AGUIRRE, p. 134. 
 
 * " Un capo di polizia appunto perche non vi e un codice, pub far 
 tutto," &c. " Appendice," p. 47. 
 
 4 What is here expressed in mild terms is represented in very dark 
 colours by the Italians for instance, in the " Appendice," p. 79, by 
 AGUIRRE, AZEGHO, and others. 
 
 4 " Appendice," p. 68. 
 
 6 " L'industria rimasta in culla fra noi nel mezzo del progresso di tutta 
 1'Europa," says Cardinal Morichini, in his Report, p. 377. 
 
 ' Imports, 92,000,000 francs; exports, only 31,000,000 francs. 
 ZELLER, u Histoire de 1'Italie," 1853, p. 558.
 
 MANIFESTO OF 1845. 405 
 
 We are, forsooth, told that we pay fewer taxes than other 
 populations ; but this does not disprove the fact that we are 
 far more poor than others, and that we are compelled to 
 bear oppressive communal toils, and such other burdens." 
 
 fhe Military Commissions, and the conduct pursued by 
 them in the Romagna in 1843 and 1844, increased the feel- 
 ings of animosity and discontent. A party of insurgents 
 took, without opposition, possession of the town of Kimini, 
 and then made their escape into Tuscany. In the year 1845 
 there was published a Manifesto, addressed to the sovereigns 
 and people of Europe, in which the following concessions 
 were required: "1st, An amnesty. 2nd, The promulgation 
 of civil and criminal codes in conformity with those in force 
 amongst other civilized nations, and including publicity in 
 the proceedings, in the hearing of witnesses, and in the aboli- 
 tion of confiscation of property and punishment of death for 
 political offences. 3rd, The releasing of laymen from the 
 jurisdiction of the Inquisition and of the Ecclesiastical 
 Courts ; and, further, the free election of Municipal Coun- 
 cils ; the institution of a Council of State at Rome ; the 
 bestowal of all civil, military, and judicial offices upon lay- 
 men ; an amelioration of the censorship ; the dismissal of 
 foreign troops ; the management of education by laymen ; 
 and the establishment of a National Guard." Farini was the 
 author of this Manifesto ; but, at a later period, even he 
 seemed to regard some of the demands made in it as un- 
 reasonable, or as going somewhat too far. 
 
 The Papal Government declared, in an official reply, 1 that 
 it rejected all these demands. The exclusion of laymen from 
 the higher offices in the State was, it maintained, consider- 
 ably ameliorated by the fact that a person could be a 
 " Prelato" without being a priest as all that was required 
 was wearing the dress of an ecclesiastic and keeping the 
 vow of celibacy. 2 Then, as to the Inquisition its proceed- 
 
 1 The document will be found in MARGOTTI, " Le Vittorie della 
 Chiesa." Milano, 1857, pp. 490-507. 
 
 3 Few persons could feel satisfied with this reference to the part 
 assigned to the "Prelati," whose only participation in the sacerdotal
 
 406 PUBLICATIONS ON THE PAPACY. 
 
 ings were conducted with great mildness and tenderness ; 
 but still it would not be fair to confine its jurisdiction to 
 clergymen, and to leave laymen free from its operations. As 
 to the Universities and literature they were in a prosperous 
 condition (but it must be owned that all Europe maintained 
 the very opposite of this assertion). Such was the opinion 
 then put forward by the Secretary of State : it affirmed that 
 the averments as to existing evils in the Papal States, and a 
 necessity for reforming them, were nothing more than the 
 wicked invention of some malcontent and uneasy spirits. 
 
 In the whole of Italy a conviction the very opposite to 
 this prevailed. Men whose words had the greatest weight 
 with the nation spoke out distinctly, " that affairs could not 
 remain as they were in the Papal States." A great sensa- 
 tion was caused by the writings of Massimo d' Azeglio. Even 
 Cesare Balbo, an ardent Guelph, and the historical venerator 
 of the Papacy, 1 rejoiced that the publications of Azeglio and 
 Galeotti had appeared, because they exposed the defects and 
 malpractices in the Government of the Papal States ; and it 
 was his opinion that the literary work of Azeglio had not 
 been without influence upon the Conclave by whom Pius IX. 
 was elected as Pope. 2 
 
 The Marquis Gino Capponi a man honored and respected 
 beyond all others in Italy thus expressed his opinion : 3 " In 
 the Papal States there never will be peace, unless the govern- 
 ment be taken out of the hands of priests and transferred to 
 
 character was, that they wore the habit of a priest, and took a vow of 
 celibacy, and were thus made to appear as laymen concealed under a 
 priest's mask. It is comprehensible how such a double character should 
 have given rise to the suspicion that an amphibious position like this was 
 only assumed from ambition or avarice, and that those occupying it 
 should not stand very high in public opinion ; whilst the married lay 
 employes, who saw those half-priests promoted over their heads, could 
 not but feel still more bitterly against them on account of their own 
 advancement being prevented. 
 
 1 " lo son gran papolino, al solito," was his own expression respecting 
 himself in the year 1848. RICOTTI, " Vita di Balbo," 1856, p. 265. 
 
 1 " Lettere di politica e letteratura," 1855, p. 356. 
 
 * Anonymously in the " Gazzetta Italiana." See, with reference to it, 
 MOSTANELLI, " Memorie," i. 84.
 
 DISSATISFACTION WITH SACERDOTAL RULE. 407 
 
 laymen ; and that it bears in mind how, in the Middle Ages, 
 the Papal sovereignty reposed upon the power of ah idea, 
 and the prestige of a name, whilst it was on all sides con- 
 trolled by the conflicting jurisdictions of the people and the 
 nobility. The existing mode of government this sacerdotal, 
 all-intermeddling, tax-imposing, catch-poll system of admi- 
 nistration, is a novelty of modern times. The Pope must 
 bring back his sovereignty to what it formerly had been, 
 and gradually constitute a different description of Ministers, 
 different institutions and laws ; or else the Tiara will be 
 stained with blood, and at last rolled in the mire." 
 
 Difficulties, abortive efforts, humiliations, and defeats be- 
 fell the Government, and daily overwhelmed it. There was 
 no end to the incongruities, inextricable embarrassments, 
 and collisions in which the governing "Prelati" and priest- 
 hood found themselves involved between their ecclesiastical 
 status and the fitting discharge of their official duties. These 
 grew upon them, as polypi are generated out of one another. 
 The instruments of government broke to pieces in its hands. 
 The Papal soldiery became such objects of contempt that the 
 people would not enlist in their ranks ; and when a few were, 
 by the temptation of high pay, brought together, they soon 
 again were disbanded, and it was necessary to call in the 
 Austrians to protect the Papal troops from the scorn and 
 assaults of the population. 
 
 In the year 1843 the Government received a report from 
 Ferrara, " That the whole of the population of the Romagna 
 was inimically disposed towards the Government." 1 From 
 Imola the Cardinal-Legate, Massimo, reported, on the 1 2th 
 August, 1845 : " The pride of the population makes a priests' 
 government intolerable to it. From the patricians down to 
 the lowest shop-boys, they are all sworn to protect every one 
 who is prosecuted, and to save him from punishment. Many 
 of the officials and clergy are inclined to be on a good 
 understanding with the innovators. The whole of the pre- 
 
 1 " I pochissimi amici del Governo non hanno voce in queste provincie, 
 perche appunto sono pochi e TUniversale e nemico." " Document!," 
 i. 70.
 
 408 PIUS ix. 
 
 sent generation, from the age of eighteen and upwards, must 
 be regarded as lost ; for they are completely inimical to the 
 Government, and always to be found in an attitude of hos- 
 tility against it." l The Governor of Rome, Marini, in his 
 answer, says : " From many other places the reports are to 
 the same effect ; but the main-spring of all this evil is to be 
 found in the fact compulsory idleness, a want of contented 
 industry; and both of these are concomitants of the present 
 sjstem of government." 2 
 
 Many of the ecclesiastics, such as Cardinal Massimo, were 
 disposed to trace the main cause of the melancholy state of 
 things and aversion to the Papal Government, to the seeds 
 of indifferentism and infidelity which had been spread amongst 
 the people by the French troops when in occupation of the 
 country. 3 But laymen, like Aguirre, Tommaseo, and Azeg- 
 lio, replied : " It is the gross faults and abuses of the civil 
 government which make the people falter in their faith, and 
 shake their confidence in the Papal guidance of the Church. 
 The unfavourable opinion fostered by the condition to which 
 the priests' government of the Papal States has reduced 
 them, opens a path for erroneous doctrines in religion." 4 
 
 Pius IX. 1846-1861. 
 
 Out of a Conclave one that had only lasted three days, 
 and was the briefest that had occurred for nearly three hun- 
 dred years came forth Pius IX. The arrival of foreign 
 Cardinals had manifestly not been expected. What was par- 
 ticularly aimed at was to guard against Austrian influence, 
 and the Austrian negation. Cardinal Mastai, that Gregory 
 himself had desired to have as his successor, 5 and who was 
 
 1 " Document!, " i. 66. At the same time the Cardinal admits the de 
 fective mode of administering the law : "Si rende forinolaria ed ineffi- 
 cace." 
 
 * " L'ozio e il niun sfogo che hanno gli amor proprii eccitati dall' 
 esempio degli esteri," 1. c., p. 67. 
 
 3 "Document! sul Gov. pontif.," i. 66. 
 
 4 AGUIRRK, p. 174 ; TOMMASEO, " Roma e il mondo," p. 73 ; 
 D'AZEGLIO, "La Politique etle droit chretien," p. 115. 
 
 s So says SILVIO PELLICO, " Epistolario," 1856, p. 324.
 
 PROMISING COMMENCEMENT OF HIS REIGN. 409 
 
 then but fifty years of age, appeared to be the fitting man. 
 As Xuncio in Chile, he had looked upon the world outside of 
 the Papal States, and he had made a comparison between 
 the condition of other lands and his own. To continue to 
 govern in the spirit of his predecessors, and especially of 
 Lambruschini, was simply an impossibility ; but Pius had 
 not the slightest inclination to do so. He saw a greater 
 amount of disorder than he could cure ; but he brought the 
 purest motives, the most unbiassed will, and the most uncon- 
 ditional self-devotion with his summons to the throne ; and 
 he avowed his mission to be that of a reformer in the govern- 
 ment of the country, and a pacificator between the ruler 
 and the ruled. In the firm belief that love alone can beget 
 love, and beneficence gratitude, Pius commenced his reign 
 with a comprehensive Amnesty. By so doing he freed him- 
 self, in the most decided manner, from the mode and policy 
 of administration hitherto pursued ; but he also, at the same 
 time, and by the same act, as Prince Metternich said, " threw 
 open the door of his house to the professional robbers" he 
 permitted the Radical Conspirators who had, until then, 
 carried on their plots in foreign countries to make his own 
 land the seat and centre of their manoeuvres. In the purity, 
 and in the moral nobility of his own disposition, Pius never 
 hesitated, although he was not unaware as to the conse- 
 quences of what he had done. He held it to be his duty to 
 grant the Amnesty, not only as a political act of conciliation, 
 but also as a reparation for wrong that had been inflicted. 
 The Prussian ambassador, Herr von Usedom, quotes the 
 words spoken by the Pope on this topic : fl To grant an 
 Amnesty was not only a political necessity, but it was like- 
 wise my duty. The hatred which the old system had pro- 
 duced against the Papacy must be assuaged ; and in a word, 
 the old must be retrieved by the new, and amends made for 
 the past." 1 
 
 Pius conceived himself forced at last to carry into effect 
 the promises that had been made in 1831. On the 23rd 
 April, 1848, he declared in an Allocution to the Cardinals: 
 1 " Politische Briefe und Characteristiken," 1849, p. 254.
 
 410 LEGISLATIVE AND PRACTICAL REFORMS. 
 
 " That in the latter years of Pius VII. the Great Powers of 
 Europe had represented to the Papal See that it could, in its 
 civil government, create institutions which would be more in 
 correspondence with the wishes of the laity." At the same 
 time, he supported himself altogether upon the Memorandum 
 of the Powers in 1831, which had declared the introduction 
 of Provincial Councils, and the admission of laymen to ad- 
 ministrative and judicial offices, as vital questions for the 
 Papal Government. His predecessors had done a few things 
 in that direction, and had promised others ; but their ordi- 
 nances had neither corresponded with the desires of the 
 Great Powers, nor had they given satisfaction, nor secured 
 the public weal and tranquillity of the State. 1 
 
 Commissions were then established for an examination 
 into the whole system of government, for an improvement 
 in legislation, and for a more suitable classification of the 
 various branches of the executive. The selection of Gizzi 
 as Secretary of State met with general approval. The lay- 
 ing down of railroads, which had been refused during the 
 reign of Gregory, was now sanctioned. The Government 
 permitted that in the same place where only a few months 
 previously every word relating to political affairs must be 
 suppressed, a political journal might be established, and that 
 the wants and circumstances of the Papal Kingdom, as well 
 as of all Italy, might be discussed. A Censorship-edict, de- 
 claring the establishment of a Censorship College, was an 
 improvement in the antecedent state of affairs, where every- 
 thing had been left to the arbitrary judgment of a few 
 monks. Now discussion upon scientific matters, contempo- 
 rary chronicles, and questions upon agriculture and trade, 
 were left free. 2 
 
 The greatest joy was excited by a Decree of the 19th 
 April, 1847, which announced a convocation of notables 
 from the provinces to a State Consultation. A council of 
 ministers was formed; Rome had a communal representa- 
 tion; several other reforming decrees appeared, and the 
 
 1 " Document!," i. 405. 2 COPPI, ix. 78.
 
 POPULARITY OF PIUS IX. 411 
 
 State Consultative Assembly met, and propounded moderate 
 propositions. 
 
 In a few weeks Pius became the idol of all Italians ; and 
 every voice gave utterance to the same language respecting 
 him. His name was then a talisman ! Nought was rightly 
 done, but what was done by him ! All hopes were centred 
 in him, and he was hailed as the national hero of Italy ! He 
 was as their " Priest King" to break the chains of the nation, 
 and other governments would be forced to act in imitation 
 of his example ! " Then," says Montanelli, " was the pres- 
 tige of the Pope the sole defensive bulwark between us and 
 the arms of Austria." l 
 
 Laymen and priests vied with each other in tendering 
 their homage to the reforming Pope. " Pius," says Count 
 Balbo, 2 " is only now reigning for six weeks, and in that 
 brief span of time has become the most active reformer in 
 this eventful century. The great majority of ecclesiastics 
 in the Papal States are thoroughly aware that it is only by 
 such a course as this that the hatred of the town population 
 against their entire order can be put an end to. It is hoped 
 that the time has now for ever passed away, in which 
 tribunals could be seen composed exclusively of priests con- 
 demning to death or the galleys persons accused of political 
 offences and doing that, too, without affording to them the 
 means of defending themselves. 3 
 
 That which was the feeling of all intelligent and religious 
 Italians at the time, was no more than truly expressed by 
 Count Cesare Balbo, when he addressed these noble lines to 
 Pius : 
 
 " Tu non ci maledici ! Tu sei figlio 
 Di nostra eta, e 1'intendi e la second! : 
 Perdura e avanza ! a te bramando mirano 
 
 Ormai due mondi. 
 
 1 " Memorie sull' Italia," ii. 180. * " Lettere," p. 3G6. 
 
 3 Compare the letter of Poggi 4 to Saint-Aulaire, in GUALTERIO, " Docu- 
 menti," p. 273.
 
 412 DEMAND FOR NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 "Tu principe, tu padre, tu pontifice, 
 Ogni via gik t' apristi, ogni speranza ; 
 Ora dal volgo di color che dubbiano 
 
 Ti scerni e avanza." l 
 
 And not only in Italy, but in the whole Catholic world, 
 there was universal joy, and Pius became the " Amor et 
 deliciaa generis humani." The clergy in all countries, the 
 religious Catholics, each and all were rejoiced that at last the 
 reconciliation of the Roman See with the ideas of freedom 
 amongst modern nations could be announced and ratified ; and 
 that the stain could be wiped away which had been brought 
 upon the whole order of the priesthood by the misdeeds and 
 unpopularity of a clerocracy in the States of the Church. 2 
 
 It is well-known that, contemporaneous with the com- 
 mencement of the reign of Pius IX., the demand for national 
 independence, and for a free Italy, arose from one end of the 
 Peninsula to the other. " We will," it was said, " be a 
 nation ; we shall possess the strength and dignity of a nation 
 our weight shall be felt in the scale of nations, and our im- 
 portance in the world's history; we will no longer be en- 
 chained by the external interests of Transalpine powers." 
 The movement was no longer confined to the lodges of the 
 secret societies it prevailed over all Italy it was felt by all 
 the educated classes of society it was participated in by all 
 the higher and the middle ranks. All desired national inde- 
 pendence the overthrow of Austrian rule in Upper Italy 
 the abolition of Austrian supremacy in the whole peninsula : 
 all longed for political freedom. 
 
 Even in Rome those who were then about the Pope did 
 not recoil from that universal spirit which then exhibited 
 itself for shaking off the yoke of foreigners, as well as for the 
 establishment of an Italian Kingdom ; and it is even reported 
 
 1 Thou cursest us not ! Thou art a son of our own age, and thou dost 
 understand it, and thou helpest us. Hold fast, and Onward ! Two 
 worlds now look with longing love upon thee. Thou Prince, thou 
 Father, thou Pontiff every path is open before thee, all hope is in thee. 
 From the common crowd of doubters separate thyself, and Onward ! 
 
 1 The applause bestowed upon the reforming Pope, especially by the 
 French bishops, is worth remembering.
 
 THE "STATUTO FOND AMENT ALE." 413 
 
 that Pius himself had given expression to these words : " If 
 victory should favour the army of Charles Albert, then was 
 he himself ready with his own hand to crown him King of 
 Upper Italy. 1 One of Rosmini's plans for the organization 
 of an Italian Confederation met with the approval of the 
 Pope. A Diet of all the Italian States in Rome should con- 
 sult together, and determine upon war and peace, tolls, 
 treaties of commerce, and other matters of common interest 
 to them all. Rome would thus become the Frankfort of the 
 Italian Confederation of States. 
 
 But then came Rome to be oppressed by the disastrous 
 machinations of political clubs (the Circolo Romano), and of 
 a civic guard, which soon proved itself to be here, as every- 
 where else, inefficient, useless, and evil-disposed, when its 
 services were required for the maintenance of order, and a 
 protection to the Government. Radical demagogues inflamed 
 and fanaticised the populace with endless street demonstra- 
 tions, and the Government could no longer count in Rome 
 upon obedience to its orders. 2 Under the mask of public 
 demonstration of respect and gratitude, the attempt was made 
 to degrade the Pope into a tool of Mazzini, and to force him 
 into a war against Austria. Pius was to be compelled, 
 not merely to take a part in the war, but, as the first, the 
 foremost herald of hostilities, to place himself at its head. 3 
 The ministries, for the most part composed of laymen, 
 rapidly succeeded each other in office. At the beginning of 
 the year 1848, and when revolutions had already taken place 
 in France and Sicily, appeared the " Statute Fondamentale " 
 a constitution, in the preamble to which Pius declared : 
 " he would not less prize his people, nor show less confidence 
 in them than had been done in neighbouring states, where 
 the population had been regarded as sufficiently sagacious to 
 be entrusted, not merely with a representation having the 
 capacity to consult together, but also with power to resolve, 
 and to have their decrees carried into effect. Such preroga- 
 
 1 GIOBERTI, " Rinnovamento civile d'ltalia," i. 210. COPPI, x. 368. 
 
 2 RANALLI, " Del riordinamento d'ltalia," 1859, p. 298. 
 * RAXALLI, " Del riordinamento d'ltalia," p. 298.
 
 414 IMPERFECT POLITICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 tives he would confide to two Chambers one to be named by 
 himself, and the other to be elected. As to those points not 
 specified in this Statute, and in matters affecting religion 
 and morals, he reserved for himself and his successors the full 
 exercise of their sovereign authority. 1 
 
 There was an essential difference between the " Statute " 
 and any one of the modern constructed constitutional forms 
 of Government. For there was still left the College of 
 Cardinals, as a wholly independent corporation one, too, in 
 some measure participating in the sovereignty ; and it was to 
 remain not only by the side of, but above both the Chambers. 
 Thus there were, in effect, three deliberative assemblies. It 
 was natural ; perhaps, it was unavoidable, that the "Statute" 
 should be assented to by Pius. Still, as the result has 
 shown, and as, indeed, it might easily have been recognised 
 and foreseen, the people had been but insufficiently prepared 
 or educated for a right use of the political functions bestowed 
 upon them by the " Statute." What was beyond all things 
 needed, and was indispensable for them to possess, was more 
 of civil freedom in their dealings with officials less subjec- 
 tion to the arbitrary conduct and vexatious proceedings ot 
 the police more practice and experience in municipal and 
 provincial self-government. The preliminary conditions to 
 normal constitutional life were altogether wanting. Beyond 
 all things, there was required an absolute separation between 
 lay and ecclesiastical powers and attributes. When, for 
 instance, the Cardinal Vicar, who supplied the place of the 
 Pope in his character of Bishop of Rome, had his police of 
 morals, and when he, with his episcopal authority, exercised 
 a civil jurisdiction, with his own tribunal and his own agents, 
 it is not easy to perceive how such an institution could be 
 maintained along with a representative government. How- 
 ever much the representation of the people and their rights 
 might be limited, and the powers of the government strength- 
 ened, it is still inevitable that the mere existence of an 
 Assembly, the creation of the free choice of the people, must 
 give to the lay element a vast preponderance in the State, 
 1 COPPI, x. 183.
 
 PROGRESS OF REVOLUTIONARY PRINCIPLES. 415 
 
 over the clerical. And then this occurring when there was 
 in the administration an inverse order of things prevailing 
 when the lay members were doomed to be stationary, were 
 absolutely excluded from the higher offices, and made depen- 
 dents upon clerical superiors when such an absurdity as this 
 was persisted in, a peaceful solution of all these difficulties 
 was neither to be looked for nor expected, nor even thought 
 of. At almost every Elected Assembly it was determined to 
 withdraw from the clerical jurisdiction the powers exercised 
 by it to seek and find the means for the abolition of the 
 Inquisition, of the civil jurisdiction of the Bishops, and the 
 legalised immunities and privileges of the clergy. And yet 
 it was a commission of the " Prelati " a commission from 
 which all laymen were excluded that devised the "Statute;" 
 and that same "Statute" the College of Cardinals had, as it 
 is known, upon the assurance of Pope Pius himself, unani- 
 mously approved of. 1 Had the inevitable consequences of 
 the "Statute" been then foreseen"? or was it determined to 
 let a gradual change take place, when the declaration might 
 be made that it had proved in operation to be absolutely 
 objectionable? No one now can answer these questions. 
 Soon afterwards the Censorship was made more stringent 
 upon writings touching on theology and religion. Mean- 
 while Rome had become the central point of the Mazzinists 
 and Revolutionists ; whilst it is to be remembered that the 
 movements of 1831, 1843, and 1845, had left a burning 
 flame beneath their ashes. 2 The resistance of the Pope 
 against a participation in the war against Austria was made 
 use of to despoil him of all power, and to force upon him the 
 revolutionary ministry of Mamiani. Then it was that the 
 Pope's new Minister, Pellegrino Rossi, formerly the French 
 Ambassador, seized, with a strong hand, the reigns of govern- 
 ment ; and it seemed as if order would be restored, and the 
 fast-advancing steps of revolution checked, when the heads 
 
 1 " L'intero sagro Collegio vi ha convenuto di buon grado ed unani- 
 mamente," were the words of the Pope to the Roman ^municipality. 
 FARINI, ii. 5. 
 
