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charity, and will therefore assume, in all cases where there are no clear proofs to the contrary, the bona fides of opponents. They will never forget that no man is convinced and won over by bitter words and violent attacks, but that every one 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 accordingly 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 consciousness that such things are but means to an end, and are only of inferior consequence and subsidiary value. 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 sprung 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 restless spirit of inquiry, has gone along by the side of the Catholic, exciting and awakening, warming and vivifying; whilst every exalted Catholic theologian will readily admit that he owes much to the writings of Protestant scholars. 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.' (Pp. 16-18.)

We are very far from intending to charge the writer with oblivion of his own principles, but we must, nevertheless, point out some of the more glaring inaccuracies into which he has fallen in dealing with the religious and social condition of England. In doing so we do not forget that it is always difficult for a foreigner to estimate correctly the state of a

country with which he is not personally acquainted, and this is perhaps especially true of our own. To those who know the realities of English life, not from books and newspapers, but from their own experience, much which Dr. Döllinger has written on the subject will read rather like a clever but broad caricature than a simple sketch. Thus, to tell us that the religion of the Established Church is that of deportment, of 'gentility, of clerical reserve,' language which reminds us strongly of some of the more epigrammatic passages in Dr. Newman's controversial lectures, may be effective sarcasm, but is hardly in place in a sober historical sketch by a German professor. There might be some truth fifty years ago in saying that the Anglican Clergy were 'lecturers and nothing more,' but Dr. Döllinger ought to be aware that it is the reverse of being true now; neither is his inference from the absence of the Confessional that there is no intercourse between the clergyman and the lower classes of his flock, at all more correct. That great masses of the town population are still untouched by any spiritual influence is unfortunately true, but that no attempts have been made to grapple with them, or that there has not been a very marked increase both in zeal and actual results of late years, is not true. In another respect the writer is entirely mistaken, when he supposes that the lower orders in this country prefer the ministrations of men taken from their. own class to those of gentlemen. The contrary is notoriously the case. Just as our soldiers prefer to obey officers who are gentlemen, so do the English poor prefer the services of ministers taken from a higher social class; and it must not be forgotten that in England the class of gentry extends over a much wider area then in continental countries. If the poor often flock to the Dissenting chapel rather than to the parish church, it is not because they like to listen to a preacher of their own rank, but because the sermon at church is too often (by no means universally as our author seems to imply) 'a speech or essay,' which shoots over their heads and fails to touch their hearts. Those very persons, however, who resort to the Dissenting chapel will in most cases, even in towns, send for the Anglican parson when they are sick or dying. They know the value of a man of education and refinement in their greatest trials and emergencies. It is a further misapprehension to imagine that curates are a distinct order from the beneficed clergy and derived from a lower class, instead of its being a stage of clerical life through which all, with a few exceptions, must pass, though many remain in it to the end. And Dr. Döllinge

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VOL. CXVI. NO. CCXXXV.

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should remember that our worst abuses of church patronage were more than equalled in the Church of France before 1789.

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If he has a keen eye for the weak points of the Establishment, he has also failed to do justice to the real merits of the Dissenters. A writer so familiar with English periodical literature should know that the Saturday Review 'is not the most impartial authority on Mr. Spurgeon's preaching, nor the 'Union' on the semi-infidelity' of Broad Church theology. Nor can a pamphlet on National Holidays,' by Lord John Manners, written twenty years ago in all the fervour of Young Englandism, be quoted as evidence of the degraded condition of the English poor. We must observe further that the Doctor's strictures on the moral condition of England cannot fairly be urged in a controversial sense, unless he is prepared to contrast them with the phenomena of Catholic countries. In candour, courage, enterprise, and self-reliance our author seems to admit that we conspicuously bear the palm. On the whole we feel sure that should he have opportunities of becoming personally acquainted with our social and religious life, and of mixing freely with both Anglicans and Dissenters, while his view of the ecclesiastical position of those bodies would remain unchanged, he would see reason to retract, or at least greatly to modify, much that he has written of their actual state, and would be willing to admit that, whatever may be the defects of English society or English morality, we should have little to gain and much to lose by exchanging them for the happy equality of France, or the moral purity of Naples.

His sketch of Protestant Germany has more intrinsic evidence of reality, and is founded doubtless on a deeper knowledge. So too in all probability is his brief account of the Russian and Oriental Churches, which is but too well borne out by general testimony, though conceived in a less generous and hopeful spirit than Dr. Stanley's recent volume on the subject. It is due, however, to him to say, and it is one of the happiest signs for the future of religious controversy, that he has generally manifested a most laudable desire, in conformity with his own professed principles, to treat opponents with candour, and in defending the cause of his own Church, neither to press unreal and fictitious claims, nor to sacrifice to ecclesiastical interests the laws of morality and justice. We have already noticed his method of dealing with the Canon Law. Another example may be found in his pointed disclaimer of the right or duty of persecution as a principle of the Church; in this sense he quotes both Leo the Great, and the present Catholic Archbishop of Baltimore, who affirms summarily as an axiom, that the Pope

'only addresses conscience.' Similarly, the deposing power and the detestable notion that oaths made to heretics are invalid, are expressly rejected. And it is gratifying to find an eminent Catholic divine insisting that the German Reformation owed its origin not to what was worst but to what was best and truest in the feelings of the people, and was a chastisement deserved by the practical corruptions of the clergy, and in part beneficial; for the reforming spirit must never depart from the 'Church.'

Our readers will have perceived that we have here treated this question rather as it affects the interests of the Roman Catholic Church, and therefore of Christian society, of which that Church forms so considerable a moiety, than from the standpoint of historical right and justice, or in its immediate bearings on the future of Italy. We have done so advisedly, both because we have on two former occasions dwelt separately on those aspects of the question*, and because everything that can be said has been said over and over again, and said too conclusively to admit of adequate reply, in defence of the Italian national movement. One argument alone could be urged against it with any shadow of reason, and that was the plea of the interests or exigencies of the Church. To this argument we have addressed ourselves now. And here it may be well to notice, in conclusion, an objection sometimes urged from the opposite side, which appears to us to betray an extraordinary misconception of the real state of the case. The fact, we are told, that all things continue at Rome as they were a twelvemonth or two years ago, and that the Pope still retains possession of his capital, is a striking confutation of the fears of his friends and the confident predictions of his enemies. Both parties had anticipated a speedier issue, and continued possession, under such adverse circumstances, is in itself an augury of eventual triumph. To ourselves such reasoning seems something more than infelicitous. As a material fact, it is true, the Temporal Power survives, though in a mutilated form; but, as a moral influence, it grows weaker every day while the Pope allows himself to be maintained by French bayonets, against the muttered disaffection of his subjects and the deepening indignation of the Italian people, whose righteous claims can be met with no more intelligible rejoinder than the eternal non possumus' of Antonelli. The French army remains at Rome, and therefore the nominal sovereignty of the Pope continues; but its bitterest enemies could desire

*See Art. on Patrimony of St. Peter,' Ed. Rev. July 1860; 'King'dom of Italy,' January 1861.

for it no more fatal predicament than a temporary maintenance of the status quo. Though it would be hazardous to conjecture the secret springs of action which guide the policy of Louis Napoleon, it may safely be assumed that he is not actuated by any special devotion to the Papacy for its own sake. It is highly probable that the French occupation of Rome will be indefinitely prolonged: but who does not see that it is prolonged not for any papal or spiritual object in Rome, but for party and political purposes in France? No other Catholic Power has come forward with offers of effective aid in this its hour of extremest need. No voice, save from a clique of French and English obscurantists, has been raised in its defence. The collection of Peter's pence which at best can only be regarded as a precarious make-shift, is the expression of a spiritual allegiance. The greatest theologians of the Roman Church are coldly silent, or give open utterance to their disapprobation, or their doubts. One champion, indeed, has appeared from an unexpected quarter, in the person of the distinguished Protestant statesman, M. Guizot. But never was that brilliant writer less persuasive in his words. His remarks on the religious condition of modern society, and the anxieties it must cause to a sincere believer in Revelation, will come home to many hearts; but when he goes on to base on those considerations a plea for the temporal sovereignty of the Holy See, it is difficult to trace the connecting links of the argument; and it becomes evident, as it proceeds, that if the author speaks as an earnest Christian, he speaks also as a Frenchman jealous for the honour and aggrandisement of his country, who foresees a possible rival or antagonist in an united Italy. With this solitary exception, we are not aware that the Temporal Power has made a single fresh convert to its cause. The Italian clergy, secular and regular, are divided, and many of the most devoted and learned among them are openly opposed to it.

The friends of the Papacy may rest assured that they cannot do it a greater disservice than by staking its future as a spiritual Power in Christendom on a retention of its secular claims. That a great future lies before it is still possible, if only it will accept the new conditions imposed by modern society and modern thought, and adapt itself to the requirements of the nineteeth century, as it did, under Gregory the Great, to the wants of the sixth, and under Hildebrand, to the wants of the eleventh. We are no believers in a coming ecclesiastical millennium, and can neither hold out to the zealous Catholic hopes of the reconversion of Protestant Europe to his faith; nor do we anticipate, with Professor Goldwin Smith, the fusion

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