 2 RANALLI, " Istorie Ital.," i. 36.
 
 416 THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 of the anarchical party, Sterbini, Ciceruacchio, and others, 
 resolved upon, and carried into effect, the assassination of the 
 man who was the most formidable opponent of Unionism, 
 and of a " one and indivisible Italian Republic." Then fol- 
 lowed the storm of the Quirinal, and the flight of the Pope 
 to Gaeta. And this time, too, despite of the personal respect, 
 and of the veneration for Pius IX., the Papal power in the 
 whole country was easily overthrown. The utter incapacity 
 of a population, of whom ninety-nine in every hundred had 
 never, either before or after the Revolution, taken a book or 
 newspaper in their hands, made the task attempted to be 
 performed by the Triumvirate and their adherents much more 
 easy of accomplishment. 
 
 During the sixty-nine days of the Republic created by the 
 Garibaldists and Mazzini<ts, the inhabitants of the Papal 
 States must have drained to the very dregs the intoxicating 
 cup of revolution. The birds of prey quickly gathered 
 round the fallen body of the State, and the people were, 
 under the name of a Democratic Republic, composed of the 
 anarchists of every country, tyrannised over and despoiled 
 by a plundering faction. Of " democratic speech-makers," 
 and of empty-headed chatterers, there was a superfluity ; but 
 of all things else a deficiency. 
 
 When the French appeared, for the purpose of restoring 
 the Pope, General Oudinot mentions what he then found to 
 be the prevailing spirit amongst the population : " There is 
 for Pius IX. a personal affection entertained ; but everyone 
 is afraid of a clerical government." 1 He transferred the 
 conquered city to the commissioners appointed by the Pope 
 Cardinals Dalla Genga, Vanicelli, and Altieri on 1st 
 August, 1849. It was not until the 4th April, 1850, Pius IX. 
 made his entry into Rome. 
 
 In the Allocution of the 20th April, 1849, Pius declared 
 that it never had been in his thoughts to change the nature 
 and character of his government ; that he had distinctly 
 
 1 That a vast majority of the population in Rome wished for the return 
 of the Pope is a fact attested by an eye-witness, HELFFERICH, in his 
 '* Briefen aus Italien," ii. 56.
 
 COURSE OF PAPAL GOVERNMENT. 417 
 
 pointed to the fact of the " Statute," with its representative 
 constitution, as perfectly compatible with the character of 
 the Papal sovereignty. But now came into the possession of 
 power those who regarded the salvation of the State to 
 consist in the speedy restoration of all that had been pre- 
 viously overthrown. Even the Inquisition was revived; a 
 "moderate" party, such as there was in 1847, and on which 
 the Pope might now, as then, rely for support, was declared 
 to be no longer procurable. All who were around the Pope 
 desired that the institutions and concessions of 1847 and 
 1848 should be put an end to. Cardinal Antonelli governed 
 in this sense, as Secretary of State, and became the sole leader 
 of the administration, whilst the other five ministers were but 
 the first official servants of government. Count Balbo had been 
 sent to Gaeta, for the purpose of impressing, in the name of 
 the Piedmontese Government, upon the Pope and his minister, 
 the wisdom of holding fast by the " Statute ;" but his appeal 
 proved to be of no avail. 1 Pius was convinced that the 
 incorrigible would only make use of every concession that 
 was granted to them to carry on their plots as enemies to 
 all social order and positive religion. A restricted amnesty, 
 with but a few, and these unavoidable, exceptions, was granted. 
 By the institution of the " Staats Consulta" laymen had the 
 right of giving an opinion upon domestic concerns ; but the 
 decision upon them was reserved for the " Prelati" in whose 
 hands were again placed all the higher offices. The munici- 
 palities, however, were promised a certain sort of independ- 
 ence. The Communal Councils were to be chosen out of 
 electoral bodies of Council men, sixfold in number to those 
 nominated ; and the Pope reserved to himself the nomination 
 of the first. 
 
 For ten years (1849 1859) did the Government of the 
 Papal States, supported by the Austrian occupation in the 
 Romagna, and by the French in Rome and Civita Vecchia, 
 pursue, upon the whole, a peaceful and equable course. 
 Seldom, indeed, has a government begun and ended its 
 wearisome day-work under such disheartening circumstances 
 1 RICOTTI, " Vita del Balbo," p. 273. 
 
 EE
 
 418 RAYNEVAL'S MEMORIAL. 
 
 surrounded on all sides by bitter, malignant, self-seeking, 
 and skulking foes, and nowhere having a firm support, and 
 in no one a cordial, steady, and reliable friend. 
 
 The Report of the French Ambassador, Count Rayneval, 
 in the year 1856, defended, in most points, the Government 
 of the Papal States, under the present Pope and Cardinal 
 Antonelli, against the reproaches of the Italians, and the 
 wide-spread opinion in England and France regarding them. 
 The Report cert56es that dissatisfaction and discontent con- 
 tinue to prevail amongst the population ; but the cause for 
 this state of things " is to be sought," it says, " not in the 
 faults of the system of government, but in the defects of 
 the national character," and especially in the then existing 
 situation and temper of the Italians. The English Envoy, 
 Mr. Lyons, who was in Rome at the same time, has, in his 
 Report, made frequent reference to Rayneval's Memorial, 
 which he maintains was drawn up in agreement with, and 
 according to, the data supplied by the Papal Government, 
 for the purpose of influencing the Paris Cabinet to favour 
 the continuance of the French Protectorate, and to shew that 
 the Pope ought not to be pressed to make changes in his 
 mode of government. He disputes, in many points, the 
 correctness of M. Rayneval's representation. And, yet, both 
 the one and the other, Rayneval and Lyons, coincide in some 
 main points. Both give the assurance that no blame should 
 be cast upon the existing Government for the general discon- 
 tent and desire of the population for a change in the supreme 
 authority over them. There are, as Mr. Lyons affirms, but 
 two descriptions of men in the country ; the first are 
 unflinching, active, and irreconcileable enemies of the Go- 
 vernment, whose watchword is, " No more government by 
 priests ! " These can never be won by reforms in particular 
 matters ; all they would do with every concession made to 
 them would be to employ it as a weapon against the Govern- 
 ment. It is not reform, but the overthrow of the Government, 
 that they aim at. The others are indifferent, tepid, unreliable, 
 and, in a moment of danger, the Government would not find in 
 them the slightest support. They would not lift a finger in aid
 
 RELATIONS OF GOVERNMENT AND PEOPLE. 419 
 
 of the assailed ruler. The supposition thus made by the Eng- 
 lish Envoy was, in the year 1859, but too accurately verified, 
 and too fully justified. Even the lower classes of the Papal 
 employes were, as Mr. Lyons declares, notoriously disaffected 
 to the Papal sovereignty, 1 and they were also described by 
 him as being lazy and corrupt. 
 
 There are two matters which must not be overlooked by 
 any one who would pass a sound judgment upon the condition 
 of the Papal States. The first is the reflection that those 
 who are rulers are, essentially, of the population, and parti- 
 cipate in the popular virtues as well as popular defects. A 
 want of energy and activity cannot reasonably be made a 
 matter of reproach against a Government, when in it is dis- 
 cernible a national trait. Secondly : when once the fitting 
 relations between a people and their Government become 
 disturbed, then mutual confidence between them disappears, 
 and a malcontent population is disposed to make their rulers 
 responsible for all the wrongs and crimes of which they are 
 themselves guilty, and which, whether they be sins of com- 
 mission or omission, are characteristic of them, as a nation. 
 In what an extreme degree this is the case in the Papal 
 States, has been remarked upon by Count Rayneval. The 
 inhabitants of the Papal States are, in some respects, like to 
 the Mexicans, of whom it has been said by a keen observer, 
 lately arrived from that country, that " they blame the 
 Government if their coat is torn ! " This mode of reasoning 
 in the Papal States, it must, however, in candour, be 
 admitted, is the natural consequence of the tutorship system 
 of government, which restricts both a discussion upon, and a 
 participation in, public business. Hence, too, flows a fatal 
 distrust. " They dream," says the French Ambassador, " of 
 naught else than dishonesty and extortion. They complain 
 that the State does not engage in carrying out great under- 
 takings, which, if it did, they would at once make those 
 undertakings an object for their attacks." 2 
 
 1 Despatches from Mr. Lyons respecting the Condition and Adminis- 
 tration of the Papal States." London, 1860, p. 53. 
 
 2 " Allg. Zeitg.," 1857, p. 1666. 
 
 EE 2
 
 420 SECULARIZATION OF PUBLIC OFFICES. 
 
 The first and most pressing problem of all, is that affecting 
 the relation of the ecclesiastical and lay holders of govern- 
 ment situations ; or, in other words, the question of " the 
 secularization of public offices." Many hold this as being 
 the most difficult to determine as actually insoluble. It 
 involves not merely the point that almost all the higher 
 offices are in the hands of ecclesiastics, and that such offices 
 are so regulated as to be inaccessible to laymen ; but the 
 Government says, 1 "That the Pope is an ecclesiastic, and 
 that under the Pope, as sovereign, the direction of the 
 administration must be essentially ecclesiastical. Besides 
 that, we have only a very small number of laymen from 
 whom we could make a selection, and the cities themselves 
 (for instance, Orvieto and Camerino a short time previously) 
 had desired to have ecclesiastics for their governors." To 
 this it was replied by laymen, and the ambassadors of 
 foreign powers : " The Government should be secularized, so 
 that laymen of talent, honour, and ambition may have 
 opened to them a path, and a hope of promotion, to the 
 higher offices ; and that it may thus plainly be made worth 
 their while earnestly and seriously to prepare themselves for 
 admission to the public service. So long as this is not the 
 case, capable laymen will hold themselves aloof ; laymen 
 and ecclesiastics will be separated into hostile classes and 
 the former being constantly discontented, will wish for, 
 and conspire to effect a change in, the form of the govern- 
 ment. Moreover, situated as things now are, an accom- 
 plished and independent-minded layman would find himself, 
 upon all occasions, compelled to sacrifice his judgment to 
 that of his ecclesiastical superiors that which would be 
 done by very few, and these not the most competent or 
 reliable persons." To these objections was to be added 
 another, " that," as a shrewd French observer remarked, 2 
 " the priests stand like sentinels, at the opening of every 
 
 1 Cardinal Antonelli, in an interview with Mr. Lyons, " Despatches," 
 p. 17. 
 
 * H. v. METZ-XOBLAT, in his " Varia, Morale, Politique, Literature." 
 Paris, 1861, p. 433.
 
 CESSATION OF CASTE GOVERNMENT. 421 
 
 public career, to examine the candidate's testimonials of 
 piety, and fulfilment of ecclesiastic duties ; for without 
 these no one is permitted to enter the Government service." 
 
 " We will have," declared an Italian, lately, " along with 
 the wished-for secularization in the Papal States, not merely 
 the exclusion of priests from government offices, but also the 
 cessation of a caste-government, and the establishment of 
 equality in the temporal hierarchy, as well as a participation 
 in the government of the country and the management of 
 its affairs." 1 
 
 Count Rayneval coincided in the view of the Government, 
 for he directs attention to the fact " that the people exhibit 
 towards the lay employes of the Government no marks of 
 respect, and are much less tolerant of their superiority over 
 them 2 in rank and position, than they are as regards ecclesi- 
 astics. And such feeling is so much the more plainly 
 recognisable in the fact that many more violent personal 
 assaults have been made upon lay than upon ecclesiastical 
 officials." But he remarks, at the same time, that " the cry 
 for a complete secularization of the Government is applauded 
 by the people." 
 
 What we then see is this : a condition of circumstances 
 in which they who are in reality " the people " are accus- 
 tomed to find the ecclesiastical officers both more capable 
 and less avaricious than the lay official subordinates ; and 
 then, even though they may be, in general, dissatisfied with 
 the administration, still they are unwilling to speak against 
 the " Priest-Government." On the other hand, the higher 
 orders, that is, all those who believe that they themselves, or 
 their kinsmen, have a claim to participate in the service of 
 the State are discontented; they feel that they are excluded 
 from office, and, therefore, demand that all situations and 
 offices should be occupied by laymen. If this be laid down 
 as a principle to be rigidly enforced, it is, in fact, an opening 
 to the speedy secularization of the Papacy itself. On the 
 other side, it is clear that if things remain as they now are, 
 
 1 " Rivista Contemp.," viii. 470. 
 
 * u Denkschrift, Allg. Ztg.," 1857, 17th April.
 
 422 ASSUMPTION OF ARBITRARY POWER. 
 
 a reconciliation of the two classes, and consequently a peace- 
 ful and beneficent maintenance of the Papal States, is scarcely 
 to be hoped for. The disproportion lies, however, not so 
 much in the number as in the outrageous contrast of social 
 positions the disparity complained of makes the clerical a 
 governing, and the lay a subordinate class ; it appears in 
 public and private personal conflicts between a layman and 
 an ecclesiastic, for it places every advantage within the reach 
 of the latter, and renders the defeat of the former almost a 
 matter of certainty. In other countries, we see ecclesiastics 
 and laymen in the same description of employment standing 
 well and amicably, as well as working harmoniously together; 
 as, for instance, in Universities and Gymnasia, and as 
 employes of the Government. Such a state of things would 
 also be attainable in the Papal States, if the conditions were: 
 *' Equality of rights and of duties, free competition acces- 
 sibility to official life the capability and suitableness of the 
 individual, but not the paramount privileges of the class in 
 society to which he may belong." 
 
 There is another difficulty to be found in the want of a 
 rigid conformity to law. From the reports received on all 
 sides, a person must feel convinced that one of the greatest 
 defects in the condition of the Papal States is to be found in 
 the want of conformity to law. There is unknown there the 
 peaceful, firm, and, for rulers and for ruled alike, the equal 
 binding and unapproachable sanctity of law. There is too 
 much confided to the power, and too much is made dependent 
 upon the wilfulness, of particular officials. It is remarked by 
 Mr. Lyons, "that the Court of Rome .... shows an ex- 
 traordinary disregard to laws and forms in its dealings with 
 its subjects, and seems almost always to assume an arbitrary 
 power to act in each matter according to the circumstances 
 of the moment." 1 There is an instance of a governor de- 
 claring " that, for want of proofs, the accused could not be 
 convicted, but still he should be punished with imprisonment 
 for eight days, upon bread and water.'" 2 And then there was 
 
 1 " Despatches," p. 61. See AGUIRRE, p. 124. 
 
 2 "Document!, sul Gov. pontif.," ii. 580.
 
 CONSTITUTIONALISM AND THE PAPACY. 423 
 
 Cardinal Bernetti, the Secretary of State, who declared, with 
 respect to an individual against whom there were not suffi- 
 cient proofs, " that upon his first transgression he should 
 receive, in addition to whatever might be the legal punish- 
 ment of his offence, five years hard labour." 1 This exercise 
 of an arbitrary power, this licentiousness on the part of the 
 Administration and the authorities, who, on every occasion, are 
 prepared to evade the law, has been branded by Count Ray- 
 neval, when he declares, " L' interpretation de la loi 1'emporte 
 sur la loi elle-meme." The mischief is, that a sound political 
 life can scarcely be developed when a government is carried 
 on in this manner. The example of those in power renders 
 it impossible for a people who live under the constant im- 
 pression of arbitrary proceedings to have a due respect and 
 reverence for the objective power, the law ; on the contrary, 
 the idea will gain ground with them that men in such a 
 country are not the subjects of the law, but of the individual 
 caprice of a certain number of persons, whose conduct is in- 
 fluenced by their passions and the interests of their order. 2 
 
 It is perfectly manifest that u constitutionalism," as it is or- 
 dinarily understood and acted upon, could not be applied to 
 the States of the Church. It would not be tolerated that a 
 warlike faction could, by refusing the supplies, force the 
 Pope, " the supreme shepherd of nations," to go to war with 
 a Christian power, as they sought to compel him to declare 
 war against Austria. The Pope must be in possession of a 
 real and not a nominal sovereignty, so that he may be seen, 
 as well as seem to be, in his ecclesiastical power and actions, 
 fully and completely free. It can be a matter of not the 
 slightest import, if he is under coercion, whether that coercion 
 be exercised by a foreign power, or by a haughty and de- 
 spotic parliamentary majority. But such a sovereignty, and 
 a clerical-bureaucratic omnipotence tutoring everybody, and 
 intermeddling with and managing everything, are two con- 
 ditions of government as wide asunder from each other as 
 the two poles. The autocratic sovereignty of the Pope is 
 compatible with a participation of the people in legislation, 
 1 " Document!,' 1 ii. 595. z Marsuzi de Aguirre, p. 166.
 
 424 ELECTORAL SYSTEM. 
 
 the autonomy of corporations, a moderate freedom of the 
 press, and the separation of religion from the police. For- 
 merly, it was Austria and the different Governments in Italy 
 that were subjected to the guidance of Austria, that had, 
 under the pretence that the principle of popular elections 
 was irreconcileable with due order in their States, opposed 
 the adoption of elective Provincial and Municipal Councils. 1 
 In accordance with the Motu Proprio of 1850, these elections 
 were to take place, and the Frencli defenders of the Papal 
 See, Montalembert and De Corcelle, have appealed to the 
 fact. The Italians reply : " That the Electoral system of 
 Municipal and Provincial Councils is good in theory, but 
 that Cardinal Antonelli had, in a circular of 29th April, 
 1854, ordered the Electoral Colleges not to be called to- 
 gether. 2 The Government could cite in its justification the 
 remark of the English diplomatist, that it must conduct it- 
 self in accordance with the law of self-preservation ; for, as 
 he remarks, " the natural unwillingness of the Government to 
 allow its own enemies a place in them " (the Communal 
 Councils) "is unfortunately sufficient to exclude in many 
 districts the men otherwise best qualified." 3 In fact, the 
 number is far too great, as the British diplomatist says, of 
 those in whose eyes " the standard of value for a scheme of 
 reform is the means it would supply for throwing off the 
 yoke of the Holy See." These are the persons who " would 
 be sorry to have fewer causes of complaint sorry for any- 
 thing which would diminish the extent or the intenseness of 
 disaffection." 4 
 
 Another circumstance, and one of far too common occur- 
 rence, has contributed to the contempt into which the Go- 
 vernment has fallen with its own subjects, by increasing the 
 conviction that they live under a pure despotism ; and that 
 circumstance is the promulgation of laws which are after- 
 wards permitted to remain a dead letter." 5 
 
 1 GALEOTTI, " Delia sovranitk del Papi," 1846, p. 339. See remarks 
 of H. v. ECKSTEIN, " Allg. Zeitung," April. 1860, p. 1803. 
 
 2 FARINI, in the " Rivista Contempor.," 1857, ix. 19. 
 
 1 LYONS, " Despatches," p. 19. 4 LYONS, " Despatches," p. 20. 
 
 Particular attention has been attracted towards this point by the
 
 THE INQUISITOR AIRALDl's EDICT. 425 
 
 The Pope himself has long since admitted that an intel- 
 lectually-gifted and extremely energetic people like the 
 Italians could not endure the suppression of all public dis- 
 cussion, and an exclusion from all active participation in 
 public life ; that their impulsive activity required that there 
 should be beds and channels into which it might be poured, 
 and then, within due and prescribed limits, it might flow on 
 beneficially. That by the side of public deliberative assem- 
 blies there should be a rigid preventive censorship prohibit- 
 ing all discussions, as well as that there should be maintained 
 certain institutions and privileges which have long since dis- 
 appeared out of every other part of the world that the 
 duration of these contradictions could be prolonged is an 
 impossibility. And hence concessions are refused by those 
 who are for perpetuating the old systems, and who, as it has 
 often been repeated, labour their very utmost to prevent the 
 establishment of elective and consultative colleges, although 
 in so doing they are acting contrary to the wish of the Pontiff, 
 and inflicting pain upon him. 1 They who act thus well know 
 that the chimney cannot be left stopped up once a fire is 
 kindled on the hearth. 
 
 In the year 1856, the Inquisitor, Airaldi, issued a long 
 Edict, in which, under a threat of the severest censures, he 
 called for the denunciation of every ecclesiastical and reli- 
 gious offence that might be known by anyone to have been 
 committed by others he declared it to be the bounden duty 
 of such to make certain sins known ; as, for instance, a maid- 
 servant incurred excommunication and became liable to pun- 
 ishment, if she neglected to inform the Inquisition of anyone 
 in the house in which she lived having eaten meat on a 
 Friday or a Saturday evening ! All the newspapers 2 the 
 
 anonymous Italian author of " Memoires du Comte Aldini," in the 
 "Revista Contemp.,"viii. 469. 
 
 1 The author of an article in the " Rivista Contemp.," 1856, viii. 470, 
 maintained, upon what he said was the best authority, that Pius himself 
 complained of the conduct of the Government then existing. 
 
 2 It was first brought to notice in the " Correspondance Italienne 
 lithographiee," 19th October, 1856.
 
 426 PUBLIC OPINION ON THE PAPAL QUESTION. 
 
 " Siecle" leading the van instantly got possession of this do- 
 cument, and it was printed in full. What commentaries 
 were made upon it in France, England, and Italy ! what 
 inferences were drawn from it as to the character of the 
 Papal Government, and what little hope of reform to be 
 looked for from it ! Of all this it is not now necessary to 
 say a word. The numberless enemies of the Papal See could 
 scarcely be tendered a more welcome gift. The hope, how- 
 ever, was entertained that something might be done to 
 remove the impression caused by this circumstance. One 
 journal brought the intelligence that Airaldi had been re- 
 moved from his office, but the " Ecclesiastical Journal," pub- 
 lished in Rome, instantly contradicted that statement, and 
 declared that " Airaldi had only done his duty ! " } 
 
 It would seem, in point of fact, as if persons in the narrow 
 circles at Home had either no precise notion, or some idea 
 far removed from the truth, as to the gigantic powers of 
 " journalism," and of that u public opinion " which is formed 
 through or reflected by journalism. Every one who is ac- 
 quainted with the present condition of Europe, and the rela- 
 tions between existing powers, is well aware that three such 
 events as the case of Achilli, the Edict of Airaldi (and others 
 antecedent to and like it), and the affair of Mortara, have 
 weighed more in the balance, on the question of the Papal 
 States, than a battle lost or won. The question here is, not 
 how each of these circumstances should be judged of by its 
 intrinsic merits, but in what manner they contributed to in- 
 fluence an irresistible public opinion in Europe. At present, 
 all are living in glass houses, and it is not sufficient to treat 
 with governments, for behind them are the peoples upon 
 whose fixed opinions depend the resolutions of those in au- 
 thority. How unfavourable in Italy, in England, in the 
 greatest part of France, Germany, etc., is public opinion, for 
 the continuation of the temporal sovereignty of the Pope, 
 every one, who will only make use of his own eyes, can but 
 too plainly discern. 
 
 It cannot appear to be a matter much to be wondered at, 
 1 The u Civiltk Cattolica," in its number of 20th December, 1856.
 
 HOSTILE SPIRIT OF THE POPULATION. 427 
 
 that, wherever the co-operation of laymen is needed in Rome, 
 all should go wrong, and that the Government (as all the 
 foreign diplomatists testify) should nowhere find a support in 
 the population. At great cost, and with inexpressible diffi- 
 culty, there was incorporated anew, in 1850, a small Papal 
 native army; but the events of 1859 shattered into pieces 
 this instrument, and destroyed this hope. The facts proved 
 that these troops were completely untrustworthy, and recourse 
 was unavoidably had to foreign soldiers. 
 
 Prelati and Delegati were constantly sending in reports of 
 the systematically hostile spirit of the population of their 
 dogged repugnance to enlist in the Papal military service of 
 their refusal to undertake any communal office which would 
 bring them in contact with the Government, and render it 
 necessary for them to carry out its orders. The Delegate 
 Folicaldi wrote from Ferrara, in the year 1849: "The 
 Liberals say, ' The Austrian rather than the Papal,' only for 
 the purpose of expressing their hatred against the Papal 
 Government." l From Bologna, the Prelato Bedini wrote to 
 say that he could only discover a few persons who would 
 undertake the office of " Censor." It was the same at Ra- 
 venna and Ferrara. At Faenza, no one would accept of any 
 kind of office ; and the Delegate Lasagna, writing from 
 Cesena, 1858, says: "In this district there are only a few 
 persons well disposed towards the Government." 2 
 
 Nevertheless, the administration of Pius IX. is wise, bene- 
 volent, indulgent, thrifty, attentive to useful institutions 
 and improvements. All that proceeds from Pius IX., person- 
 ally, is worthy of the Head of the Church it is elevated and 
 liberal in the best sense of the term. No sovereign spends 
 less on his Court, and his own private wants. If all thought 
 and acted as he does, his would be a model State. Both the 
 French and the English envoys affirm that the financial 
 administration had improved, that the value of land was in- 
 creasing, agriculture flourishing, and that many symptoms of 
 progress might be observed. 3 
 
 1 " Document!," i. 57. * " Document!," i. 210. 
 
 3 LYONS, " Despatches," p. 54.
 
 428 CHARACTER OF PIUS IX. 
 
 Whatever can be expected of a monarch full of affection 
 for his people, and seeking his sole recreation in works of 
 beueficence, Pius abundantly performs. " Pertransiit bene- 
 faciendo." These words have been spoken of One, far, 
 far higher, and yet, when applied to Pius, they are but the 
 simple truth. In him, we can clearly perceive how the 
 Papacy, even as a temporal State, might, so far as the cha- 
 racter of the Prince is concerned, through judicious elections, 
 be the most admirable of human institutions. A man in the 
 prime of life, after an irreproachable youth, and a conscien- 
 tious discharge of episcopal duties, is elevated to the highest 
 dignity and sovereign power. He knows nothing of expen- 
 sive amusements, he has no other passion than that of doing 
 good, no other ambition than to be beloved by his subjects. 
 His day is divided between prayer and the labours of govern- 
 ment ; his relaxation is a walk in the garden, a visit to a 
 church, a prison, or a charitable institution. Free from per- 
 sonal desires and from terrestial bonds, he has no relations 
 and no favourites to provide for. For all, there is the like 
 claim, and the like access to him. For him, the rights and 
 powers of his office exist only for the sake of its duties. 
 His abstinent and thrifty palace-expenditure affords to him 
 abundant means to relieve want and mitigate suffering on all 
 sides. He, too, like most of the Popes, has had buildings 
 erected ; yet his are not splendid palaces, but works of 
 general utility. Grievously outraged, maltreated, repaid 
 with ingratitude, he has never harboured a thought of re- 
 venge, never committed an act of severity, but ever forgiven 
 and ever pardoned. The cup of sweetness and of bitterness, 
 the cup of men's favour and disfavour, he has not merely 
 tasted, but drained to its very dregs ; he has heard, too, the 
 cry of " Hosanna!" and he has heard it soon followed by 
 the cry of "Crucify him!" The man of his confidence, 
 yea ! the first great mind of his nation, had fallen beneath 
 the dagger of the assassin ; and the bullet of an insurgent 
 struck down the friend by his side. And yet no feeling of 
 hatred, no breath of anger, could ever obscure, even for a 
 moment, the spotless mirror of his soul. Untouched by
 
 EFFORTS TO MISLEAD PUBLIC OPINION. 429 
 
 human folly, unmoved by human malice, he proceeds with a 
 firm and regular pace on his way, like to the stars in heaven. 
 
 Such I have seen the action of this Pope in Rome such 
 it has been described to me by all, whether near him or afar ; 
 and if he now seems to be appointed to pass through all the 
 painful and discouraging experience that can befall a monarch, 
 and to continue, to the end, the course of a prolonged martyr- 
 dom, he resembles in this as in so many other things the 
 Sixteenth Louis ; or rather, to ascend still higher, he knows 
 that the disciple is not above the Master, and that the pastor 
 of a Church, whose Lord and Founder died upon the Cross, 
 cannot marvel and cannot refuse that the Cross should be 
 laid upon him also. 
 
 At present, the utmost efforts are made, in Italy and 
 France especially, to mislead public opinion. One Italian 
 after another comes forward to show that the Papal See is, 
 according to the principles on which it is based, not in a 
 condition to comply with the demands which the genius 
 of the age, and the prevailing tendencies in social and 
 political life, make upon those who are in authority. The 
 same has been maintained by the English Minister, Gladstone, 
 in the British Parliament, in the year 1856, and ever since 
 then. 1 The Pope, it is said, is, as a Sovereign of the Church 
 States, bound by the Canon Law, and, therefore, fettered 
 down to the conditions and legal customs of the Middle Ages. 
 Hence, it is said that, as there has been a complete change 
 effected in all the relations of civil life, it is manifestly im- 
 possible that a people of the nineteenth century can be ruled 
 by the principles of the thirteenth ; and so the temporal 
 sovereignty of the Pope is a contradiction in itself a perma- 
 nent state of war, that can only be maintained by force of 
 arms ; and hence it is doomed whether sooner or later to 
 die ! All the friends of the Church, and of the Papal See, 
 
 1 See the work of MONTANELLI, " L'Impero, il Papato, e la demo- 
 crazia," Florence, 1859. The essays of MINGHELLI, VAINI, and of an 
 anonymous writer, u Patrizio Romano," in the " Rivista Contemporanea," 
 1861 ; the treatise of GEKNARELLI, " I Lutti dello Stato Romano," 
 1860, and several others.
 
 430 ELASTICITY OF THE PAPACY. 
 
 are called upon to oppose such an opinion ; for it is only that 
 Avhich, according to the Catholic doctrine, is of Divine Insti- 
 tution, and what is essential for all times and unchangeable, 
 to which the Pope is bound. 
 
 Happily, the sovereignty of the Pope is of a very elastic 
 nature, and it has already gone through many different forms. 
 If a comparison be instituted between the use which the 
 Popes made of their sovereignty in the thirteenth or 
 fifteenth century and the form of government which 
 Consalvi introduced, it will be seen that few things could 
 exhibit a stronger contrast with one another. There is 
 no reason, therefore, to doubt that it will now, after a violent 
 interruption, assume the form best adapted to the character 
 of the age and the requirements of the Italian people. Let 
 it be but seen that the Papal Government possesses a vast 
 advantage over all other forms of sovereignty ; and instantly 
 the people will willingly again place themselves under the 
 dominion of the Papacy. What is there to prevent us from 
 thinking that a state of circumstances may arise in which, 
 when elections to the Papal dignity occur, the persons chosen 
 shall no longer be decrepit, aged individuals, but men in the 
 prime of their years and their strength a period, too, in 
 which the people shall be reconciled to their government by 
 free institutions, and share in the conduct of their own con- 
 cerns whilst the upper classes are satisfied by the opening 
 of a suitable career in public affairs 1 In such a condition of 
 circumstances, the public and speedy administration of justice 
 would win the confidence of the people ; an honourable 
 esprit du corps, a feeling of self-respect, and a pride in their 
 integrity, and in the dignity of the class to which they belonged, 
 would animate the Government employes ; the hostile separa- 
 tion between ecclesiastics and laity would be put an end to, 
 by an equality in their privileges and their duties ; the police 
 would no longer prop themselves up by religious means, 
 and religion would no longer hobble like a cripple, and rely 
 for support upon the crutches of a policeman. The Pope 
 and his territory could then be placed under the protection 
 of the Catholic Powers the same Powers that have guaran-
 
 A RIGHTFUL REQUISITION. 431 
 
 teed the neutrality of Belgium and Switzerland. The Great 
 Powers that have become security for the integrity of the 
 wretched, self- collapsing empire of the Turk, could also 
 shield the dominions of the Pope. Defended by such a 
 buckler, and the ruler over a peaceful, contented people, the 
 Pope's hands would be completely free. The barriers to 
 material and intellectual intercourse which have until now 
 maintained, by an unnatural separation, different portions 
 and districts of Italy apart from each other, would then be 
 thrown down. International affinities and certain free ad- 
 missibilities, such as are enjoyed by University professors in 
 Germany, might leave open to the ambitious in their own 
 land a career for employment in the civil and military service 
 in other parts of Italy. The Pope would have no enemies to 
 fear, either at home or abroad ; his subjects would be released 
 from the detested conscription ; the State-budget would be 
 without the burden of army estimates, and for the mainte- 
 nance of public security all that would be required would be 
 a few brigades of a Gendarmerie. For the execution of 
 works of general necessity sufficient funds would not be 
 wanting. 
 
 And this is no vain, empty fancy-sketch. Abstracting 
 those misfortunes and faults which every one of good will, 
 and right intentions, and unprejudiced feeling will admit to 
 be curable, and supposing that peace and order prevail in Italy, 
 then might the Government of the Papal States be a model 
 Government a pattern worthy of imitation by all other 
 States and administrative authorities. That it should be 
 such a pattern for others has not only been declared by 
 Tommaseo, but also by the Bishop of Orleans, whose work 
 has been declared by the Pope himself to be the best of all 
 that have appeared in defence of the sovereignty of the 
 Papacy. Even he (the Bishop of Orleans) marks it as a 
 rightful requisition, that the lands of the Church should be 
 more prosperous and better governed than others, and that 
 their people should be more contented with their lot than any 
 other population. 1 Monseigneur Diipanloup likewise an- 
 
 1 " Si la perfection doit se rencontrer sur la terre quelque part, ce doit
 
 432 FREEDOM OF RELIGIOUS WORSHIP. 
 
 n ounces that those who, " under the pretence of dogmas, main- 
 tain that the Pope cannot put his Government in harmony icith 
 modern times and the legitimate wishes of the people, are per-sons 
 who thereby declare the destruction of the Papal power to be 
 unavoidable" Let it now be considered what high authoritative 
 approval the book has received in Rome which contains these 
 words, and there will then be found that they are full of hope 
 and of cheering promise. 
 
 There are persons now in Italy who urge, as regards the 
 temporal sovereignty of the Pope, a pressing difficulty, and 
 which they declare to be insoluble. It is a perfect freedom 
 of religious worship. 1 They say : Religious freedom in a 
 double sense freedom for all religion, and freedom to choose, 
 and openly profess and practise a form of religion different 
 from that which is the predominant faith as well as the creed 
 of the majority of the nation. This is a requirement from 
 which no state in Europe will dissent. The principle has 
 been introduced into other parts of Italy ; but the Pope will 
 never permit it. 
 
 I regard this assumed difficulty as insignificant that is, 
 that it has already practically been solved, or is still in 
 process of solution. Life, that concrete actuality, with its 
 unavoidable demands, is accustomed to cut through those knots 
 which to many have seemed inextricably involved. Attempts 
 have already been made in the States of the Church, as in so 
 many other places, by gold and eloquence, to win proselytes 
 to Protestantism. Hitherto, these efforts have proved 
 fruitless. 2 But admitting it had been otherwise, and that in 
 reality several conversions had taken place, would it then have 
 been in the power of those in authority to employ any means 
 of punishing the converts, and, above all, to maintain a last- 
 
 etre dans les etats de TEglise. J'admets cette exigence comme un hom- 
 mage involontaire qui nous honore, et avec lequel nous devons compter." 
 " La Souverainete Pontificate," 1860, p. 570. 
 
 1 MONTANELLI, " L'Impero, il Papato, e la Democrazia in Italia," 1859, 
 p. 29. 
 
 * See on this subject, ODDO, " L'Independenza, il Cattolicismo, e 
 1'Italia," 1859, p. 34.
 
 PROTESTANTISM IN ITALY. 433 
 
 ing coercion as regarded them ? We all know thoroughly 
 well to what a high state of perfection the art is carried now- 
 a-days of patting a pressure upon an unpopular government 
 how it works through the medium of diplomacy, or by agita- 
 tion, or by open attacks in the press, and by speeches in 
 Parliament until its power may at last be compared to that 
 of an armed intervention, and its final success is inevitable. 
 It is notorious that the case of the Jew boy Mortara has 
 been to the enemies of the Church and of the Roman See 
 one of the most welcome circumstances that could have 
 occurred, and they have known how to make a large capital 
 out of it. But if the event were now to occur that an 
 Italian, having become a convert to Protestantism, were to 
 be denounced to the Inquisition, and imprisoned by that 
 tribunal, &c. what would be the consequence? A cry of 
 indignation would be raised from Norway to Sicily news- 
 papers, popular meetings, Parliaments and Chambers, would 
 occupy themselves with the affair a powerful agitation, such 
 as we have witnessed with respect to the Florentine Madiais, 
 would be renewed and brought before the world in still more 
 huge dimensions ; and certain Powers, which it is needless 
 for us to name, would seize with delight upon the pretext 
 thus afforded them to rob the Pope of all that still remains to 
 him of his temporal sovereignty. And where are the hands 
 that in such a circumstance would be raised in defence of the 
 Pope? There is now much talk of the introduction of 
 Protestantism into Italy. Should this talk become a reality, 
 and Protestantism gain a strong position, and have an 
 influence upon ideas and feelings in Italy, then would most 
 assuredly the situation of the Papal See be, in an incal- 
 culable manner, embarrassed, and the reconciliation of the 
 Pope with the popular spirit be rendered, perhaps, an impos- 
 sibility. But nothing practical will ever come of such a 
 movement. Even in the century when Protestant ideas 
 possessed their greatest strength, and had attained their 
 mightiest powers of attraction and when they were in the 
 north of Europe truly popular, and dominated over the minds 
 and hearts of all even then Protestantism in Italy was only 
 
 FF
 
 434 PROTESTANT TESTIMONY OF ITALIANS. 
 
 thought of by a few scholars and ecclesiastics ; whilst the 
 people were never seriously affected by it. The peculiar Pro- 
 testant spiritual testimony of Italians,and the contingent which 
 they, on behalf of Italy, gave to the religious movement of 
 the sixteenth century was Socinianism ! It is not to be 
 expected that the ideas which three hundred years ago, in all 
 their youthful freshness, had such mighty attractions for 
 mankind, and yet whose ardent power was wholly lost upon 
 the Italians, will, at this period of the world's history, be able 
 to make any considerable impression upon the people of Italy 
 even though they cotne recommended by the influence of 
 the Piedmontese Government and the enticements of English 
 coin. "The Italians," said to me a man of whom all Tus- 
 cany is proud, a few years since in Florence, " can never be 
 made believing Calvinists or Lutherans. All that these 
 English and German labours will, or can, ever be able to 
 effect is this that a number of persons will be estranged 
 from all religions, and plunged into infidelity. With us, 
 Protestantism can never be anything more than a power of 
 destructiveness, and the founder of social disorders and dis- 
 sensions. 1 
 
 So has the English preacher, S. W. King, who visited 
 Italy in the year 1858, likewise admitted that the labours 
 (which had been richly supported by English money) of the 
 "Waldenses, and other preachers of Protestantism in Italy, 
 had for the most part proved to be ineffective ; that in Pied- 
 mont, where there had been the greatest exertions, Protes- 
 tantism had made but little progress ; and that outside the 
 Valleys of the Waldenses there were not 1,000 Protestants in 
 the whole kingdom. 2 It astonished him to find the opponents 
 of the Church able to quote quite glibly passages from 
 
 1 " In the same spirit speaks." GIURIA, " Silvio Pellico e il suo 
 tempo," 1854, p. 81. 
 
 1 " The Italian Tallies of the Pennine Alps ;" London, 1858. See 
 GIAC, ODDO, " I/Independenza, il Cattolicismo e I'ltalia," 1859, p. 40. 
 lie holds that the notion, that Protestantism can ever become a power in 
 Italy, is absolutely groundless and absurd. Such, too, is the opinion of 
 MASSIMO D'AZEGLIO.
 
 REFORM OF THE PAPAL SEE. 435 
 
 the Bible against the Catholic religion, whilst they showed 
 that they themselves had no faith in the Bible, nor in the 
 passages they cited ! a circumstance that is quite intelligible 
 to those well acquainted with Italian affairs. Recently, too, 
 at a meeting of " the Protestant Alliance," at Geneva, the 
 paid agents of "the Alliance," the Messrs. Bert, Valette, 
 and Mazarella, felt it necessary to let down, in a very 
 modest, moderate style, the high hopes that had been enter- 
 tained of the glorious consequence to follow from "the 
 Gospel in Italy," and to admit to an audience hungering for 
 far different tidings, that, as yet there had, in reality, very 
 little been done ! 
 
 The French Government has proposed, over and over again, 
 to the Papal Administration, both general and particular 
 reforms. Even Austria, in the year 1859, declared herself 
 ready again to take up the negotiations with the Papal 
 Government for reforms, which had been entered upon, in 
 1857, by France, and subsequently abandoned, 1 or to make 
 new representations on the same subject at Rome. The 
 Roman Cabinet has, upon its part, never absolutely rejected 
 these reforms. On the contrary, in the year 1860, it stated 
 " that the Holy See regarded the question of reforms as one 
 that was in principle conceded, but maintained its right to 
 postpone the announcement of them until it was again put 
 in possession of those provinces belonging to it which had 
 been annexed by Sardinia." 2 At an early period, the Pope 
 had declared that he was ready to introduce the reforms pro- 
 posed by the Great Powers, but under the stipulation (as well 
 as an unavoidable condition) that the integrity of the Papal 
 States should be guaranteed. This was refused in Paris ; 
 and by that refusal may be measured the candour, sincerity, 
 and fair-dealing involved in the proposed demand made for 
 reforms. With this, also, is combined another matter, made 
 known by Lord John Russell's declaration in Parliament, and 
 the knowledge of which will astonish no one namely, "that 
 
 1 " Malmesbury Correspondence," p. 155. 
 
 1 Report of the Duke of Grammont, 14th April, 1860. " Allg. Ztg.," 
 1861, p. 718. 
 
 FF 2
 
 436 LAMENTABLE SITUATION. 
 
 the Courts of Vienna and Madrid had tendered a proposal in 
 Paris, that the affairs of the Papal States should be made 
 the suhject of a united consultation and decision ; but, in 
 Paris, this proposal had been declined, under the pretence 
 that, in the arrangements of the Vienna Peace, with respect 
 to the Papal States, England, Prussia, and Sweden had 
 been participators ' M an expression that sounds very like a 
 mockery, considering all the circumstances that have occurred 
 of late years ; and what things have been contrived between 
 Paris and Turin, in which, most assuredly, the opinion of 
 Prussia or of Sweden was never asked for. And then, 
 almost at the very time that those events became known, 
 the Pope was compelled to have solicitations made at Paris, 
 " that France should not hasten the withdrawal of the troops 
 in occupation of Rome." 2 In regarding a situation so very 
 lamentable as this, one feels sorely tempted to wish that a 
 crisis might come even though it be in the form of a 
 catastrophe but still one that might, at least, put a stop to 
 the continuation of such ceaseless sorrows, combined with 
 such deep humiliations. 
 
 From the facts of the immediate past can probabilities 
 as to fast-coming events be clearly surmised. The Ro- 
 magna, which, in 1846, desired to be annexed to Tuscany, 
 wished, in 1859, upon the withdrawal of the Austrian gar- 
 
 1 " Weekly Register ;" London, June 22, 1861. [The precise words used 
 by LORD JOHN RUSSELL are thus reported in ' Hansard" : a I have re- 
 ceived a communication from the French Ambassador in London, inform- 
 ing me that a proposal has been made to the French Government by th.e 
 Austrian and Spanish Ambassadors in Paris, in general terms, that the 
 Roman Catholic Powers should act in concert with regard to the 
 temporal power of the Pope. There was no mention of armies, 
 or of protecting by arms the temporalities of the Pope. It was a 
 general proposal, and to that proposal an absolute negative was 
 given by the Government of France. I may, perhaps, state that the 
 ground on which the proposition was refused was, that the general 
 arrangements with regard to the temporalities of the Pope were settled 
 at Vienna by Great Britain, Prussia, and Sweden, as well as by the 
 Roman Catholic powers." HANSARD'S u Parliamentary Debates" (third 
 series), vol. clxiii., pp. 1:327. 1328. June 20, 1861.] 
 
 * " Allg. Ztg.," 1861, 25th June, p. 2872.
 
 "THE POPE AND THE CONGRESS." 437 
 
 rison, to become Piedmontese ; and 121 Deputies one half 
 of them consisting of nobles voted unanimously for annexa- 
 tion to Piedmont. The French Emperor, too, wrote to the 
 Pope r 1 " That the Legations could now only be retained in 
 obedience to the Papal See by means of a prolonged military 
 occupation ; and that this could give rise only to a continual 
 state of rancour, discontent, and fear. The Pope, therefore, 
 would, for the sake of the peace of Europe, make a sacrifice 
 in the loss of those Provinces." The same motive can be 
 made equally available, whenever the moment may come, 
 when the Pope will be required to renounce his sovereignty 
 over the remainder of his territories. " There is," said 
 Napoleon III., in another letter to the Pope, "an inexorable 
 logic in facts." 
 
 Shortly afterwards appeared in Paris the well- known 
 pamphlet, " The Pope and the Congress," of which it was 
 said by Lord John Russell, " that it had stripped the Pope 
 of more than the half of his dominions." It proposed "to leave 
 to the Head of the Church the city of Rome and a garden." 
 At the same time, however, Cavour said in his Parliament, 
 at Turin, that this was the demand of Italy viz. : " Rome 
 is precisely the very thing that we want ; and Rome we 
 must have, as the capital of our kingdom." 
 
 The conduct pursued was utterly unprecedented. The 
 Pope was required to disarm his own troops, at the very 
 moment that his territories were overrun with foreigners, and 
 his subjects called upon by them to take up arms. Without any 
 Declaration of War against him, his dominions were invaded, 
 an Ultimatum was presented to him, his little band of soldiers 
 was overwhelmed with an army ten times their own in number; 
 and at the same time furious proclamations were issued, threat- 
 ening with death and extermination " the Papal hordes " 
 and then! Cavour declared (llth October, 1860), in Par- 
 liament, " that all these memorable circumstances are 
 the necessary results of our policy for the last twelve 
 years!!!" 
 
 What are to be the guarantees for this (Sardinian) Go- 
 1 The letter is published in the "Moniteur," llth January, 1860.
 
 43S ROME AND PIEDMONT. 
 
 vernment? Would it not itself deride the credulity of those 
 who placed faith in its promises ? It will remain consistent 
 with its character. It unites the shameless tyranny of a 
 Convention, and the impudent sophistry of a Government 
 of advocates, with the ruthless brutality of a military despotism. 
 Far more secure could Pius feel upon the Turkish soil, and 
 in his dealings with the Sultan, than in the neighbourhood 
 of the Piedmontese beast of prey, or in the power of a 
 Ricasoli, or a Ratazzi, or, above all, of those lawyers and 
 literati, those land-plagues that, with trumpery, pompous 
 rhetoric, and hollow-sounding phrases, are now and mayhap 
 for some little time longer may be permitted to swim upon 
 the surface of society. (Rather than trust to these) Pius 
 may imitate the example of the great Popes of the twelfth 
 century. They, confiding in the spiritual power of the 
 Papacy, have sought for and found, on the other side of the 
 Alps, that freedom and independence which were denied to 
 them in Italy. Germany, Belgium, Spain, the Ionian Islands, 
 Catholic Switzerland he can select any one of these he 
 chooses, certain that his arrival will be greeted by a joyful 
 and reverential population, in the midst of whom he will find 
 full freedom of action. 
 
 If Piedmont, with the connivance of France, should 
 wrest from the Papacy Rome, and the remainder of the 
 Papal States, then will the rightful possession of them by 
 the Pope be interrupted, but not abolished. The Papacy has 
 seen many monarchies created, and then dissolved into atoms. 
 The See of St. Peter will outlive the Kingdom of Italy, and 
 many other sovereignties. It can, with patience, wait : 
 patiens quia aeternus. " The strength of the Papacy," writes 
 Lord Cowley, the British Ambassador at Rome, on the 19th 
 January, 1859, "lies in his weakness, and we may well ask 
 what can you do with a man who, the moment that pres- 
 sure is put upon him, exclaims, ' Do with me what you will 
 drive me from Rome ; but, remember, I am as much the 
 Pope, whether seated on a barren rock, or on the throne of 
 St. Peter?'" 1 
 
 1 u Official Correspondence on the Italian question, by the Earl of 
 Malmesbury." London, 1859, p. 22.
 
 FRANCE AND ROME. 439 
 
 Let this fact also be borne in mind, that Rome (as it has 
 been already remarked by the Marquis Gino Capponi,) 
 stands much more in need of the Pope, than the Pope does 
 of Rome; and that, with a continuous absence of the Pope 
 from Rome, the decay of that city inevitably begins. " In 
 Rome," says Cernuschi, one of the Roman Revolutionists of 
 1849, but whose opinions have changed since then "in 
 Rome, above the Catacombs, in the midst of the Basilicas, 
 and by the side of the Vatican, there is no room, space, 
 nor place for a democratic tribune, much less for a king." 
 Rome may yet have to learn, whether it is for its greater 
 advantage to be the domicile of Victor Emmanuel, the 
 titular capital of a kingdom in which the centrifugal ten- 
 dency is much stronger than the centripetal ; and whether 
 the preference so given to it is a compensation for the rank 
 and importance it had previously enjoyed as the metropolis 
 of all Catholic Christendom as the first religious city of the 
 entire world. We shall see what was seen in the fourteenth 
 century. Roman envoys will seek out the Pope, and earnestly 
 entreat him to return to " his faithful city." 
 
 There is one fact to which persons cannot now close their 
 eyes, and that is, that the Pope and the whole "curia" are 
 at this moment dependent upon the French Government. 
 The mere threat to withdraw the French garrison, and to 
 yield up to their fate the Pope, and the remnant of the 
 Papal States still left to him, must force Rome to yield to 
 the threatener everything that it would not be a sin to 
 concede. And the demand might fairly be submitted to, 
 when with it would be involved the duty of self-preservation. 
 But such a state of circumstances, it is plain, must be in the 
 highest degree alarming for other nations. But for the 
 absolute confidence which every one has in the exalted 
 conscientiousness and pure truthfulness of the present Pope, 
 and the lucky circumstance that there is now no ecclesiastical 
 complication which the Parisian Court could use for its own 
 selfish ends only that these things are perfectly plain, the 
 existing relations between France and Rome could not be 
 patiently endured by the Catholic world. But then these
 
 440 POLICY OF THE EMPEROR. 
 
 relations may suddenly change, and as, sooner or later, they 
 are sure to change, so can no one seriously desire their much 
 longer continuance. No Catholic could or would find such 
 relations to be tolerable, if they became permanent. The 
 French garrison is not in Rome, having for its main object 
 the defence of the city against an attack on the part of 
 Piedmont a word of command sent by the telegraph from 
 Paris to Rome would be of sufficient potency to effect that 
 purpose. The French are in Rome to protect the Pope 
 against his own subjects, and the GaribaliHan free corps. 
 
 Already has the French Government, in principle, abandoned 
 the maintenance of the dismembered Papal States. It had 
 declared itself in favour of a Confederation, as the best form of 
 political existence for the peninsula; and in so doing, had given 
 a guarantee for the preservation of the temporal sovereignty of 
 the Pope. But on the 25th of June, 1861, France recog- 
 nised the new kingdom of Italy ; and a few days afterwards, 
 the Piedrnontese Government publicly announced : " That 
 persons should not let themselves be deceived by appearances 
 that Piedmont would, at the fitting time, and with the assent 
 of France, make its entrance into Rome, constitute Rome to 
 be the residence of the King, and incorporate the remnant 
 of the Papal States with the new kingdom." 
 
 For the present, it is the interest of the French Govern- 
 ment to see the Pope so weak that he cannot dispense with 
 the support of France, and that whatever may be desired 
 from him should be rendered impossible of refusal, by the 
 threat that the Pope would be left as a defenceless prey to 
 his Italian enemies. If the withdrawal of the French 
 garrison were to have the effect of removing the Pope and 
 Court into France, then would the French sooner give up 
 to-day than to-morrow the city of Rome, and all that remain 
 of the Papal States, to the Piedmontese. That the Pope 
 should become a dependent upon Piedmont, is one of those 
 plans which does not lie within the contemplated policy of 
 the Emperor. But if the transference of the Court of Rome 
 to France could be effected, thus would the greatest triumph 
 of CaBsarism be accomplished. The nephew, the heir and
 
 STRUGGLE OF THREE GREAT NATIONALITIES. 441 
 
 executor of the ideas and plans of " the uncle," would then, 
 by " pacific " means, and the avoidance of direct force, 
 attain what the first Napoleon was never once able, even 
 with the stress of imprisonment, to extort. 
 
 There is now in Europe no Power which either will or 
 can afford to the Pope effective aid in the preservation of 
 the territories that are still left to him. 
 
 Three mighty races, three great complex nationalities, are 
 now struggling for dominion over the world ; and all three 
 are seized with the fearful travail throes of new formations. 
 These are the Roman world, under a French ijy^wf, as 
 leader the Sclavonic, with a Russian primacy and the 
 Germanic, with England's preponderance. In the last of 
 these the Protestant interest is, through England and 
 Prussia, the most predominant. The consequence is, that 
 England shows itself to be hostile to the continuance of the 
 Papal States, and for the last two years has taken an active 
 part aiding in their destruction ; whilst in Prussia the 
 majority are moved towards the same view from a double 
 interest first there is the religious notion, to which the 
 weakness and depression of the Roman See is agreeable ; and 
 then there is the political feeling, that regards with com- 
 placency .the principle of annexation effected by a vote of 
 the plebiscity, and which it is considered desirable to have 
 imported into Germany. At such cost are persons quite 
 prepared to sacrifice the common interest of all sove- 
 reigns, and contentedly to look on until the overthrow of 
 the principle of legitimacy and of all public law in Europe is 
 completed. The Sclavonic world stands partly under the 
 influence of Russia, but partly also distinct from it, and 
 contemplates every question with a view to see how it may 
 affect the great interests of nationality and so doing, shows 
 itself disposed to sympathise with Italian nationality against 
 an isolated Church sovereignty over a distinct state. As to 
 Catholic Germany, it is, by reason of the weakness of Austria, 
 completely destitute of any political centre, and of all 
 influence beyond the borders of Germany it is upon this 
 question powerless, and must confine itself to addresses, and
 
 442 MISREPRESENTATIONS OF THE FRENCH PRESS. 
 
 innocuous announcements of the notions that it entertains. 
 France, in the year 1849, as a Republic, restored by force 
 of arms the Pope who had been despoiled and driven away 
 by the Revolution. At that time a great majority of the 
 French nation was favourable to the cause of the Pope. His 
 liberal government affording a willing hand to every just 
 demand of his subjects, and his exertions to introduce re- 
 forms, had won for him the applause of all Europe, and made 
 him the most popular of princes. But when he was rein- 
 stated by French arms, and that event was followed by a 
 complete re-establishment of an ecclesiastical adminis- 
 tration, and when the Statuto, and, with it, self-government 
 and popular representation, were abolished, and a con- 
 dition of circumstances was renewed which it was supposed 
 had been for ever got rid of, then it was that the feelings of 
 the French with respect to the Papal Government were 
 changed. The daily journals those newspapers that are 
 the most read have now had for ten years time opportunity 
 and unrestrained freedom to depict in the darkest colours 
 the condition of the Papal States, and to portray the clerical 
 government as an irremediable mass of corruption. The 
 great amount of good that has been effected, or is in process 
 of accomplishment, they have never mentioned; they have 
 carefully suppressed all notice of it, or they have misrepresented 
 it, whilst they have, at the same time, given an exaggerated 
 description of every abuse. And so it has come to pass that 
 episcopal pastorals and the most eloquent writings of the 
 first men in France have in these latter years been able to 
 produce no favourable influence upon national feeling in support 
 of the maintenance of the Papal States ; and, consequently, 
 if the Emperor were to withdraw his troops, there would be 
 apparent no very strong movement in France, and none at 
 all of a character threatening danger to its Government. 1 
 
 D 
 
 1 A correspondent of the " N. Preussischen Zeitung " (26th Sept., 
 1861), who has shown himself to be generally well informed, says : " The 
 Catholic population (of France) are absolutely incapable of understand- 
 ing how it can be necessary for the Head of the Church to be also a 
 Sovereign ; and the French episcopacy have contributed to the adoption of
 
 ITALIAN OPPOSITION TO THE PAPACY. 443 
 
 The feelings of the people in those portions of his terri- 
 tory still remaining in possession of the Pope are in favour 
 of their being incorporated with the new Italian kingdom. 1 
 In consequence of directions received from Turin, all there 
 remains tranquil ; but when the two governments of Paris 
 and Turin have made up their minds, and they consider that 
 the time for action has arrived, then we may be sure there 
 will be an insurrection of the inhabitants and a plebiscite to 
 give to the attack of the Piedmontese the appearance of 
 being nothing more than a compliance with, and a fulfilment 
 of, the popular will. 
 
 And so, then, we at last come to this, that it is the Italian 
 nation the nation to which also the Pope, as well as the 
 "Prelati" of the Curia belong that has to decide upon the 
 fate of the Papacy; and this it is which is truly tragic in 
 the present situation of affairs that here Italians stand op- 
 posed to Italians. And herewith is the Papacy in a far 
 different position than it was in former times ; for now the 
 active majority of the nation seems determined on no longer 
 enduring a Papal Government in the midst of the Peninsula. 
 It is, they say, with its past antecedents, become a strange 
 and antipathetical institution to the rest of Italy; and it is, 
 in its dependence upon foreign protection, and guarded, in 
 consequence of its own cravings, by foreign arms, a horrify- 
 ing excrescence, a breath-smothering wen, and an ever- 
 threatening danger to the body politic of Italy. 
 
 such a notion, because they have whether forced to do so or not, is an 
 historical question we do not here enter into shown themselves to be 
 well content with a government allowance that which was given to the 
 Church by the State for the loss of the property of which it was de- 
 spoiled such property being, in fact, their temporal power. Add to this 
 feeling the overwhelming influence of the anti-religious newspapers, and 
 it is impossible not to entertain the conviction that the temporal power 
 of the Pope has nothing favourable to expect from the verdict of public 
 opinion in France. It is the Emperor alone who can give, by a favour- 
 able vote, a fitting solution to the difficulty." 
 
 1 " Allg. Zeitung," 26th May, 1861. See also " Neue Preuss. Ztg.," 
 8th August, 18G1. " The whole population of that district (Subiaco; is 
 pervaded but by one thought, and that is to see themselves included 
 amongst the Piedmontese."
 
 444 THE ITALIAN KINGDOM AND THE PAPACY. 
 
 When the Popes were, in former times, either threatened 
 or attacked, the Italians either stood by their side or re- 
 mained passive. But now almost the whole Italian literature 
 preaches the same opinion, and the whole of the periodical 
 press with the exception of the "Armenia" in Turin and 
 the "Civilta" in Rome inculcate the pet doctrine of the day; 
 viz., that the Pope must, for the sake of the welfare of Italy, 
 be stripped of his temporal sovereignty ; and this, it is said, 
 must be done under the pretence either that the greatness 
 and unity of Italy require such a sacrifice, or that the 
 defects of the Papal Government are held to be irremediable. 
 A powerful Italy is wished for, because the example of a 
 single united powerful France has worked upon the minds of 
 the higher classes in Italy, who have for a long time been 
 imbued with French literature. To obtain this commanding 
 position, it is affirmed that Italy can alone reach it by ab- 
 sorbing those States which are in their nature neutral, and 
 by means of which the country is separated into two distinct 
 halves. 1 Besides this, it is added, as a point about which 
 there can be no dispute, that there is an utter impossibility 
 a Koman priest-government can ever reform itself, or adapt 
 itself to the wants, ideas, and wishes of modern times. 
 Such are the notions that Cavour has spread abroad. When, 
 in the spring of the present year, Mr. Pope Hennessey spoke 
 in the British Parliament in favour of the rights of the 
 Papacy, Mr. Layard called upon him to name a single man 
 of any intellectual importance in Italy, who, on the question 
 of the Papal States, was on the side of the Papal Govern- 
 ment; and Mr. Hennessey could only name one, and that 
 one was the Jesuit Secchi. In point of fact, two indi- 
 viduals conspicuous for their talents amongst the clergy have 
 very openly declared as their opinion that the Papal States, 
 at least in their present condition, must either cease alto- 
 gether or be completely altered. The two men who have 
 given this opinion are Passaglia and Tosti. 2 
 
 1 See the memorial of Count Rayneval, in "Allg. Ztg.," 1857, 15th 
 April. 
 
 2 The letter of the latter, dated from Montecassino, 15th June, is
 
 IMPORTANCE OF THE PAPAL SEE TO ITALY. 445 
 
 And yet the time will assuredly come when the Italian 
 nation will be again reconciled with the Papacy and its 
 dominion in the midst of the people. That unhappy, hateful 
 pressure which Austria imposed upon the entire Peninsula, 
 was in reality the main cause why the value of the Papal 
 See as a moral bulwark to all Italy became so very much 
 obscured in the eyes of the nation. The Roman Govern- 
 ment itself groaned under this pressure, and yet was forced 
 to strengthen and confirm it, by calling in the Austrian 
 troops of occupation, and by the political helplessness that 
 forced it to follow, in temporal and political'afFairs, the will 
 of the Cabinet of Vienna. 1 
 
 For fifteen hundred years the Papal See was the pivot upon 
 which turned the destiny of the Italians. The greatest and 
 the mightiest institution of the Peninsula is this See ; and 
 upon its possession rested the weight of Europe, and the 
 world-renowned importance of Italy. Every thoughtful 
 Italian must acknowledge that, if the Papal See be lost 
 to Italy, then the sun has disappeared from its firmament. 
 The partition between the nation and the whole course of 
 Italian history on the one side, and of the Papacy on the 
 other, could alone be put an end to, when Italy should 
 become that which might make her united that is, her con- 
 version into a purely military state, living in a constant state 
 of war, and maintaining herself by conquests. This, how- 
 ever, is a state of circumstances so totally repugnant to the 
 nature and disposition of the present race of Italians, that 
 
 printed in the " Edinburgh Review," July, 1861, p. 277. In that letter 
 he prays of the Pope to cast away the burden of the Papal States, 
 " Perche oggi i popoli non si lasciano piu portare addosso, come una 
 volta, ma vogliono andare co' piedi loro," &c. TOSTI'S treatise, "S. 
 Benedetto al Parlamento nazionale" (Naples, 1861), in which a request is 
 made for leaving Montecassino untouched, takes its stand upon the pro- 
 priety of having a united Italian kingdom, and by implication abandons 
 the maintenance of the Neapolitan Kingdom, as well as of the Papal 
 States. 
 
 1 " Che e egli (the Pope) in realta se non un suddito dell' Austria?" 
 said TORRELLI, in the year 1846, in his " Pensieri sulT Italia," p. 83. 
 That was, until 1859, the opinion generally entertained in Italy.
 
 446 PROPOSED PERVERSION OF THE PAPACY. 
 
 the military enthusiasm that now prevails, and yet has left 
 the greater portion of the population unmoved, is certain 
 in a very short space of time totally to subside. 
 
 A remarkable expression of Sismondi's is well worthy of 
 notice, viz., that the contumely with which Alexander VI., 
 during his government, had covered the Church of Rome, 
 annihilated that religious respect which had previously pro- 
 tected all Italy, and so rendered it an easier spoil for hostile 
 attempts to be made against it. Thus it was since Leo I. 
 for fourteen hundred years every enfeeblement and de- 
 pression of the Papacy was at the same time a downfall 
 for Italy. In the grandeur and the majesty of the See of 
 St. Peter, the Italians participated. And when Italians 
 turned their arms against this See, and when, with the 
 spoliation of this See, they enriched themselves, and when 
 they hoped with the princely robes they had torn from the 
 Pontiff to cover their nakedness, then were they ultimately 
 compelled to feel that they had been guilty of tl felo de se" 
 had laid suicidal hands on their own body, and vented their 
 blind rage on its noblest organ. This is a fact which has 
 been recognized by all persons, in modern times, thoroughly 
 well acquainted with Italian history. Balbo, Troya, Cantu, 
 Galeotti, Gino Capponi have not spoken otherwise respect- 
 ing it. And even Ferrari would admit it, but that he is 
 restrained by his cheerless, unchristian fatalism. 
 
 But the predominant party now in Italy is not only for 
 an incorporation of the whole of the Papal States in the 
 new United Kingdom, but they would also make use of the 
 spiritual power of the Papacy for their political objects for 
 objects which are still incalculable. They would have the 
 Pope, not a world-Pope, but a Pope for the Italians, to do 
 their will, and to prop up their kingdom ; and much, indeed, 
 would they be amazed and embarrassed to find the Pope 
 making preparations to pass beyond the Alps. There might 
 be an attempt to create a schism an essay at establishing 
 an anti-Pope but such, in sooth, would be but a harmless 
 experiment; and its only end would be "reading a lesson" 
 to the Italians, that an institution like the Papacy can never
 
 THE PAPACY A SACRED DEPOSIT TO ITALY. 447 
 
 be made use of for selfish purposes, and that those who so 
 seek to pervert it will, at last, only bring down upon them- 
 selves both loss and shame. 
 
 For centuries long, in Italy, the people hoped in the fulfil- 
 ment of a prophecy respecting " an Angelic Pope " (Papa 
 Angelico), who was yet to come, and to bring order out of 
 disorder, peace out of disunion, piety out of irreligion, and 
 who also was to be the renovator and the benefactor of 
 Italy. 1 That which is a Barbarossa sleeping in a cavern 
 under a mountain, for the Germans, is the " Papa Angelico " 
 for Italians. In the saga is expressed the feeling, that the 
 destiny of Italy is determined by the Papacy, that both have 
 become united together, and that it is the mission of the 
 Pupal See to be the guardian genius of the nation, to abide 
 with it, and to watch over it. 
 
 Although the understanding of Italians may be, for one 
 moment, darkened, yet it will again be able clearly to 
 discern that the Papacy is an exalted deposit and pledge, 
 entrusted to them by God, and that, as a nation, they will 
 be held responsible for the use or misuse that they make of 
 it. The greatest men amongst the Italians in modern times 
 have avowed that a monarchical unity was antagonistic 
 both to the character and the past history of the population, 
 and did violence to the Italian municipal spirit. Balbo, 
 Gioberti, Rosmini, Galeotti, were all in favour of a Confede- 
 ration, as being most in accordance with the Italian tradition 
 and the popular sentiment, and therefore they regarded a 
 united Italian kingdom as an impossibility. And even now 
 there are many deep-thinking Italians who see in this 
 attempt at creating a United-Kingdom edifice, nothing 
 more than an effort to put the roof on a building which has 
 
 1 In CAMBI (" Storie Florentine," iii. 60), it is said that in the year 
 1514 a monk, Theodore, had cajoled the people with the assurance, 
 " avergli un angelo rivelato, come egli sarebbe quel Papa Angelico, che 
 i popoli italiani aspettavano." Savonarola was also accused that his 
 ambitious intention had been " farsi Papa Angelico." See " Scritti vari 
 del P. Vixc. MARCIIESE." Florence, 1855, p. 294.
 
 448 UNITY AND CENTRALIZATION. 
 
 neither side walls nor a solid foundation. 1 The road to what 
 is possible will yet be discovered, out of the by-path of that 
 which, by experience, is found to be impossible. The party 
 which struggles for unity and centralization, after the 
 French pattern, has now the upper hand ; but it will not 
 be able to retain it, and the adherents of a federative unity 
 will be then its successors in power and influence. 2 Not many 
 weeks since, one of the early leaders of the Italian Revolu- 
 tion, Cernuschi, demonstrated the impracticability of a 
 United Italy, and prophesied a speedy dissolution to the new 
 kingdom. 3 A Confederation of Italian States, with the Pope 
 as Moderator at their head : such was the hope of Pius IX., 
 and the object for which he struggled. 4 And the establish- 
 ment of such is still attainable, and presents itself as a plan 
 the most suitable for the popular genius ; and as such it will 
 be regarded when the existing Piedmontese annexation 
 unity has fallen into fragments, when the Italians are 
 wearied of Piedmontese officials, and when their shoulders 
 have been galled and bruised from the heavy yoke of a Pied- 
 montese administration. Men cannot, when they please, 
 improvise united nationalities. To form a united nation, 
 there must be the still, silent process of spontaneity; and to 
 complete it, the slow, gradual working of centuries. Pied- 
 mont has neither the vocation nor the capability, in any one 
 respect, to effect a fusion of the scattered parts of Italy, 
 differing from each other in manners, tastes, and customs. 
 Neither will the other parts of Italy ever really become 
 Piedmontese, nor will Piedmont become Italian. Beyond 
 the military spirit which certainly is to be found in Pied- 
 mont, though wanting in the remainder of Italy, the popula- 
 tion of Piedmont possesses none of those peculiar gifts, as 
 
 1 See the remarks of the Marquess Bourbon del Monte in " Corre- 
 spondant," 1859, xii. 472. 
 
 1 A proper distinction is there made between the two parties by Mox- 
 TANELLI, "Memorie," i. 33. 
 
 * " Neue Preuss. Ztg.," 16th July, 1861. u Ami de la religion," 18th 
 July. 
 
 4 " Un Papato moderators della lega degli Stati Italiani." FARIXI, 
 ii. 69.
 
 TURIN GOVERNMENT AND THE POPE. 449 
 
 a distinct race, which fit it for the intellectual or political 
 leadership of a whole united Italian nationality. 
 
 What the Government in Turin can offer to the Pope ; 
 what it formerly, under Cavour and through Passaglia, has 
 offered ; and what it, under Ricasoli, does offer, or thinks of 
 again offering, is a subject with respect to which there is no 
 mystery. 1 The matter is one partly affecting the position of 
 the Pope, and partly the freedom of the Church in Italy. 
 With reference to the latter, Cavour, on the 26th March, 
 1861, made the declaration in Parliament, "That Italy will 
 emancipate the Church from the State, and secure its liberty 
 on the amplest foundations." With respect to the Pope and 
 Court of Rome, it was announced, " That there was every 
 readiness to concede to the Pope and the Cardinals, as 
 Princes and Privy-Councillors of the Church, all the privi- 
 leges of a sovereign's immunities both for his own person and 
 the members of the Sacred College." It was added " that 
 an establishment of a free fixed landed property an endow- 
 ment from the State would not be refused ;" for it was 
 perceived, even in Turin, that the Pope could not well be 
 placed in the position of a government-pensioner. And yet, 
 with these two conditions united together sovereignty and 
 an independent landed property there would be nothing 
 more effected than the new commencement of another Papal 
 state ! But now Piedmont is prepared to rob the Pope of 
 that which is his own, in order that he maybe endowed with the 
 property of strangers and when that has been done, there 
 is something more to be thought of: namely, what reliable 
 securities can the Turin politicians or the future Roman 
 Government tender to the Pope and the whole Catholic 
 world ? Who is there to guarantee the faithful performance 
 of what they promise 1 ? Or who is there to go bail for the 
 guarantees "? Who is to be guarantee for the guarantors ? 
 
 Is a Government that prides itself in its perfidy, and 
 respects neither the rights of nations, nor the faith of treaties, 
 nor the legitimate possession of property that has no regard 
 
 1 See as to this matter the " Edinburgh Review," 1861, July, pp. 
 260-9. 
 
 GG
 
 450 PIEDMONT AND THE PAPAL SEE. 
 
 but for brute force, and the power of the stronger, and the 
 authority of accomplished facts ; is a Government that, in 
 one of its decrees, declared the memory of a murderer to be 
 holy and sanctified ; is a Government that is restrained 
 neither by the bonds of law, morality, nor religion, to be the 
 Government that is to secure to the Church its freedom, and 
 to the Pope his inviolability and independence ? Let the 
 question be asked in Turin of the Brofferios and the Gal- 
 lengas, who regard the Church as a useless log, from which 
 anyone can, like the Horatian carpenter, chop out, as he 
 fancies, either a stool or an idol, 1 and they will tell you what 
 would be the lot assigned to it. Their " freedom of the 
 Church " would begin by " freeing " it from the burden of its 
 earthly possessions. And when they had done that, then 
 they might deal with the Mendicant as their whims, their 
 caprice, or their innate despotism might dispose them to act. 
 Their doings with religious communities, their oppression 
 and spoliation of monasteries and convents, their banishment 
 and maltreatment of bishops, are now before the world, as the 
 superabounding first-fruits of the new era of "religious free- 
 dom" inaugurated by them. 
 
 That the Papal See could be, in a kingdom like the Pied- 
 montese, really free, is an absolute impossibility. Even if the 
 present and future statesmen of that kingdom had the sincere 
 intention not to violate the freedom of the Papal See, still 
 circumstances would overmaster them. The daily press 
 would be untiring in its mischievous meddling and incite- 
 ments it would to-day be describing the Pope and all 
 about him as secret conspirators, and then to-morrow de- 
 nouncing them as popular demagogues ; and so there would 
 be put in force, and in a very short space of time, too, the 
 whole apparatus of the police, with political measures of 
 restraint and coercion. As -opposed to the powers and 
 influences that now prevail in Piedmont, and will for a time 
 reign over it, every compact and assurance would be but as a 
 
 1 [" Olira truncus eram ficulnus, inutile lignum; 
 
 Cum faber, incertus scamnum faceret ne Priapum, 
 Maluit esse deum." " Hor.," lib. i., serin. 8.J
 
 THE POPE A " SUBJECT " OR " AN EXILE " ? 45 I 
 
 drag-chain made of paper to restrain the downward career of a 
 fast-running carriage. Upstart advocates and journalists would, 
 upon the very first opportunity, sweep down, with the besom 
 of brutal violence, the whole cobweb of solemn stipulations. 
 Italian Bareres would surpass their predecessors, in the Paris 
 Convention, in the utterance of sonorous phrases, in palliation 
 of every infringement of right that might be practised, and 
 every deed of violence that might be perpetrated. Then, 
 too, they would be acting upon the apothegm : " II faut aviler 
 et puis detruire." And as " the monarchy" was treated in 
 France, so the posthumous posterity of the Convention in 
 Italy are already preparing to follow out a similar series of 
 events, and to complete them all with a final, fatal verdict 
 against " the Papacy." According to statements made in 
 the public journals, " There are at this time in Rome nine of 
 the Cardinals disposed to enter into terms with Piedmont." 
 This is scarcely credible. They must be indeed blindfolded, 
 if they could think of so acting; or do they imagine that the 
 time has, even now, come when the Mazzini Wolf will lie 
 down meekly, gently, and tenderly by the side of the Church 
 Lamb ? 
 
 Should the hour arrive when the Pope has to make his 
 choice between the condition of being "a subject" or "an 
 exile," then will he, as we confidently hope, adopt the better 
 alternative ; for the Pope is in the whole Catholic world at 
 home. 1 It is only amongst the professors of another creed he 
 would be a stranger. To whatever side he then may turn, 
 he will everywhere meet with his children, and everywhere 
 will be venerated as a father. " Thou art mine, and we are 
 thine" such is the salutation with which he will be in all 
 places greeted. 
 
 Rome, too, may then remember with what shouts of joy in 
 the time of the seventh Pius the appearance of the Pope, 
 released from his French prison, and returning to his native 
 land, was hailed in Italy. The circumstance, too, of the 
 
 1 Petrarch, in his letter to Pope Urban V. in the year 1366, says, 
 " Ubicunque ille (Pontifex) sibi moram eligit, illic sponsa, illic sedes 
 propria sua est." Ap. RAYNALD, ad. a. 1366, 22. 
 
 GO 2
 
 452 REMOVAL OF THE PAPAL SEE. 
 
 Pope's absence would have this beneficial result that it 
 would make, in a tangible manner, clear to the religious 
 portion of the nation certain facts, and they might thus 
 then say: "It is our Unity-advocates who have imposed 
 upon us the triple yoke of a Conscription, Exorbitant 
 Taxes, and Foreign Government-Officers and now, in addi- 
 tion to all these, they have driven away from us the Pope, 
 and forced him to become an exile on the other side of the 
 Alps." There would, it must be admitted, in such a 
 temporary separation of husband and wife, in the departure 
 of the Pope from Rome, be many inconveniences experienced. 
 It could not occur without great and manifold disturbance 
 and interruptions to the ecclesiastical department, to the 
 members of the Court, to the many and numerous religious 
 congregations which would have to be transported en masse 
 to a foreign land. In former times, the machinery of the 
 Government of the Church was much more simple ; and 
 when the Pope (as it often happened) had to take up his 
 abode in another city than Rome, or to travel across the 
 Alps, the whole members of the Court that followed him 
 could find sufficient room in a single French abbey. It is 
 now far otherwise. There are, too, some Powers that may 
 suppose it will be easier for them to gain what they desire 
 from a Court suffering from oppression, and forced awny 
 from its native soil. Thus it will be seen that, if there is a 
 necessity for quitting Rome, it will not fail to be accompanied 
 by difficulties and painful circumstances. But, then, that 
 which is the less of two evils must be chosen ; and there can 
 be no doubt that the temporary embarrassment of the Papal 
 See is a far less evil in comparison with that which would 
 involve the renunciation of a principle, that, once abandoned, 
 would prove to be lost irretrievably. 
 
 The removal of the Papal See to France would, under 
 existing circumstances, be regarded as tantamount to the 
 formal challenge to a schism ; or it would, at the least, afford 
 a welcome pretext to all who wish to curtail the Papal 
 rights, or to interrupt the communication between the Pope 
 and the several Churches ; and it would put arms into the
 
 CATHOLICISM IN GERMANY. 453 
 
 hands of governments that wish to impede the action of the 
 Papal authority upon the churches and populations in their 
 respective states. 
 
 And, then, what humiliations await both Pope and Car- 
 dinals, and what a yoke would be imposed upon them, if they 
 were once but to be on French soil, and within the power of 
 those individuals on the banks of the Seine who are already 
 boasting that they can count upon a number of votes at 
 the next Conclave ! When Spain had become acquainted 
 with the designs of Piedmont upon Umbria and the Marches, 
 she was prepared to send an army into Middle Italy, for 
 the defence of the Papal territory, and invited the French 
 Government to strengthen its garrison in Rome, for the same 
 purpose. To that invitation, a reply in the negative was 
 given, " because England did not wish it." And it has 
 come to this the French people, who, in the year 1849, 
 had purchased, with the blood of their warriors, the 
 restoration of the Pope, are now, twelve years later, com- 
 pelled to abandon the Pope, because England so wills it ! 
 
 If the Court of Rome should reside for a time in Ger- 
 many, the Roman " Prelati" will, doubtless, be agreeably 
 surprised to discover that our people are able to remain 
 Catholic and religious without the leading-strings of a 
 police ; and that their religious sentiments are a better 
 protection to the Church than Episcopal prisons, which, 
 thank God ! do not exist. They will learn that the Church 
 in Germany is able to maintain herself without the Holy 
 Office ; that our Bishops, although, or because, they use no 
 physical compulsion, are reverenced, as if they were princes, 
 by the people ; that they are received with triumphal 
 arches, and that their arrival in a place is a festival for 
 the inhabitants. They will see how the Church with us 
 rests on the broad, strong, and healthy basis of a well- 
 organised system of pastoral administration, and of popular 
 religious instruction. They will perceive that we Catholics 
 have maintained for years, straightforwardly, and with- 
 out reservation, a struggle for the deliverance of the 
 Church from the bonds of bureaucracy ; that we cannot en-
 
 454 DEFENCE OF THE POPE'S LEGITIMATE RIGHTS. 
 
 tertain the idea of denying to Italians what we have 
 claimed for ourselves ; and that, therefore, we are far from 
 thinking that it is anywhere an advantage to fortify the 
 Church with the authority of the police, and with the power 
 of the secular arm. Throughout Germany we have been 
 taught by experience the truth of Fenelon's saying, " That 
 the spiritual power must be kept carefully separate from the 
 civil, because their union is pernicious." They will find, 
 further, that the whole of the German clergy is prepared to 
 bless the day, when it shall learn that the free sovereignty 
 of the Pope is assured without sentence of death being still 
 pronounced by ecclesiastics ; without priests continuing to 
 discharge the functions of treasury-clerks, or police-direc- 
 tors, or to conduct the business of the lottery ; and, finally, 
 the Prelati will convince themselves that all the Catholics 
 of Germany will stand up, as one man, for the independence 
 of the Holy See, and the legitimate rights of the Pope ; but 
 that they are no admirers of a form of government of very 
 recent date, which is, in fact, nothing else than the product 
 of the mechanical polity of Napoleon combined with a clerical 
 administration. And this information will bear good fruit, 
 when the hour shall strike for their return home, and when 
 restitution has been made. Another thing will also occur 
 whether the Italian Kingdom can establish itself, or what is 
 certainly far more probable fall again into pieces. The time 
 will come when the people of Italy will desire to make peace 
 with the Papacy ; and then they will recognize how truly 
 had one of their most exalted men of genius Tommaseo 
 spoken, when he uttered these words : " It would be a folly 
 in Italy to cast away from itself, to any other nation, the 
 Papacy, which is its sword and its shield." 1 .And Tommaseo 
 also intimates that it might be well if the Papacy were 
 removed for a short time out of Italy ; for so would the 
 present race of Italians best learn what a treasure to them 
 had been its possession. 
 
 Meanwhile, Pius and the men of his Council will " ponder 
 over the days of old, and the years of the past." 2 They will 
 1 u Roma e il mondo," p. 349. 2 Psalm Lxxvi. 6.
 
 RESTORATION OP THE POPEDOM. 455 
 
 read the future in the earlier history of the Papacy, which 
 has already seen many an exile and many a restoration. 
 The example of the resolute, courageous Popes of the Middle 
 Ages will be as a guiding light to them. There is no 
 question now as to suffering martyrdom, or of clinging to 
 the tombs of the Apostles, or of descending into the cata- 
 combs but here is the matter to be thought of to quit a 
 land of slavery, in order to exclaim, upon a free soil : " The 
 bonds are snapped asunder, and we are emancipated!" For 
 the rest, God will provide ; and the unceasing gifts and pure 
 sympathies of the Catholic world will provide. And the 
 parties, too, in Italy, will provide for the consequences. 
 When these parties have torn and exhausted the land of 
 which they have made a battle-field ; and when the sobered 
 and saddened people, tired of the rule of lawyers and of 
 soldiers, have understood the worth of a moral and spiritual 
 authority then will the time have come to think of returning 
 to the Eternal City. In the interval, the things will have 
 disappeared for whose preservation such pains had been 
 taken ; and then there will be better reason than Consalvi 
 had, in the preface to the " Motu Prop-rio" of the 6th July, 
 1816, to say: " Divine Providence, which so conducts human 
 affairs, that, out of the greatest calamity, innumerable bene- 
 fits proceed, seems to have intended that THE INTERRUPTION 
 OF THE PAPAL GOVERNMENT should prepare the way for IT 
 
 IN A MORE PERFECT FORM."
 
 456 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 TWO LECTURES DELIVERED IN MUNICH, 
 
 5TH AND 6TH APRIL, 1861. 
 I. 
 
 WILL the Papal State maintain itself or vanish ? Will the 
 Head of the Church remain as sovereign prince, or is the 
 time arrived when the temporal power of the Pope must be 
 separated from the spiritual? 
 
 A large portion of territory is already torn from him, the 
 remainder is threatened the seizure even of his capital is 
 prepared for. Should this take place, what will be the con- 
 sequences to the Christian world ? What is to become of 
 the Papal See when the ground beneath its feet is taken 
 away? And will it be possible to fulfil its high mission 
 when it is, so to speak, suspended in the air, or placed in 
 dependence on a foreign power intent on its own objects ? 
 These questions keep every man in breathless suspense. No 
 human foresight, no power of imagination, is capable of mea- 
 suring all the consequences, operative through ages to come, 
 bound up inevitably in their decision.
 
 APPENDIX. 457 
 
 Of the good right of the Pope, which rests upon the 
 strongest and most legitimate titles of acquisition and pos- 
 session, acknowledged by mankind, there can be no doubt. 
 As little can exist of the faithless Macchiavellism, and the 
 revolting injustice of the policy pursued towards the Roman 
 See. On this point we all think alike. It may, however, be 
 as well to mention a fact generally ignored, at least in Italy, 
 that Pius is an electoral prince, that he has to administer a 
 property only entrusted to him for life, and that he is bound 
 by oath to preserve the States of the Church intact. 
 
 Unquestionably, the Papacy is older than the States of the 
 Church ; the Roman bishops have been from all time Chief 
 Shepherds of the Church ; but in latter ages only have they 
 become Temporal Princes. The Roman See subsisted seven 
 centuries without possessing in sovereignty a single village. 
 And even after the large donations of the Frankish kings, 
 and that the Emperor had laid the foundation for a State of 
 the Church, centuries had still to pass away before the Pope 
 came into quiet possession and actual administration of the 
 land in its subsequent extent. In Rome itself the Popes' 
 power was long disputed ; they were frequently and for a 
 long time compelled to leave their city, and to prefer having 
 their residence in Viterbo, Anagni, Orvieto, or they were 
 necessitated to pass the Alps and seek elsewhere an asylum 
 most frequently in France. In the fourteenth century there 
 came no Pope to Italy for nearly seventy years. The Court 
 (Curia) resided in Avignon. In fact, it was not till the time 
 of Leo X., about 350 years ago, that the Popes held quiet 
 possession of the State, with its three million of inhabitants. 
 
 It is also true that the electoral form, excellent for the 
 Church, has, politically considered, serious disadvantages. 
 The many and frequent changes of rulers, and, with them, 
 systems of government the formerly prevailing efforts of 
 the elected to elevate and enrich their kindred the want of 
 a native-born dynasty, which should become, through the at- 
 tachment of the people, at once a pledge and a bulwark of 
 steadfastness and duration all this shows that the form of 
 an electoral monarchy, with many advantages, has also its
 
 458 APPENDIX. 
 
 dark side ; and history teaches that electoral states, being 
 exposed to stronger convulsions, are more easily subverted 
 than hereditary principalities. In Rome, however, till very 
 lately, this danger was warded off by the universally recog- 
 nised inviolability of the Papacy, by the religious reverence 
 that environed and protected the chair of the Apostolic 
 princes. 
 
 The heroes of Church science have not however considered 
 this union of the highest ecclesiastical power and dignity 
 with a temporal kingdom as an advantage or a perfection, 
 but rather as a something urgently commanded by the ne- 
 cessity of the times. " It would be better in itself," says 
 Cardinal Bellarmine, "if the Popes concerned themselves 
 only with spiritual affairs, the Kings with temporal ; but, on 
 account of the wickedness of the times, Divine Providence 
 has seen fit to bestow temporal principalities on the Pope 
 and other bishops. It has been with the Church as with the 
 Jews, amongst whom the kingly dignity and the pontifical 
 were first united in the time of the Maccabees. In the 
 earlier ages the Church did not need princely authority for 
 the support of her majesty now it seems to be a necessity." 1 
 
 This necessity indisputably exists in our time as strongly 
 as ever. And yet there has arisen, even in the Catholic 
 world, numerous voices some even of theological import- 
 ance which speak of a time for the separation of these 
 hitherto united powers which announce that the time is 
 come when the secularization of the Church State is both 
 called for and unavoidable. The causes of this striking ma- 
 nifestation are to be sought for in the condition of Italy, the 
 internal circumstances of the Papal States, the sentiments of 
 the Italian peoples, and more particularly of the Pope's sub- 
 jects. 
 
 The Papal Government has the reputation of being one of 
 the mildest and most moderate in all Europe. And yet it is 
 true, that for nearly forty years deep discontent and dissatis- 
 faction have reigned in the States of the Church, but most 
 
 1 "De Rom. Pontifice, Disputationes," vol. i., p. 1104. Ed. Ingol- 
 stadt, 1596.
 
 APPENDIX. 459 
 
 strongly in the towns; and in a land where no independent 
 yeomanry exists, it is the population of the towns in a yet 
 higher degree than elsewhere that decides on everything. 
 In these chief places of the nation secret political societies, 
 conspiracies, and attempts at insurrection have grown rank 
 and numerous; hundreds live compromised or banished they 
 pass their days as fugitives in foreign lands. 
 
 The weakness of the Papal Government increases from year 
 to year. Pius IX. attempted in vain by concessions, and by 
 granting a Constitution, to effect a reconciliation. He began 
 his reign with a most complete amnesty, which recalled the 
 accused and culpable of four insurrections. This measure 
 brought back to the country the irreconcil cable opponents of 
 its Government, and placed them iu a position to make war 
 upon it. 
 
 The catastrophes that followed in quick succession are well 
 known. As before, so since 1849, two foreign powers, Aus- 
 tria and France, have been obliged to garrison the country 
 with their troops. 
 
 The Papal See, which in its ecclesiastical position and its 
 spiritual rights found in the whole Catholic world the most 
 complete recognition and the readiest obedience, more, per- 
 haps, than had ever been the case in like degree in any for- 
 mer time ; yet on its temporal, political side has presented the 
 melancholy spectacle of the weakest, most helpless Govern- 
 ment in all Europe ; and one, too, only able to maintain it- 
 self by the double prop of foreign Powers and their bayo- 
 nets. 
 
 And yet no government could labour more to remove no- 
 torious abuses of administration, to introduce improvements, 
 to take into consideration the reasonable wishes of the peo- 
 ple, so far as the interests and principles of self-maintenance 
 or of the existing system of a government administered by 
 ecclesiastics, were not brought in question. For twelve 
 years the history of the present Pope's reign was one con- 
 tinuous chain of useful and beneficent reforms. But all 
 these improvements were and are insufficient to remove the 
 deep discontent and aversion of the people.
 
 460 APPENDIX. 
 
 Every government which is not supported merely by the 
 bayonets of its soldiers, must even if there be a class of 
 discontented be able to depend upon the majority of the 
 population, through their attachment to the dynasty, their 
 conservative feelings, or, at least, through an interest in self- 
 maintenance and fear of revolutions and thus be in union 
 with the nation. 
 
 All this is wanting in the States of the Church : there is 
 no dynasty, all attempts to form a native army have failed 
 utterly, the dislike to the Papal military service id universal, 
 and foreign mercenaries only embitter it. Foreign diplo- 
 matists remark in their reports : " The impotence of the 
 Papal Government is glaringly evident it can rely on no 
 one class of the population in the moment of an attack upon 
 it not one would raise a hand in its defence, and no one make 
 a sacrifice for its support." Hence it comes that the temporal 
 dominion of the Papal See has numerous enemies, not only 
 among its own subjects, but throughout Italy. The public 
 opinion of Italy is against it. It is looked upon as the great 
 obstacle to the realisation of the Italian ideal the develop- 
 ment of one grand nationality, one powerful Italian State, 
 which should take its place among the " Great Powers " 
 of Europe. Count Rayneval says justly, " The displeasure 
 and discontent of the population arise chiefly from this : 
 that Italy does not play such a part in the world as she has 
 dreamed of. In all times when this feeling of national 
 ambition is awakened, the temporal power of the Pope will 
 be looked upon by it as a hindrance." 1 
 
 It is further not to be denied that for a hundred years a 
 tendency to secularisation has passed through the whole of 
 Europe. The union of spiritual dignities with temporal 
 officialism has, henceforward, no sympathy to reckon on from 
 the nations of Europe. Even the German spiritual princi- 
 palities, in which, unlike the Papal States, the administration 
 was chiefly in lay hands, have been destroyed, not merely by 
 revolution, but by public opinion, which saw in them some- 
 thing foreign to the age ; unnatural a ruin of the past ; and 
 ' " Allg. Ztg.," 15th April, 1857.
 
 APPENDIX. 461 
 
 since 1814 not a single voice has been raised for their re- 
 storation. In our time, therefore, a union of temporal 
 functions and action with the ecclesiastical is no longer an 
 
 O 
 
 element of strength, but of weakness. Nothino- gives rise to 
 
 ~ * O O 
 
 more bitter feelings than the application of secular govern- 
 mental measures, or even of the power and chastisements of 
 the police to effect religious purposes, or the reverse, the 
 application of religious means to political objects. 
 
 This repugnance to the admixture of the spiritual and 
 temporal, or to the exercise of political power and police 
 office functions by ecclesiastics, is not the operation of weak- 
 ened religious feeling, but the consequences of altered views 
 and a change in circumstances. The Spaniards present a 
 striking example of this. With the Spaniards there was 
 a kind of necessity for that which appeared elsewhere in- 
 tolerable. They desired to listen to the Church even in 
 temporal matters ; and if the State wanted taxes the inter- 
 vention of the Church was requisite an ecclesiastical form 
 must be given to the impost; and then only did the nation pay 
 it willingly. Thus the Spanish Inquisition was a kind of State 
 and Police institution, that was acceptable to the people only 
 under such a form. All this is now changed even in Spain. 
 And with us, in Germany, it would stir up the most vehe- 
 ment opposition if a prelate were to become minister, or a 
 bishop the president of an administration. 
 
 Formerly there was little governmental action in the terri- 
 tories of the Pope. The municipal form existed throughout, 
 and administered its own affairs ; whilst the State contented 
 itself with the supreme direction without much interference 
 in details. It is now altogether different, in consequence of 
 the system established by means of the French Napoleonic 
 administration, to whose inheritance Cardinal Consalvi suc- 
 ceeded. Since then it has been an ecclesiastical government, 
 and such it is at present; and although in the year 1848 
 there were o,059 lay employes to 109 ecclesiastics, still it 
 has been felt as an intolerable burden, and as such to be 
 shaken off; and as it is generally considered " the sooner 
 the better."
 
 462 APPENDIX. 
 
 The judicial power, also, mostly exercised by ecclesiastics 
 in the Papal States, has given occasion to manifold com- 
 plaints. And it may be a subject of consideration whether in 
 our times an ecclesiastic, by his condition, his mental cultiva- 
 tion, and his pastoral far more than forensic modes of thought, 
 is adapted for a judge ; and whether the temptation would 
 not be too strong for him to give to a frequently milder, but, 
 in the end, purely despotic procedure, the preference over 
 an objective and severely legal judgment and decision. 
 
 Hence the condition of the Papal States, apart from all 
 foreign intrigues, incitements, and acts of violence, has been 
 for years lamentable and discouraging. 
 
 The Government, necessarily rendered distrustful by the 
 aversion of a large portion of the population, thinks less 
 freedom must be granted in the interests of its own self-pre- 
 servation ; and no assemblies for discussion can be permitted, 
 because its enemies would speedily become masters of them. 
 On all sides the Government must act obstructively, and for 
 that very reason it loses more and more the support of public 
 opinion ; and hence the striking contrast between times past 
 and the present! When, in 1809, Pius VII. answered the 
 decree of deposition launched against him by Napoleon I., 
 by excommunicating the French Emperor, the act awakened 
 the enthusiasm of the people ; all Romans who were in the 
 French service threw up their employments ; and, in short, 
 the whole nation made its resolution plainly manifest, to 
 rule itself exactly according to the Bull of Excommunication. 
 Some years later, the return of Pius from his French impri- 
 sonment was a real triumphal procession throughout the 
 whole land. How changed is all this now ! 
 
 Cardinal Pacca relates that at the period of the Napo- 
 leonic dominion he had, after a year's meditation, reconciled 
 himself to the thought that the extinction of the temporal 
 sovereignty of the Papal See would be coupled with many and 
 no small advantages for the Church that the jealousy and 
 dislike to the Roman See would be removed, or at least 
 diminished. Pacca was of opinion that Europe was advanc- 
 ing towards a great universal monarchy, in which the Pope,
 
 APPENDIX. 463 
 
 without prejudice to his spiritual dignity, might again 
 become a subject, as under the Roman Empire. In this, 
 however, he greatly deceived himself. A universal monarchy 
 in Europe is, happily, not to be thought of, and the Pope 
 cannot become a subject ; he cannot belong exclusively to 
 any one kingdom he must exercise his high office freely and 
 independently, as the common father of all. As Caesar said 
 that Caesar's wife must not be even suspected, so the merest 
 suspicion of dependence would be fatal to the Papal See. 
 The most unconditional, unreserved confidence is the breath 
 of life to spiritual authority. If there were the appearance, 
 the conjecture, that the Papal See, in matters spiritual, acted 
 under the influence, or for the interest, of a political power, it 
 would operate as a deadly poison on the Church. From this 
 consideration a change in the position of the Papal See is 
 becoming more and more an urgent necessity. So long as 
 two foreign Powers, Austria and France, held garrisons in 
 the Church States, it might seem that the Pope, between the 
 two neutralising each other, enjoyed freedom. But when, in 
 consequence of the late war, the Austrian occupation ceased, 
 and the French must be looked upon as the only support of 
 the Papacy, a condition of things has existed which is only 
 bearable as being provisional and transitory. Placed as it 
 now is, the possession of a Church State would be productive 
 of results the very opposite to what it ought to produce, and 
 whereby alone it can be justified. Instead of acting inde- 
 pendently as the highest guide of the Church and assuring 
 its freedom, it will sink continually in public opinion, as an 
 institution which cannot dispense with the pro of foreign 
 soldiers; and the Pope, like all who ask and need foreign 
 help, must become a dependent on his Protector or, what 
 is nearly as bad, he will appear to be so, for that Protector 
 can at any time disquiet or coerce him, by the threat of 
 withdrawing his troops.
 
 464 APPENDIX. 
 
 II. 
 
 In my first Lecture I spoke of the difficult position of the 
 Ecclesiastical States, which has its foundation rather in false 
 relations within, than in the hostile and rapacious advances 
 of foreign powers, as the enemy has made, and continues to 
 make, the discontent of the people the pretext for and fulcrum 
 of their operations. 
 
 The thought here forces itself upon me, that the Church 
 State had its beginning with the German Empire; and it may 
 well be affirmed that the fall of that Empire inflicted a wound 
 on the Roman State from which it is still bleeding. The 
 Emperor was the armed "Protector" of the Papal See on 
 him lay the duty of wielding the sword, and when the Popes 
 took this on themselves, it was either a mistake, or an act of 
 the direst necessity. And although the Empire had long pre- 
 sented only the shadow of the old idea and purpose, yet was 
 it to the last the prop and centre of the ancient political 
 order of Europe, and covered with its majesty the Papal See, 
 as a member engrafted upon the United Roman Empire. 
 If with the Empire an outward stay has fallen, inwardly the 
 State is sickening under the false relations in which " an 
 ecclesiastical administration " necessarily stands to a modern 
 system of statesmanship. It is difficult to reject the opinion 
 that lay hands are better suited to direct the action of state 
 and police, with their manifold increasing material wants 
 and cares they are better suited than those of priests for 
 a police and administrative omnipotence, a care for lot- 
 teries, theatres, gaming-houses, and houses of public enter- 
 tainment, for managing passports and manufactories. It 
 is, indeed, frequently asserted that the Pope, as an ecclesias- 
 tical prince, must commit the administration to " ecclesiastical" 
 officers. This necessity, however, is not very evident. At 
 least, the ecclesiastical sovereignties of Germany, to which 
 Bellarmine appealed in justification of the Pope's temporal 
 dignity, afford no parallel. The prince-bishops and eccle-
 
 APPENDIX. 465 
 
 siastical electors never hesitated to govern their countries 
 through the instrumentality of lay ministers, chancellors, 
 councillors, employes and judges. 
 
 The government of Francis Louis, of Erthal, Prince- 
 bishop of Wiirzburg and Bamberg, was a model government, 
 one blessed throughout the land ; I have in my youth (my 
 grandfather was in the Bishop's service) heard old men 
 speak of it with enthusiasm. It was, however, conducted by 
 lay administrators. 
 
 Pius himself had acknowledged the want of thorough re- 
 formation in this respect his lamented minister Rossi had 
 presented a plan to the government which the Great Powers, 
 in the Memorandum of 1831, had previously recommended. It 
 is known how the dagger of a Mazzinist cut off, with this dis- 
 tinguished man, the many hopes bound up with him. And 
 after his restoration, Pius thought himself obliged to make 
 no concessions, which, as the English envoy, Mr. Lyons, 
 said, ( * might be used as weapons in the hands of enemies to 
 the government, to contend against it." 
 
 " What will all this end in ?" That is the question every 
 man proposes to himself every man tries to answer, or 
 would like to hear answered. In the complicated relations 
 and unnatural tension under which Europe now labours, 
 positive conclusions are naturally excluded ; we can only 
 speak of possibilities and probabilities. 
 
 The first possibility is, that a new war breaking out, a 
 victory of the Austrian arms should restore Austrian pre- 
 ponderance and the Papal dominion over the whole extent 
 of the States of the Church. Whether such a turn of affairs 
 is hoped for by many, I do not know ; but what I do know 
 is, that it is not wished by any intelligent friend of the 
 Papal See. A permanent occupation of the country by 
 Austrian troops, which would then become necessary, would 
 render the Pope's situation worse, and his temporal sove- 
 reignty more unmaintainable. New insurrections and political 
 convulsions with Mazzini views would inevitably follow. 
 
 A second possibility is, the transplanting the Papal See 
 to France. Such, it is well known, was the plan of the first 
 
 HH
 
 466 APPENDIX. 
 
 Napoleon, which was frustrated by the firmness of Pius VII. 
 The Emperor has left no doubt on this point ; for, subse- 
 quently, at St. Helena, he spoke with complaisance of the 
 plan, and of the splendid results that would have been con- 
 sequent on its realisation. That the nephew has entered on 
 the inheritance of the ideas and plans of his uncle is \vell 
 known. The carrying through of these projects, or the 
 fulfilment of these hopes, would certainly produce incalculable 
 mischiefs. A Gallicised Papacy would become a formidable 
 source of confusion and discord ; and one of our best read 
 journals has openly expressed the expectation that a schism 
 in the Catholic Church would be the result. 1 
 
 I confess that I entertain no fear for the one or the other 
 not of a schism in the Church ; it is now four hundred years 
 since even an attempt at a division has been made. Divi- 
 sion and Catholicism are two things so diametrically opposed, 
 that nothing but some extraordinary complication, a dispute 
 on principles, on ideas, could again lead to such a result. 
 I am convinced that no materials, and no disposition to such 
 a malady exists, in the whole compass of the Catholic Church. 
 The universal feeling of the religious in all Catholic countries 
 would reject such an attempt with abhorrence, and the irre- 
 ligious would at the utmost be able only to perform a second 
 act of the Ronge-May-festivai night of 1846. 
 
 It will not, however, come to a repetition of the four- 
 teenth century we shall see no second Avignon with French 
 cardinals and a French Pope. The episcopacy, the clergy, 
 all the Catholic faithful of France, would protest against a 
 Papal Court wholly in the power of the Emperor ; a will- 
 less instrument of his policy. The whole collective Catholic 
 states and people of the universe would cast their weighty 
 "No" into the scale against such a project. 
 
 Of the three parties into which the French may be divided 
 when such a question is in agitation, the devout minded, the 
 liadicals and the Bonapartists, only the latter, numerically 
 the weakest, would, provided their master so willed it, be 
 favourable to such a measure ; the other two, i.e., the great 
 1 " Allg. Ztg.," April 2, 1861.
 
 APPENDIX. 467 
 
 majority of the nation, would be averse to, and strive against 
 it. The Catholics, because they would see, in the attempt 
 to make the Papacy an instrument of political interests, 
 a degradation of it, to be warded off at any cost ; the irre- 
 ligious because they would on no account have the highest 
 spiritual authority in close proximity to themselves, and in 
 their own land ; because they dread the mighty influence 
 which it would exercise over the whole body of the clergy 
 and the believing part of the nation. 
 
 Tliird Possibility. That the French Emperor should bring 
 the question of the temporal sovereignty of the Pope to the 
 decision of a Congress of the Catholic Powers evidently, in 
 the present position of affairs, the justest, most rational, and 
 the only method whereby the Emperor can turn aside the 
 reproach made against him in the very heart of his own 
 nation, viz., that he has humbled himself to be the instrument 
 of English hatred to Rome, and thereby placed the French 
 nation in a position as false politically as it is morally un- 
 worthy. These Powers would be, France, Austria, Spain, 
 Portugal, Belgium, and, it is to be hoped, Bavaria. Pied- 
 mont has, indeed, openly declared that she no longer acknow- 
 ledges any national rights ; yet, in the present relation, as 
 she alone is in a condition to represent Italy, she must be 
 admitted. What such a Congress would resolve may be 
 predicted with some probability. 
 
 The majority of voices would press for the maintenance 
 of the remaining possessions of the Papal See, and for the 
 restitution of at least some portion of what has been violently 
 taken away. It will also desire, as the only means of satisfy- 
 ing the people, municipal self-government, participation of 
 the laity in the government, representation for (the purposes) 
 of finance and legislation in short, they would demand the 
 introduction of those institutions which now prevail through- 
 out Europe, with the exception of Russia and Turkey, and 
 which were substantially demanded by the Five Great 
 Powers in the year 1831, and without which none can see 
 how a reconciliation between the Government and the 
 
 HH 2
 
 468 APPENDIX. 
 
 people, and permanent order, are to be maintained, otherwise 
 than by permanent occupation by foreign troops. 
 
 Fourth Possibility. That the Pope should be obliged to 
 quit Rome, and take up his abode for a time in some other 
 Catholic country. Rome, and the remainder of the States 
 of the Church, would be, forthwith, incorporated with the 
 new Piedmontese kingdom. It is self-evident that all those 
 arrangements which the Papal Government thinks it cannot 
 grant would be immediately introduced the secularisation 
 would be complete. The whole present order of things would 
 be passed over as with a sponge ; the clergy, as in all other 
 parts of Europe, with the abolition of all privileges burden- 
 some and offensive to other classes, would, like other citizens, 
 be placed under the common law; and, herewith, the main 
 source of the dislike of the people to the priesthood be 
 put an end to. Then, when the germ of decay which the 
 new Italian kingdom bears in its bosom develops itself, and 
 the return of the Pope to Rome, and the resurrection of the 
 whole State of the Church, or a part of it, takes place, the 
 Pope will find " accomplished facts ;" he will enter upon an 
 entirely altered position ; he will be the head of an adminis- 
 tration entirely, or in great part, secular in its members, and 
 whose precedent condition, or the forcing back into forms 
 now dead, it would be as unwise as difficult, if not impossible, 
 to accomplish. 
 
 Fifth Possibility. That the States of the Church should be 
 irreparably lost to the Papal See. Even this eventuality 
 must be looked in the face. It is conceivable that it is 
 already resolved on in the councils of Providence. The 
 Church has truly the promise that the gates of Hell shall not 
 prevail against her, but she has no promise that the successor 
 of St. Peter should always remain monarch of a temporal 
 kingdom. If Italy, or Europe, be destined to become the 
 theatre of new revolutions, the position of the Head of the 
 Church is indisputably better and more dignified if it be not 
 welded to the ponderous, helpless burden of a secular king- 
 dom, which he could neither maintain nor protect against 
 ever-recurring insurrection, and against the thronging billows
 
 APPENDIX. 469 
 
 of revolution. Should, however, a permanent and well- 
 ordered State establish itself in Italy, public opinion, or 
 rather the public conscience of Catholic Europe, will be 
 strong and powerful enough to create and make firm a 
 position through which the freedom of the Papal See, and 
 the sovereign dignity and inviolability of the Head of the 
 Church, would be protected and secured. 
 
 In Germany a small, feeble State, surrounded by stronger 
 neighbours, like Frankfort, can subsist free and independent. 
 And shall, in Italy well ordered, and recovered from the 
 revolutionary fever the Pope not be able to maintain his 
 smaller or greater territory and capital intact? Will not 
 Koine itself this out-and-out papal and ecclesiastical Rome, 
 which but for the chair of St. Peter and the tombs of the 
 Apostles would long since have sunk to a little provincial 
 city or market-town prefer to be a world-city, the metro- 
 polis of a spiritual kingdom of two hundred millions, than the 
 seat of a kingdom of twenty millions ? The reconciliation of 
 the people to the Papal dominion is here presupposed ; for 
 who can be blind to the fact that, since 1831, this dominion 
 over three millions of people has been a source of weak- 
 ness, dependence, anxiety, and care for the Papal See ; that 
 this task of keeping down a discontented population long- 
 ing for the institutions of other countries has been as a 
 leaden weight attached to the foot of the successor of the 
 Apostles ? And who will maintain that it is the Divine Will 
 that this lamentable, unnatural state of things should drag on 
 for an indefinite time that the alternation of revolt, political 
 trials, dungeoning, banishment, and foreign occupation should 
 prolong itself indefinitely, as was contemplated by Count 
 Rayneval ? 
 
 We cannot conceal from ourselves that the situation is, in 
 the highest degree, tragical. The Pope is bound, by the 
 most sacred pledges, to surrender nothing of that which has 
 been entrusted to his keeping ; he must continually protest 
 against the spoliation of his territory. The Papal Govern- 
 ment can find few among the laity who have the necessary 
 instruction for higher employments, and on whose fidelity he
 
 470 APPENDIX. 
 
 can rely. As I said before, the Pope believes himself bound, 
 by the duty of self-preservation, by the right of self-defence, 
 to maintain the old system of ecclesiastical government, with- 
 out serious change of form. And yet, as things now are, it 
 is not to be hoped for that the people will be ever frankly 
 reconciled to this form of clerical administration, and will 
 renounce the rights and institutions subsisting in other parts 
 of Italy. The difficulty of the position is heightened by the 
 painful collisions in which the bishops, and, more or less, the 
 whole body of the clergy throughout Italy are entangled. 
 
 Let us not, however, forget that history is, before all 
 things, God's judgment; and that to this Judgment every 
 human will and purpose must submit. We can only say, 
 "Laissez passer la justice de Dieu" It is the beautiful privilege 
 of God, that He, when men will to do evil, can turn that evil 
 to good. The position of the Pope between the two allied 
 Powers, who are throwing the dice over him, reminds us of 
 the Lear of Shakespeare between his daughters, Goueril 
 and Regan, and where no Cordelia is to be found. But Lear 
 will not die ; Goneril and Regan will reap what they have 
 sown the Church will say at last, " My loss is a gain." 
 
 Who will pronounce on the immediate future? Do we 
 know what, is coming in Germany? Are we in Central 
 Europe not approaching some mighty convulsion? Is 
 not the Mazzini party lurking behind Piedmont to hurl 
 Italy into the throes and tortures of a social and antichristian 
 revolution ? Who can say how much in Italy and elsewhere 
 will meet destruction? One thing, however, is certain. 
 Amidst all wrecks, one Institution will remain erect, will 
 constantly emerge from the flood of revolution for it is 
 indestructible, immortal it is the Chair of St. Peter. If I 
 am asked, whence I draw this assurance, I may point to 
 the Bible as my answer ".Thou art the Rock," &c. 
 But I will give another answer, derived from the very nature 
 of the thing itself: The Papal See will not be destroyed, 
 because it is reachable by no human power ; because no one 
 on earth is strong and powerful enough to destroy it. If 
 all the Powers of Europe were to unite for its destruction,
 
 APPENDIX. 471 
 
 they could not effect it. All that human power can do is 
 to compel it to make a pilgrimage ; and, for a longer or 
 shorter time, to keep its seat away from Rome. And, lastly, 
 this Chair will not be destroyed, because it is indispensable 
 and irreplaceable, for it forms the keystone of the whole build- 
 ing of the Church. " On ne detruit que ce quon remplace" 
 That the Papacy can ever be replaced by anything else, no 
 one will seriously maintain. It is the keystone that holds 
 the whole edifice of the Church together, that makes the 
 Church what it is, and what it ought to be : a world-Church 
 the only society that has in earnest fulfilled the given 
 purpose of God that is, to embrace all humanity, and find 
 room for all nations. 
 
 Should this all-keeping, all-sustaining keystone be taken 
 away, the whole will fall asunder, the Church will be split 
 according to monarchies and nationalities ; from the Christian 
 religion will be rent that noble jewel bestowed by her 
 founders ; that privilege that stands alone in history the 
 privilege and the strength to unite all nations in one great 
 whole, yet without injury to them as nations. The faithful 
 throughout the world desire not to belong to a French or a 
 Spanish, a Bavarian or an Austrian Church ; they desire to 
 belong to ONE church, THE Church, the only Catholic Church 
 in other words, all will be subject to the Pope, and will, 
 in community with him, feel and acknowledge themselves as 
 members of "the Catholic Church." 
 
 The Papacy, then, will continue, because God wills it, 
 because every Catholic believes it, because two hundred 
 millions of men in all parts of the world desire it, because 
 everyone who knows the condition of the world acknow- 
 ledges it. There are enemies many enemies of the Tem- 
 poral Power of the Papacy ; but, within the Catholic world, 
 there lives no enemy of the Pope's Spiritual Power, or only 
 such as are at the same time the enemies of the Christian 
 religion. I am not afraid to maintain that, even outside the 
 pale of the Catholic Church, in the Protestant world, so far 
 as it is really Christian, reflecting believers, especially among 
 the laity, do not object to the Papal power in itself. They
 
 472 APPENDIX. 
 
 ask themselves: "Is there not something beautiful, something 
 good, something willed of God, that the different Christian 
 nations and countries should be united in one Church one 
 world-embracing community of faith and love that the 
 common affairs of the entire be conducted by one hand ;" 
 and the answer from all is " Yes." If it be further asked : 
 '.' Shall this centre of church unity, this bearer of the highest 
 authority of the Church, be a temporal monarch?" the 
 answer will be " No that is impossible ; he must be no 
 Emperor, no King, no President of a Republic ; he must be a 
 Pope that is, he must be a Spiritual Father." So soon, how- 
 ever, as the observation is made, " This real, living, concrete 
 Pope is already there ; he dwells in Rome, and at present bears 
 the name of Pius; and the larger part of assembled Christen- 
 dom obeys him willingly and gladly will you accept him?" 
 Then there is heard an angry protest, a many-voiced cry of 
 " No ; him by no manner of means." " And why not ? " 
 "Because he does not teach as we teach." "And what, then, 
 shall he teach ?" And a voice from one corner of Germany 
 cries out : " He shall teach what is agreeable to the German 
 nation that nation of thinkers and inquirers. He shall 
 teach, therefore, as Wittenberg taught from 1520 to 1546. 
 Then and there the true Christian doctrine, in completest 
 purity, first saw the light." Forthwith a different cry is 
 heard from another corner of Germany : " That is an obso- 
 lete resting-place ; in latter times the German people have 
 made the grandest progress ; they stand now on the summit 
 of intelligence and theological penetration. In three centuries 
 we have learned much, and unlearned more. The Pope must 
 teach now, as they think and teach in the chief seats of German 
 science, in Berlin, and, perhaps, in Leipzig or Gottingen. 
 Then we would accept him." " Not so," says a voice from the 
 west; "neither Wittenberg nor Berlin, but Geneva is the birth- 
 place of true Christianity ; if the Pope were converted 
 to Calvin if he teaches as the French Reformer taught he 
 may be something for us." " Let him take heed how he does 
 that," is the cry from the other side of the Channel, from 
 England. " Neither Wittenberg nor Geneva has discovered
 
 APPENDIX. 473 
 
 genuine Christianity. That precious jewel has been decreed 
 of Heaven to the Anglo-Saxon race. The true Church is 
 that of which Queen Elizabeth was the mother : it is the 
 English-episcopal Church. This Church alone maintains the 
 true medium between the extremes of Continental Protes- 
 tantism and Catholicism. Let the Pope become Anglican, 
 and we will then let him talk to us." " You are all in error, 
 sheep without a shepherd," the North exclaims. " The true 
 Church, the beloved of God among churches, is that only 
 which the shepherd chosen of God, the Czar in St. Peters- 
 burg and his Holy Directing Synod, leads in the pastures of 
 the Divine Word. Russia is, as the Emperor Nicholas has 
 often called it, 'Holy Russia] and the Russian people are 
 ' God's chosen in these present times.' Let the Pope acknow- 
 ledge this and act accordingly, and we will willingly concede 
 him the first rank amongst the five orthodox patriarchs." 
 And, lastly, a new and strongly represented party, particu- 
 larly in Germany and in England, claims to be heard the 
 men of " The Church of the Future." " You all," say they, 
 " demean yourselves as if the true Church really existed 
 anywhere, but that is a monstrous delusion. All existing 
 church communities are but fragments, or the stones and 
 building materials from which God will in nearer or remoter 
 times construct the true church, responsive to all wants. 
 Until that time, we have only provisional churches, and a 
 provisional doctrine, and the Pope had better prepare himself 
 for this Church, lying yet unborn in the lap of the future, and 
 in the mean time put a note of interrogation to tLe doctrines 
 hitherto prevalent in the Church." 
 
 So far these, parties ; and now, on the other side, the two 
 hundred millions, Europeans, Asiatics, Americans, these 
 world-churches, to whose community belong at least a frag- 
 ment of every considerable people on the whole earth. These 
 say unanimously, " Our Christianity shall have no national 
 supplementary flavour; it shall be no especial German, or 
 Italian, or French, or English, or Russian Christianity it 
 shall not tickle the palate of this or that people, like a fiery 
 artificially-prepared potation; our doctrine, our religious
 
 474 APPENDIX. 
 
 practice, shall be and is a pure, clear stream of running water, 
 colourless and odourless, the universal, wholesome drink for 
 all, to-day as yesterday, to-morrow as a thousand years gone 
 by. The Pope cannot, dare not teach otherwise than as 
 those two hundred millions believe, and have long believed. 
 And these millions will, must have a Pope ; will not allow 
 him to be taken from them, will not suffer him to fall. 
 They prove that they are ready to make any sacrifice for his 
 preservation ; for his freedom. German, Irish, and French 
 blood has flowed in his defence, and for a just and noble 
 cause. We will also in the coming time, and before all the 
 clergy in Europe as in America, willingly, joyfully, abun- 
 dantly bring our tribute to alleviate the situation of our 
 common Head and Father, and to furnish him with the means 
 of free and vigorous action in his high office. But we will 
 not cling to that which is transitory and accidental ; we will 
 not desire that any people shall be constrained to accept 
 what we ourselves would not bear; we will not stand up for 
 a system of government which is in point of fact not more 
 than forty-five years old, and the deficiencies of which the 
 Pope himself has acknowledged, and which, in the course of 
 that time, has generated nothing but discontent and revolt 
 amongst the majority of the people. He who will support 
 himself on such a staff, when the staff has already become 
 rotten, must run the risk of falling to the ground. 
 
 The Greek myth says : When a new god, Apollo, was to 
 be born, the island of Delos rose from the sea to be the birth- 
 place of a deity. We will in all confidence expect that a 
 Delos shall not be wanting to the Chair of St. Peter, should 
 it even have to arise from the depths of the sea ! 
 
 THE END. 
 
 R. BORN, PRINTER, GLOUCESTER STREET, REGENT'S PARK.
 
 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH ST. LONDON. 
 
 MESSRS. HURST AND BLACKETT'S 
 
 LIST OF NEW WORKS, 
 
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 THE LIFE OF J. M. W. TUKNER, R,A. FKOM 
 
 Original Letters and Papers furnished by his Friends and Fellow Academi- 
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 Illustrations. 30s. (Now ready.) 
 
 THE LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF ADMIRAL 
 
 SIR CHARLES NAPIER, K.C.B. From his Private Papers and Official 
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 FRENCH WOMEN OF LETTERS. By JULIA 
 
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 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS' MUSICAL RECOLLEC- 
 
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 MEMOIRS OF QUEEN HORTENSE, MOTHER OF 
 
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 The Duke of Wellington In, and Out of, Office The Reform Cabinet and the 
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 uuv iiiiertrsi. AS lurumig tue uuuuiusiuu ui u vtuuuuic aim 
 
 irs should find a place on the shelves of every library." Sun. 
 
 MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF GEORGE IV. FROM 
 
 ORIGINAL FAMILY DOCUMENTS. By the late DUKE OF BUCKING- 
 HAM AND CHANDOS, K.G. 2 vols. 8vo. with Portraits. 30s. 
 
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 for gossip, or for more sterling information, will be disappointed by the book. There aie 
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 MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF THE REGENCY. 
 
 FROM ORIGINAL FAMILY DOCUMENTS. By the late DUKE OF BUCK- 
 INGHAM AND CHANDOS, K.G. 2 vols. 8vo., with Portraits, 30s. 
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 and abroad they bore to the great bourne I from the accession of the Regent to power to 
 the death of George III. including the fall of Perceval; the invasion of Russia, and the 
 war in Spain; the battles of Salamanca and Horodino; the fire of Moscow; the retreat of 
 Napoleon; the conquest of Spain ; the surrenderor Napoleon; the return from Elba; the 
 Congress of Vienna; the Hundred Days ; the crowning carnage of Waterloo; the exile to 
 St. Helena; the return of the Bourbons ; the settlement of Europe; the public scandals at 
 the English Court; the popular discontent, and the massacre of Peterloo ! On many parts 
 of this story the documents published by the Duke of Buckingham cast new jets of light, 
 clearing up much secret history. Old stories are confirmed oe\v traits of character are 
 brought out. In short, many new and pleasant additions are ir.ade to our knowledge of 
 those times." Athenaeum.
 
 HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 WORKS BY MISS FEEEE. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE REIGN OF HENRY IV. KING OF 
 
 FRANCE AND NAVARRE. From numerous Original Sources. By 
 MARTHA WALKER FREER. 2 vols. with Portraits, 21s. 
 
 HENRY IV. AND MARIE DE MEDICI- FORMING 
 
 Part II. of " The History of the Reign of Henry IV. King of France and 
 Navarre." By MISS FREER. 2 vols. with Portraits. 21s. 
 
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 details are little known by general readers among us, and therefore in presenting so 
 complete and interesting a narrative Miss Freer has done good service to the public, 
 besides enhancing her own well-earned reputation." Sun. 
 
 <: In these volumes we have the second part of a work the greatest to which Miss 
 Freer has dedicated her powers. She draws her materials from sources mostly original, 
 and she has selected for illustration a period the interest of which can scarcely be said to be 
 second to any in modern times. There was romance in Henry the Fourth's character and 
 in his career, and events of importance were grouped around his life. Miss Freer 
 writes only after the most conscientious research, and with a mastery of the subject which 
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 the day." Sunday Times. 
 
 HENRY III. KING OF FRANCE AND POLAND; 
 
 HIS COURT AND TIMES. From numerous unpublished sources. 
 
 By MISS FREER, 3 vols. post 8vo. with portraits, 31s. 6d. 
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 the French kings of the house of Valois. We refer our readers to the volumes them- 
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 Poland, his marriage with Louise de Lorraine, his cruelties, his hypocrisies, his penances, 
 his assassination by the hands of the monk Jaques Clement, &c. Upon these points, as 
 well as with reference to other persons who occupied a prominent position during this 
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 that a deep debt of gratitude is due to that lady for the faithful and admirable manner in 
 which she has pourtrayed the Court and Times of Henry the Third." Chronicle.
 
 HURST AND BLACKETT'S NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 ELIZABETH DE VALOIS, QUEEN OF SPAIN, AND 
 
 THE COURT OF PHILIP II. From numerous unpublished sources in 
 the Archives of France, Italy, and Spain. By MISS FREER. 2 vols 
 post 8vo. with fine Portraits by HEATH. 21s. 
 
 THE LIFE OF MARGUERITE D'ANGOULEME, 
 
 QUEEN of NAVARRE, SISTER of FRANCIS I. By MISS FREER. 
 Second Edition, 2 vols. with fine Portraits, 21s. 
 
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 authoress is quite equal in power and grace to Miss Strickland. She must have spent great 
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 manner. It is difficult to lay down her book after having once begun it.." Standard. 
 
 THE LIFE OF JEANNE D' ALBERT, QUEEN OF 
 
 NAVARRE. By MISS FREER. Cheap Edition, 1 vol. 5s. with Portrait. 
 
 "This book reflects the highest credit on the industry and ability of Miss Freer. 
 Nothing can be more interesting than her story of the life of Jeanne U'Albret, and the 
 narrative is as trustworthy as it is attractive." Post. 
 
 THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE COURT OF 
 
 FRANCE UNDER LOUIS XV. Edited, from Rare and Unpublished 
 Documents, by Dr. CHALLICE. 2 vols. with fine Portraits. 21s. 
 
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 tive." Critic. 
 
 " A valuable and interesting work. It unites the fascination of a romance with the 
 integrity of history." Chronicle. 
 
 " The interest of this work will be readily acknowledged. Every page contains a con- 
 tribution to the general chronicle of the times, while anecdotes and sketches of character 
 abound." Illustrated Newt. 
 
 MEMORIALS OF ADMIRAL LORD GAMBIER, G.C-B. 
 
 with Original Letters from LORDS CHATHAM, XELSON, CASTLEREAGH, 
 MDLGRAVE, HOLLAND, Mr. CANNING, &c, Edited, from Family Pa- 
 pers, by LADY CHATTERTON, SECOND EDITION, 2 vols. 8vo, 28s. 
 
 " These volumes are an important addition to our naval literature; but they are also 
 valuable for the light they throw on the domestic history of the time. The correspon- 
 dence is particularly rich in anecdotes, glimpses of society and manners, and traits of 
 character." U. S. Magazine. 
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. BY J. C- JEAFFRESON, 
 
 ESQ.., New, Revised and Cheaper Edition, 1 vol., 10s. Cd. 
 
 "This is a rare book; a compliment to the medical profession and an acquisition to 
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 loves of physicians, are rich with anecdotes of medical celebrities. But Mr. Jeaffreson 
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 thank Mr. Jeaffreson most heartily for the mirth and solid information of his work. All 
 the members of our profession will be sure to read it." Lancet. 
 
 "A pleasant book. Out of hundreds of volumes, Mr. Jeaffreson has collected 
 thousands of good things, adding much that appears in print tor the first time, and which 
 of .course gives increased value to this very readable book." Athenxum.
 
 HURST AND BLACKETT S NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 LODGE'S PEERAGE AND BARONETAGE. Under 
 
 THE ESPECIAL PATRONAGK OF HER MAJESTY AND H.R.H. THE 
 PRINCE CONSORT. Corrected throughout by the Nobility. THIRTIETH 
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 LODGE'S PEERAGE AND BARONETAGE is acknowledged to be the most 
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 hands of every one having connections in, or transactions with, the aristocracy." Observer .
 
 HURST AND BLACKETl's NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 LODGE'S GENEALOGY OF THE PEERAGE AND 
 
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 EDITION. Uniform with " THE PEERAGE" Volume, with the arms 
 
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 The desire very generally manifested for a republication of this volume has 
 
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 yet combined characters, has been useful and correct information ; and the 
 
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 The great advantage of " The Genealogy" being thus given in a separate volume, 
 
 Mr. Lodge has himself explained in the Preface to " The Peerage." 
 
 THE BOOK OF ORDERS OF KNIGHTHOOD, AND 
 
 DECORATIONS OF HONOUR OF ALL NATIONS; COMPRISING 
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 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF GEORGE VILLIERS, 
 
 DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM. By MRS. THOMSON. 3 vols. 
 
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 author. The story of the royal favourite's career is told by Mrs. Thomson very honestly, 
 and is enriched abundantly with curious and entertaining)details of which a full publication 
 is now made for the first time." Examiner. 
 
 BRITISH ARTISTS, from HOGARTH to TURNER;- 
 
 A SERIES OF BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. By WALTER THORNBURY. 2v 
 
 "The interest of Mr. Thornbury's pictures is undeniable a result partly due to the 
 talent of the painter, partly to his subjects; for next to the lives of actors those of artists 
 are among the most interesting to read. Especially so are those of our English artists of 
 the last century lives abounding in contrasted and often dark hues, interwoven with the 
 history of men still remarkable in letters and polities. Capital subjects for a biographer 
 with a turn for dramatic and picturesque realisation are such men as the bright, mercurial 
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 Barry, the fierce and squalid; shrewd, miserly Nollekins; the foppish, visionary Conway; 
 the spendthrift Sherwin ; the stormy Fuselt ; Morland, the reprobate; Lawrence, the 
 courtly. The chapters devoted to these heroes of the English schools are not so much 
 condensed biographies as dramatic glimpses of the men and their environments. Certain 
 striking scenes and circumstances in their lives are vividly and picturesquely painted 
 made to re-live before our eyes with all the vraisemblance of the novelist." Critic. 
 
 MEMOIRS OF ROYAL LADIES. BY EMILY S. 
 
 HOLT. 2 volumes post 8vo. with Illustrations. 21s. 
 
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 VOYAGES AND TRAVELS. 
 
 TRAVELS IN THE REGIONS OF THE AMOOR, 
 
 AND THE RUSSIAN ACQUISITIONS ox THE CONFINES OF INDIA AND 
 CHINA; WITH ADVENTURES AMONG THE MOUNTAIN KIRGHIS, AND THE 
 MANJOURS, MANYARGS, TOUNGOUZ, TOUZEMTZ, GOLDI, AND GEI/YAKS. 
 By T. W. ATKINSON, F G.S., F.R.G.S., Author of " Oriental and Western 
 Siberia." Dedicated by permission, to HER MAJESTY. SECOND EDITION. 
 Royal 8vo., with Map and 83 Illustrations. 2 2s., elegantly bound 
 
 " Our readers have not now to learn for the first time the quality of Mr. Atkinson as an 
 explorer and a writer. The comments we made on, and the extracts we selected from, his 
 ' Oriental and Western Siberia' will have sufficed to show that in the former character he 
 takes rank with the most daring of the class, and that in the latter he Is scarcely to be 
 surpassed for the lucidity, picturesqueness, and power, with which he pourtrays the scenes 
 through which he has travelled, and the perils or the pleasures which encountered him on 
 the way. The present volume is not inferior to its predecessor. It deals with civilization, 
 semi -civilization, and barbarous life. It takes us through localities, some of which are 
 little, others not at all, known to even the best read men in the literature of travel. The 
 entire volume is admirable for its spirit, unexaggerated tone, and the mass of fresh materials 
 by which this really new world is made accessible to us. The followers, too, of all the ' ologies 
 will meet with something in these graghic pages of peculiar interest to them. It is a noble 
 work." Athenaeum. 
 
 "We must refer to Mr. Atkinson as one of the most intelligent and successful of the 
 civilized travellers of our own day. By far the most important contribution to the history 
 of these regions is to be found in Mr. Atkinson's recent publication on the Amoor a work 
 which derives equal interest from his well-stored portfolio and his pen." Edinburgh 
 Review. 
 
 ".This is in every respect an aureus liber. Its magnificent apparel not Inaptly sym- 
 bolises its magnificent contents. Mr. Atkinson has here given us a narrative which could 
 be told by no other living Englishman. The intrinsic interest of that narrative is enhanced 
 by Mr. Atkinson's gift of vigorous and graceful description. Thanks to the power of his 
 pen, and the still more remarkable power of his pencil we follow his travels with eager 
 Interest and anxiety. He himself is the chief object of interest, from his thirst for adventure 
 and daring exploits, and the countless shapes of terror and death that he encounters. 
 The work is a magnificent contribution to the literature of travel. More useful and 
 pleasant reading can no where be found." Literary Gazette. 
 
 " Mr. Atkinson has here presented the reading world with another valuable book of 
 travels. It is as interesting, as entertaining, and as well written as his previous work. It 
 is a volume which will not only afford intellectual entertainment of the highest order, but 
 fitted to instruct both the philosopher and the statesman. The vast territorial acquisition! 
 lately made by Russia in the Northern parts of Central Asia along the whole frontier of 
 China, is described by an eye witness well qualified to estimate their real value and political 
 advantages. Our readers, we feel sure, will peruse this interesting book of travels for 
 themselves. It contains something for every taste." Daily News 
 
 " The success of Mr. Atkinson's ' Oriental and Western Siberia' has happily indnced 
 him to write and publish another volume, and written with the same unflagging interest. 
 A more pleasing as well as more novel book of travels it would be difficult to find. The 
 illustrations are admirably executed, and they add ten fold to the value of a volume already 
 possessing intrinsic merits of the highest kind. Independently of the deep interest it excites 
 as a traveller's tale, the work has other claims. It presents peculiar geographical and ethnolo- 
 gical information, and points out a boundless field of commerce to English enterprise. It 
 marks with a decided pen the gradual advances of Russia towards British India, and the 
 sweeping rush of her conquering energy from Siberia to the Pacific. Thus Mr. Atkinson's 
 book has not only a literary, but a political and commercial importance. There is food for 
 all readers and interest for all." Globe. 
 
 "A really magnificent volume, which for many years to come must be a standard 
 authority upon the country of which it treats. It is very interesting and abounds in 
 incident and anecdote both personal and local." Chrtnicle.
 
 HURST AND BLACKETT's NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 ORIENTAL AND WESTERN SIBERIA ; A NAR- 
 
 RATIVE OF SEVEN YEARS' EXPLORATIONS AND ADVENTURES IN SIBERIA, 
 MONGOLIA, THE KIRGHIS STEPPES, CHINESE TARTARY, AND CENTRAL 
 ASIA. By THOMAS WITLAM ATKINSON. In one large volume, 
 royal 8vo., Price JG2. 2s., elegantly bound. Embellished with upwards 
 of 50 Illustrations, including numerous beautifully coloured plates, from 
 drawings by the Author, and a map. 
 
 "By virtue alike of ltd text and Its pictures, we place this book of travel in the first 
 rank among those illustrated gift books now so much sought by the public. Mr. Atkinson's 
 book is most readable. The geographer finds in it notice of ground heretofore left 
 undescribed, the ethnologist, geologist, and botanist, find notes and pictures, too, of which 
 they know the value, the sportman's taste is gratified by chronicles of sport, the lover of 
 adventure will find a number of perils and escapes to hang over, and the lover of a frank 
 good-humoured way of speech will find the book a pleasant one in every page. Seven 
 years of wandering, thirty-nine thousand five hundred miles of moving to and fro in a wild 
 and almost unknown country, should yield a book worth reading, and they do." Examiner. 
 
 "A book of travels which in value and sterling interest must take rank as a landmark 
 in geographical literature. Its coloured illustrations and wood engravings are of a high 
 order, and add a great charm to the narrative. Mr. Atkinson has travelled where it is 
 believed no European has been before. He has seen nature in the wildest, sublimest, and 
 also the most beautiful aspects the old world can present. These he has depicted by pen 
 and pencil. He has done both well. Many a fireside will rejoice in the determination which 
 converted the artist into an author. Mr. Atkinson is a thorough Englishman, brave and 
 accomplished, a lover of adventure and sport of every kind. He kuows enough of mineralogy, 
 geology, and botany to impart a scientific interest to his descriptions and drawings ; 
 possessing a keen sense of humour, he tells many a racy story. The sportsman and the 
 lover of adventure, whether by flood or field, will fiud ample stores in the stirring tales of 
 his interesting travels." Daily News. 
 
 " An animated and intelligent narrative, appreciably enriching the literature of English 
 travel. Mr. Atkinson's sketches were made by express permission of the late Emperor of 
 Russia. Perhaps no English artist was ever before admitted into this enchanted land of 
 history, or provided with the talisman and amulet of a general passport; and well has Mr. 
 Atkinson availed himself of the privilege. Our extracts will have served to illustrate the 
 originality and variety of Mr. Atkinson's observations and adventures during his protracted 
 wanderings of nearly forty thousand miles. Mr. Atkinson's pencil was never idle, and he 
 has certainly brought home with him the forms, and colours, and other characteristics of a 
 most extraordinary diversity of groups and scenes. As a sportsman Mr. Atkinson enjoyed 
 a plenitude of excitement. His narrative is well stored with Incidents of adventure. 
 His ascent of the Dielouka is a chapter of the most vivid romance of travel, yet it is less 
 attractive than his relations of wanderings across the Desert of Gobi and up the Tangnou 
 Chain." Athenteum. 
 
 "We predict that Mr. Atkinson's 'Siberia' will very often assume the shape of a 
 Christmas Present or New Year's Gift, as it possesses, in an eminent degree, four very 
 precious and suitable qualities for that purpose, namely, usefulness, elegance, instruction 
 and novelty. It is a work of great value, not merely on account of its splendid illustrations, 
 but for the amount it contains of authentic and highly interesting intelligence concerning 
 regions which, in all probability, has never, previous to Mr. Atkinson's explorations, been 
 visited by an European. Mr. Atkinson's adventures are told in a manly style. The valuable 
 and interesting information the book contains, gathered at a vast expense, is lucidly 
 arranged, ann altogether the work is one that thejauthor-artist may well be proud of, and 
 with which those who study it cannot fail to be delighted." John Bull. 
 
 " To the geographer, the geologist, the ethnographer, the sportsman, and to those who 
 read only for amusement, this will be an acceptable volume. Mr. Atkinson is rot only an 
 adventurous traveller, but a correct and amusing writer." Literary Gazette.
 
 VOYAGES AND TRAVELS. 
 
 THE OKAVANGO RIVER; A NARRATIVE OF 
 
 TRAVEL, EXPLORATION AND ADVENTURE. By CHARLES JOHN 
 ANDERSSON. Author of " Lake Ngami." 1 yol. 8vo. with Portrait of the 
 Author, and numerous Illustrations. 21s. bound. 
 
 " Mr. Andersson is one of those whom the world and the Geographical Society delight 
 iu uonour. Not for adventures only, but for science's sake does he betake himself to the 
 wilds, in which he has all the delights attractive to the true sportsman, but in which he 
 fearlessly encounters all perils that he may discover a river, depict a new people, or 
 bring to light a tresh species. His ' Lake Ngami' was deservedly popular; and, on behalf 
 
 "This book illustrated with many animated pictures of adventures connected with the 
 
 " Mr. Andersson's adventures stamp him as an one of the most enterprising traveller 
 of modern times, and well worthy to take rank by the side of Livingstone and others, who 
 have attempted to penetrate the interior of the great African continent. Every page of hit 
 present work is full or' interest." Observer. 
 
 " Mr. Andersson's narrative of his discovery of the Okavango River is very interesting. 
 The book is one which will please alike the traveller, the sportsman, and the student of 
 natural history. It abounds in startling adventures." Morning Post. 
 
 " Mr. Andersson's new work is full of startling accounts of encounters with all kinds of 
 wild beasts the elephant, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, the lion, the giraffe, &c. all of 
 which will be read with delight by the sportsman ; while the traveller and the student of 
 geography or ethnology will find plenty of food for the mind in the other parts of the 
 book. It is profusely and beautifully illustrated, and cannot but become one of the favourite 
 works of the season." Bell's Life. 
 
 LAKE NGAMI; OR EXPLORATIONS AND DIS- 
 
 COVERIES DURING FOUR YEARS* WANDERINGS IN THE WlLDS OP 
 
 SOUTH-WESTERN AFRICA. By CHARLES JOHN ANDERSSON. Second 
 Edition.l vol. royal 8vo., with Map and upwards of 50 Illustrations, repre- 
 senting Sporting Adventures, Subjects of Natural History, &c. 
 
 "This narrative of African explorations and discoveries is one of the most important 
 geographical works that have lately appeared. It contains the account of two journeys 
 made between the years 1850 and 1854, in the first of which the countries of the Damaras 
 and the Ovambo, previously scarcely known in Europe, were explored; and in the second 
 the newly-discovered Lake Ngami was reached by a route that had been deemed imprac- 
 ticable, but which proves to be the shortest and the best. The work contains much scientific 
 and accurate information as to the geology, the scenery, products, and resources of the 
 regions explored, with notices of the religion, manners, and customs of the native tribes. 
 The continual sporting adventures, and other remarkable occurrences, intermingled with 
 the narrative of travel, make the book as interesting to read as a romance, as, indeed, a 
 good book of travels ought always to be. The illustrations by Wolf are admirably designed, 
 and most of them represent scenes as striking as any witnessed by Jules Gerard or Gordon 
 Cumming." Literary Gazette.
 
 10 HURST AND BLACKETT's NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 TRAVELS IN THE HOLY LAND. By FREDRIKA 
 
 BREMER. Translated by MARY HOWITT. 2 vols. (Just ready.) 
 
 TWO YEARS IN SWITZERLAND AND ITALY. 
 
 By FREDRIKA BREMER. Translated by MARY HOWITT. 2 vols. 
 
 " This Is certainly one of the best works Miss Bremen has ever yet produced. We 
 can scarcely find words adequately to express our admiration of the manner in which 
 she has told all she saw and felt during the two years she passed in the loveliest parts 
 of Europe. The book is the best that ever was written on such themes." Messenger. 
 
 SIX YEARS OF A TRAVELLER'S LIFE IN 
 
 WESTERN AFRICA. By FRANCISCO VALDEZ. Arbitrator at Loanda, 
 and the Cape of Good Hope. 2 vols. with Illustrations. 
 " A book of value and importance." Messenger. 
 
 TEN YEARS' WANDERINGS AMONG THE ETHIO- 
 
 PIANS ; with Sketches of the Manners and Customs of the Civilised and 
 Uncivilised Tribes from Senegal to Gaboon. By T. J. HUTCHINSON, 
 F.R.G.S., Consul for Fernando Po. 8vo. with Illustrations. 14s. 
 
 " A work of very considerable interest, that cannot fail to be highly valued by the 
 merchant and the trader, as well as by the philantrophist, the ethnologist, the geographi- 
 cal explorer, and the man of science." Observer, 
 
 THE MEDICAL MISSIONARY IN CHINA: A NAR- 
 RATIVE OF TMENTY YEARS' EXPERIENCE. By WILLIAM LOCK- 
 HART, F.R.C.S. F.R.G.S, of the London Missionary Society. Second 
 Edition, 1 vol. 8vo. 
 
 " We heartily commend this work to our readers. It contains more information upon 
 the social life of the teeming millions of Chinese than any book it has been our fortune to 
 meet." Baptist Magazine. 
 
 TRAVELS IN EASTERN AFRICA, WITH THE 
 
 NARRATIVE OF A RESIDENCE IN MOZAMBIQUE : 1856 to 1859. 
 By LYONS McLEOD, Esq. F.R.G.S.. &c. Late British Consul in Mo- 
 zambique. 2 vols. With Map and Illustrations. 
 
 A RESIDENCE AT THE COURT OF MEER AU 
 
 MOORAD ; WITH WILD SPORTS IN THE VALLEY OF THE INDUS. BY CAPT. 
 LANGLEY, late Madras Cavalry. 2 vols. 8vo. with Illustrations. 30s. 
 
 SIXTEEN YEARS OF AN ARTIST'S LIFE IN 
 
 MOROCCO, SPAIN, AND THE CANARY ISLANDS. By MRS. 
 ELIZABETH MURRAY. 2 vols. 8vo. with Coloured Illustrations. 
 
 " Mrs. Murray's book is like her painting, luminous, rich and fresh. We welcome it (as 
 the public will also do) with sincere pleasure." Athenteum. 
 
 A SUMMER RAMBLE in the HIMALAYAS; with 
 
 SPORTING ADVENTURES IN THE VALE OF CASHMERE. Edited 
 by MOUNTAINEER. 8vo. with Illustrations. 15s. 
 
 " This volume is altogether a pleasant one. It is written with lest and edited with care. 
 The incidents and adventures of the journey are most fascinating to a sportsman and very 
 nteresting to a traveller." Athtrutum
 
 HURST AND BLACKETT S NEW PUBLICATIONS. 1 1 
 
 THE ENGLISH SPORTSMAN IN THE WESTERN 
 
 PRAIRIES. By the HON. GRANTLEY BERKELEY. Royal 8vo. with 
 numerous Illustrations. 
 
 " This is a splendid volume, full of adventure and anecdote. One of the most skilful and 
 ardent of our sportsmen, Mr. Grantley Berkeley is at the same time an excellent writer 
 upon sporting matters. This is a very rare combination of qualities, for, generally speaking, 
 the men who understand sport are unable to write, whilst those who can write are pro- 
 fonmlly ignorant of sport. Now Mr. Grantley Berkeley not only understands his topics 
 thoroughly, but is able to write with ease, freshness, and vigour about them. There is a 
 zest in his descriptions which only a true sportsman can feel. There is a breath of the 
 woods, an echo of the hunting-horn in his writings. We can see the exciting picture 
 which his words would present." Critic. 
 
 " We heartily commend this handsome book to the gentlemen of England. Its author 
 is the present Caesar of sport, who unites to his feats of hunting the ability of recording 
 them .'' Herald. 
 
 ESSAYS FROM THE QUARTERLY. BY JAMES 
 
 HANNAY. 1 vol. 8vo. 14s. 
 
 " A very agreeable and valuable addition to our literature. As a writer Mr. Hannay 
 possesses very remarkable merit indeed. He is eminently readable, he has a vast deal of 
 shrewd common sense, and a brilliancy of illustrative comparison quite unparalleled by 
 any author of the present day. We could not point to any series of articles, not even 
 excepting those of Alacaulay, which are easier reading." Spectator. 
 
 DOMESTIC SKETCHES IN RUSSIA. By LADY 
 
 CHARLOTTE PEPYS. 2 vols. post 8vo. 21s. 
 
 " This very agreeable book presents a photograph of Russian home life, the simplicity 
 of which is as charming as the manner of relating it is attractive." Messenger. 
 
 LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF FRENCH MILITARY 
 
 LIFE. By the Author of " FLEMISH INTERIORS," &c. 3 vols. with 
 Illustrations. (Just ready.) 
 
 REALITIES OF PARIS LIFE. BY THE AUTHOR 
 
 of " FLEMISH INTERIORS," &c. 3 vols. with Illustrations. 31s. 6<1. 
 
 " ' Realities of Paris Life' is a good addition to Paris books, and important as affording 
 true and sober pictures of the Paris poor." Atheruntm. 
 
 DOMESTIC MEMOIRS OF THE ROYAL FAMILY, 
 
 and the COURT OF ENGLAND, chiefly at SHENE and RICHMOND. 
 By FOLKESTONE WILLIAMS, F.G.S., 3 vols. with Portraits. 
 
 " In the prosecution of his labours, the author has consulted antiquaries and archte- 
 ologists, and examined contemporary authorities. The result is, a work, pleasant and. 
 instructive, abundant in anecdote, and agreeably gossipping. It, moreover, evinces con- 
 siderable research, and a generally sound historical judgment." Spectator. 
 
 THE RIDES AND REVERIES OF MR. .ESOP SMITH. 
 
 By MARTIN F. TUPPER, D.C.L., F.R.S., Author of " Proverbial Philo- 
 sophy," " Stephen Langton," &c., 1 vol. post 8vo. 5s.
 
 12 
 
 HURST AND BLACKETT S NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 STUDIES FROM LIFE. BY THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 " JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN,'' " A WOMAN'S THOUGHTS ABOUT 
 WOMEN," &c. 1 vol. 10s. 6d. elegantly bound. 
 
 "Studies from Life is altogether a charming volume, one which all women and most 
 men, would be proud to possess." Chronicle. 
 
 " Without being in the same degree elaborate, either in purpose or plot, as 'John 
 Halifax,' these 'Studies trom Life' may be pronounced to be equally as clever in construc- 
 tion and narration. It is one of the most charming features of Miss Muloch's works that 
 they invariably tend to a practical and useful end. Her object is to improve the taste, retine 
 the intellect, and touch the heart, and so to act upon all classes of her readers as to make 
 them rise from the consideration of her books both xviser and better than they were before 
 they began to read them. The ' Studies from Life' will add considerably to the author's 
 well earned reputation." Messenger. 
 
 POEMS. BY THE AUTHOR OF " JOHN HALIFAX, 
 
 GENTLEMAN," " A WOMAN'S THOUGHTS ABOUT WOMEN," &c. 
 1 vol. with Illustrations by BIRKET FOSTER. 
 
 "A volume of poems which will assuredly take its place with those of Goldsmith, Gray, 
 and Cowper, on the favourite shelf of every Englishman's library. We discover in these 
 poems all the firmness, vigour, and delicacy of touch which characterise the author's prose 
 works, and in addition, an ineffable tenderness and grace, such as we find in few poetical 
 compositions besides those of Tennyson." Illustrated Ne.ws of the World. 
 
 " We are well pleased with these poems by our popular novelist. Tliey are the expression 
 of genuine thoughts, feelings, arid aspirations, and the expression is almost always grace- 
 ful, musical and well-coloured. A high, pure tone of morality pervades each set of verses , 
 and each strikes the reader as inspired by some real event, or condition of mind, and not by 
 some idle fancy or fleeting sentiment." Spectator. 
 
 A SAUNTER THROUGH THE WEST END. BY 
 
 LEIGH HUNT. 1 vol. 10s. 6d. 
 
 " The title of this work is unexceptionable, it is happily and appropriately chosen to 
 denote the gossipping contents of the book ; light, chatty, and amusing. The author 
 quietly puts his arm in that of his reader, and as he passes on from Hyde Park Corner 
 down Piccadilly or Pall Mall to the Haymarket and Soho, points out the anecdotes con- 
 nected with each locality. Touches of quiet, genial, humour, playful interruptions, and 
 amusing stories told in a quaint, unaffected style contribute to the attractive conversational 
 tone adopted, as he saunters along with his friend of the hour. The reader will nnd himself 
 agreeably carried on from the first to the last of ' The Saunter' by its cheerful tone and 
 entertaining gossip." Literary Gazette. 
 
 "This book is ever fresh. Few men felt, as Leigh Hunt did, the human poetry of 
 the memories that crowd upon the lettered and thoughtful rambler about London streets. 
 His gentle, genial humour shines in a book like this worthy companion to his ' Town' 
 and ' Old Court Suburb' with light that will not become dim with lapse of time." Exam. 
 
 "Ifanyofour readers are in want of a genial, gossipping volume, full of pleasant 
 historical allusions, and written by one who was deservedly a great favourite in the 
 world of letters, we can recommend them Leigh Hunt's very pleasant ' Saunter.' It will 
 suit town or country readers equally well." Critic. 
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF A FOX-HUNTER. BY SCRU- 
 TATOR. 1 vol. 
 
 "This is Scrutator's best book. It is a sort of memoir of the hearty and accomplished 
 writer, including pleasant notices of sporting celebrities, such as Assheton Smith, &c., but 
 the burden of the volume consists of experience in the hunting-field real truths con- 
 veying excellent lessons as to horse and hound, and ensuring for tlie volume an honoured 
 place in every sportsman's library." Era, 
 
 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A STAGE-COACHMAN. 
 
 By THOMAS CROSS. Dedicated to Henry Villebois, Esq., Master of 
 the Norfolk Hounds. 3 vols. with Illustrations. 
 
 " The autobiography of Mr. Cross is a faithful chronicle of a by -gone form ofciviliia- 
 tion. It is one of Mr. 'Cross's chief merits that he tells many a good anecdote in his own 
 characteristic way." Examiner,
 
 WORKS OP FICTION. 
 
 13 
 
 THE LAST OP 
 THE MORTIMERS. 
 
 By the Author of "MAROARKT MAIT- 
 LAND," &c. 3 vols. 
 
 WHITE AND BLACK. 
 
 A TALK OF THE SOUTHERN STATES. 3v. 
 
 THE HOME AT ROSEFIELD. 
 
 By EDWARB COPPING. 3 vols. 
 
 NOTICE TO QUIT. 
 
 By W. G. WILLS. 3 vols. 
 
 " A novel of remarkable power. The 
 interest never flags. There is real genius 
 in this writer." Spectator. 
 
 EAST AND WEST. 
 
 By J. FRAZER CORKRAN. 3 vols. 
 
 " A good novel. The author has know- 
 ledge in abundance." Daily Newt. 
 
 SIR RICHARD HAMILTON. 
 
 2 vols. 
 
 COUNTY SOCIETY. 
 
 3 vols. 
 
 " An admirably written and entertaining 
 novel." Observer 
 
 A HERO IN SPITE OP 
 HIMSELF. 
 
 By CAPTAIV MAYVE REID. 
 
 From the French of Luis de Bellemare. 
 
 3 vols. 
 
 ALONE IN THE WORLD. 
 
 By the Author of 
 " COUSIN GEOFFREY," &c. v. 
 
 PAUL FOSTER'S 
 DAUGHTER. 
 
 RyDoTTON COOK. 3 vols. 
 
 UNDER THE SPELL. 
 
 By the Author of " GRANDMOTHER'S 
 
 MONKY," "WlLDFLOWBR," &C. 8 Vols. 
 
 "The beststory hitherto written by a 
 very pleasant novelist." Examiner. 
 
 A FAMILY HISTORY. 
 
 By the Author of " THE QUEEN'S PAR- 
 DON." 3 vols. 
 
 NO CHURCH. 
 
 By the Author of " HIGH CHURCH." 
 Third Edition. 3 vols. 
 
 " We advise all who have the oppor- 
 tunity to read this book. It is worth the 
 study. It is a book to make us feel what 
 may be accomplished by each and all of us 
 who choose to set about it in a simple, 
 earnest spirit, unprejudiced by sectarian 
 or party feeling, only having a lively 
 faith in God's mercy, and a fervent 
 charity towards our fellow men. As a love 
 story, the book is interesting, and well 
 put together." Athenaeum, 
 
 MY SHARE OF THE 
 WORLD. 
 
 By FRANCES BROWNE. 3 vols. 
 
 KATHERINE AND HER 
 SISTERS. 
 
 By the Author of "THB DISCIPLINE OF 
 LIFK," &c., 3 vols. 
 
 ICE-BOUND. 
 
 By WALTER THORNBCRT. 3 vols. 
 " lu ' Ice-Bound' Mr. Thorubury has 
 put forth all his powers, and has pro- 
 duced one of the best books of fiction he 
 has ever written." Messenger. 
 
 THE HOUSE ON THE MOOR. 
 
 By the 
 
 Author of " MARGARET MAITLAND," 3 v. 
 " This story is very interesting and the 
 interest deepens as the story proceeds." 
 Athenaum. 
 
 HOMELESS; or, A POET'S 
 INNER LIFE. 
 
 By M. GOLDSCHHIDT. 
 Author of " JACOB BENDIXBN." 3 v. 
 
 THE WORLD'S VERDICT. 
 
 By the Author of " MORALS or MAT 
 FAIR," 'CREEDS," &c. 3 vols. 
 
 WHEEL WITHIN WHEEL. 
 
 By the Author of" ALICE WBNTWORTH," 
 "THE LEBSOFBLKNDON HALL." &c. 3v. 
 
 "A good novel." Atlienoeum. 
 
 THINKING AND ACTING. 
 
 By A CLEKOVMAN'S DAUGHTER. 
 
 Author of " HBLEN LINDSAV," OCR 
 " HOMELESS POOR," &c. 2 vols.
 
 NOW IN COURSE OF P0BLICA.TIOX. 
 
 HURST AND BLACKETT'S STANDARD LIBRARY 
 
 OF CHEAP EDITIONS OF 
 
 POPULAR MODERN WORKS 
 
 ILLUSTRATED EY MILLAIS, LEECH, BIRKET FOSTER, &c. 
 
 Each in a single volume, elegantly printed, bound, and illustrated, price 5s. 
 A volume to appear every two months. The following are now ready. 
 
 VOL. I.-SAM SLICK'S NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 " The first volume of Messrs. Hurst and Blackett's Standard Library of Cheap Editions 
 of Popular Modern Works forms a very good beginning to what wi<l doubtless be a very 
 successful undertaking. ' Nature and Human Nature' is one of the best of Sam Slick's 
 witty and humorous productions, and well entitled to the large circulation which it 
 cannot fail to obtain in its present convenient and cheap shape. The volume combines 
 with the great recommendations of a clear, bold type, and good paper, the lesser, but 
 still attractive merits, of being well illustrated and elegantly bound." Morning' Post. 
 
 "This new and cheap edition of Sam Slick's popular work will be an acquisition to 
 all lovers of wit and humour. Mr. Justice Haliburton's writings are so well known to 
 the English public that no commendation is needed. The volume is very handsomely 
 bound and illustrated, and the paper and type are excellent. It is in every way suited 
 for a library edition, and as the names of Messrs. Hurst and Blackett, warrant the 
 character of the works to be produced in their Standard Library, we have no doubt the 
 project will be eminently successful." Sun. 
 
 VOL. II.-JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN. 
 
 " This is a very good and a very interesting work. It is designed to trace the career 
 from boyhood to age of a perfect man a Christian gentleman, and it abounds in incident 
 both well and highly wrought. Throughout it is conceived in a high spirit, and written 
 with great ability, better than any former work, we think, of its deservedly successful 
 author. This cheap and handsome new edition is worthy to pass freely from hand to hand, 
 as a gift hook in many households." Examiner. 
 
 "The new and cheaper edition of this interesting work will doubtless meet with great 
 success. John Halifax, the hero of this most beautiful story, is no ordinary hero, and this, 
 his history, is no ordinary book. It is a full-length portrait of a true gentleman, one of 
 nature's own nobility. It is also the history of a home and a thoroughly English one. 
 The work abounds in incident, and many of the scenes are full of graphic power and true 
 pathos. It is a book that few will read without becoming wiser and better." Scotsman 
 
 VOL. III.-THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS. 
 
 BY ELIOT WARBURTON. 
 
 "Independent of its value as an original narrative, and its useful and interesting 
 information, this work is remarkable for the colouring power and play of fancy with 
 which its descriptions are enlivened. Among its greatest and most lasting charms is its 
 reverent and serious spirit." Quarterly Rvvieu 1 
 
 "A book calculated to prove more practically useful was never penned than 'The 
 Crescent and the Cross' a work which surpasses all others in its homage for the sub- 
 lime and its love for the beautiful in those famous regions consecrated to everlasting 
 immortality in the annals of the prophets, and which no other writer has ever depicted 
 with a pencil at once so reverent and so picturesque." Sun. 
 
 VOL. IV. NATHALIE. BY JULIA KAVANAGH. 
 
 '"Nathalie ' is Miss Kavanagh's best imaginative effort. Its manner is gracious and 
 attractive. Its matter is good. A sentiment, a tenderness, are commanded by her which 
 ate as individual as they are elegant. We should not-soon come to an end were we to 
 specify all the delicate touches and attractive pictures which place ' Nathalie* high among 
 books of its class." Athenaeum, 
 
 VOL. V. A WOMAN'S THOUGHTS ABOUT WOMEN. 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF "JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN." 
 
 "A book of sound counsel. It is one of the most sensible works of its kind, well-writ- 
 ten, true-hearted, and altogether practical. Whoever wishes to give advice to a young lady 
 may thank the author for means of doing so." Examiner.
 
 HURST AND BLACKETT'S STANDARD LIBRARY 
 OF CHEAP EDITIONS. 
 
 Each in a single volume, elegantly printed, bound, and illustrated, price 5s. 
 
 VOL. VI.-ADAM GRAEME, OP MOSSGRAY. 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF "MRS. MARGARET MAITLAND." 
 
 "' Adam Graeme' is a story awakening genuine emotions of interest and delight by Its 
 admirable pictures of Scottish life and scenery. The eloquent author sets before us 
 the essential attributes of Christian virtue, their deep and silent workings in the heart, 
 and their beautiful manifestations In the life, with a delicacy, a power, and a truth which 
 can hardly be surpassed." Morning Post. 
 
 VOL. VII.-SAM SLICK'S WISE SAWS 
 AND MODERN INSTANCES. 
 
 "The humour of Sam Slick is inexhaustible. He is ever and everywhere a welcome 
 visitor; smiles greet his approach, and wit and wisdom hang upon his tongue. 
 The present production is remarkable alike for its racy humour, its sound philosophy, 
 the felicity of its illustrations, and the delicacy of its satire." Post. 
 
 VOL. Vlii.-CARDINAL WISEMAN'S RECOLLECTIONS 
 OF THE LAST FOUR POPES. 
 
 "A picturesque book on Rome and its ecclesiastical sovereigns, by an eloquent Roman 
 Catholic. Cardinal Wiseman has here treated a special subject with so much generality and 
 geniality, that his recollections will excite no ill-feeling in those who are most conscientiously 
 opposed to every idea of human infallibity represented in Papal domination." Athenaeum. 
 
 VOL. IX.-A LIFE FOR A LIFE. 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF "JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN." 
 
 "We are always glad to welcome Miss Muloch. She writes from her own convictions, 
 and she has the power not only to conceive clearly what it is that she wishes to say, but to 
 express it in language effective and vigorous. In ' A Life for a Life' she is fortunate in a 
 good subject, and she has produced a work of strong effect. The reader having read the 
 book through for the story, will be apt (if he be of our persuasion) to return and read again 
 many pages and passages with greater pleasure than on a first perusal. The whole book in 
 replete with a graceful, tender delicacy ; and in addition toils other merits, it is written in 
 good careful English." Athenaeum. 
 
 VOL. X.-THE OLD COURT SUBURB. BY LEIGH HUNT. 
 
 "A delightful book, of which the charm begins at the first line on the first page, for full of 
 quaint and pleasant memories is the phrase that is its title, ' The Old Court Suburb.' Very full 
 too, both of quaint and pleasant memories is the line that designates the author. It is the 
 name of the most cheerful of chroniclers, the best of remembrancers of good things, the 
 most polished and entertaining of educated gossips 'The Old Court Suburb' is a work that 
 will be welcome to all readers, and most welcome to those who have a love for the best 
 kinds of reading." Examiner. 
 
 VOL. XL-MARGARET AND HER BRIDESMAIDS. 
 
 "We may save ourselves the trouble of giving any lengthened review of this work, for 
 we recommend all who are in search of a fascinating novel to read it for themselves. They 
 will find it well worth their while. There are a freshness and originality about it quite 
 charming, and there is a certain nobleness In the treatment both of sentiment and incident 
 which is not often found." Athenaeum. 
 
 VOL. XII. THE OLD JUDGE. BY SAM SLICK. 
 
 "These popular sketches, in which the Author of ' Sam Slick' paints Nova Scotian life, 
 form the 12th Volume of Messrs Hurst and Blackett's Standard Library of Modern Works. 
 The publications included in this Library haVe all been of good quality ; many give infor- 
 mation while they entertain, and of that class the book before us is a specimen. The 
 manner in which the Cheap Editions forming the series is produced deserves especial 
 mention. The paper and print are unexceptional; there is a steel engraving in each 
 volume, and the outsides of them will satisfy the purchaser who likes to see a regiment of 
 books in handsome uniform." Examiner.
 
 HURST AND BLACKETT'S STANDARD LIBRARY 
 OF CHEAP EDITIONS. 
 
 Each in a single volume, elegantly printed, bound, and illustrated, price 5s. 
 
 VOL. XIII. DARIEN. BY ELIOT WARBURTON. 
 
 "This last production, from the pen of the author of 'The Crescent and the Cross,' 
 has the same elements of a very wide popularity. It will please its thousands." Globe. 
 
 " We have seldom met with any work in which the realities of history and the poetry 
 of fiction were more happily interwoven." Illustrated News. 
 
 VOL. XIV.-FAMILY ROMANCE ; OR, DOMESTIC ANNALS 
 OF THE ARISTOCRACY. 
 
 I^ SIR BERNARD BURKE, ULSTER KINO OF ARMS. 
 
 " It were impossible to praise too highly as a work of amusement this most interesting 
 book, whether we should have regard to its excellent plan or its not less excellent exe- 
 cution. It ought to be found on every drawing-room table. Here you have nearly fifty 
 captivating romances with the pith of all their interest preserved in undiminished poig- 
 nancy, and any one may be read in half an hour. It is not the least of their merits that the 
 romances are founded on fact or what, at least, has been handed down for truth by long 
 tradition and the romance of reality far exceeds the romance of fiction." Standard. 
 
 VOL. XV. THE LAIRD OF NORLAW. 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF "MARGARET MAITLAND." 
 
 " In this delightful work Scottish life and character, in connection with the for- 
 tunes of the house of Norlaw, are delineated with truly artistic skill. The plot of 
 the tale is simple, but the incidents with which it is interwoven are highly wrought and 
 dramatic in their effect, and altogether there is a fascination about the work which holds 
 the attention spell-bound from the first page to the last." Herald. 
 
 VOL. XVI. THE ENGLISHWOMAN IN ITALY. 
 
 BY MRS. G. GRETTON. 
 
 " Mrs. Gretton had opportunities which rarely fall to the lot of strangers of becoming 
 acquainted with the inner life and habits of a part of the Italian peninsula which is the 
 very centre of the national crisis. We can praise her performance as interesting, uuex- 
 aggerated, and full of opportune instruction." The Times. 
 
 VOL. XVII. NOTHING NEW. 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF "JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN." 
 
 " We cordially commend this book. The same graphic power, deep pathos, heall ul 
 sentiment, and masterly execution, which place that beautiful work 'John Haliiux,' 
 among the English Classsics, are everywhere displayed." Chronicle. 
 
 VOL XVIII. THE LIFE OF JEANNE D'ALBRET. 
 
 BY MISS FREER. 
 
 "We have read this book with great pleasure, and have no hesitation in recommending 
 it to general perusal. It reflects the highest credit on the industry and ability of Miss 
 Freer. Nothing can be more interesting than her .Uory cf the life of Jeanne D'Albret, and 
 the narrative is as trustworthy as it is attractive." 1'ost. 
 
 VOL XIX. THE VALLEY OF A HUNDRED FIRES. 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF "MARGARET AND HER BRIDESMAIDS." 
 
 "We know no novel of the. last three or four years to equal this latest production of 
 the popular authoress of ' Margaret and her Bridesmaids.' If asked to classify it, we 
 should give it a place between 'John Halifax* and 'The Caxtons.' " Herald. 
 
 VOL. XX.-THE ROMANCE OF THE FORUM. 
 
 BY PETER BURKE, SKRJKANT AT LAW. (January 1862.) 
 
 "This attractive work will be read with much interest. It contains a great variety o 
 singular and highly romantic stories." John Bull.
 
 
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 1998 
 
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