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Being, - Ens reale et necessarium, and the characteristic of the necessary is that the contrary cannot be thought. But to place God in question is to concede that the contrary can be thought. To proceed in the face of this concession to prove that God is, can be only proceeding to prove impossible what we concede to be possible. Ex Deo, et per Deo, et in Deo sunt omnia. Therefore, to place God in question is to place all things in question, and then nothing that is not conceded to be doubtful remains from which to construct an argument. From doubtful premises we can obtain only a doubtful conclusion. The moment you concede that God is doubtful, you concede universal doubt, and that certainty is unattainable. Here, again, is the condemnation of Descartes, who makes the assumption, that all things are doubtful, or that nothing is certain, or to be accepted as certain, till demonstrated, the necessary point of departure of philosophy. But if we start with the assumption, that nothing is certain, how are we ever to arrive at certainty? If all things can be thought as uncertain, what is there that can be thought as certain? If all things cannot be thought as uncertain, the Cartesian doubt is impracticable, and Cartesianism proposes to arrive at truth by starting with a stupendous falsehood. Yet Descartes had some reputation in his day, and his method is still that of the majority of modern philosophers. For ourselves, we reject the Cartesian method as unphilosophical, absurd, impossible, and impious. The fool, no doubt, has said in his heart, God is not, Dixit insipiens in corde suo: Non est Deus, but has only evinced his folly; for it is only by intuition of God that he is able to give a meaning to his words, since negation is intelligible only by virtue of the positive. The words "God is not" are universal negation, but universal negation is absolutely unintelligible, and consequently, if nothing is, nothing can be denied; that is, unless something is, it is impossible to make a denial, and if something is, God is. Well, then, does the Holy Ghost say it is the fool who says in his heart, "God is not."

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We deny not that there have been persons may God in his great mercy pardon us, for we were ourselves during a brief period of the number- who persuade themselves that they doubt the Divine Being. And we certainly have encountered theories, ancient and modern, sometimes under the name of philosophy, and sometimes under the name of religion, which are explicitly atheism, or which necessarily, if pushed to their logical consequences, lead to atheism; nevertheless, we maintain that no man ever did, ever will, or ever can really doubt that God is. Athe

ism, or what passes for atheism, is rarely the vice of the unlettered and simple, but nearly always of the refined, the voluptuous, and the speculative, and is cherished, not because there is no conviction that God is, but because that conviction condemns both the practice and the speculations which atheism favors. It is not that the light does not shine, but those people resolutely refuse to let it illuminate them because their deeds are evil, or, at least, deeds that will not bear the light. Mere practical atheists, that is, those who conduct themselves as if there were no God, present no difficulty; for it is evident that their conduct necessarily implies nothing more than the inactivity, not the total absence, of belief. The so-called intellectual atheists are persons of a speculative turn of mind, and invariably take as the object of reflection, not the reality revealed in their intuitions, but their intuitions themselves, as mere psychological facts. They thus lose sight, in the reflective order, of the reality intuitively revealed, and build up a theory which excludes God. God not being included in their theories, they cannot believe in him theoretically, and therefore conclude they ought not to believe, do not, and cannot believe, in him at all. They are thus in will and in reflection really atheists. Nevertheless, the light, though they comprehend it not in their theories, continues to shine in their darkness; their intuitions remain, but they treat them with contempt, will not hear to them, because they see clearly, that, were they to do so, their theories would fade away as the shades of night before the rising sun. It is not that they lack conviction, but that, puffed up with the pride of intellect, and confused by false science, they stifle it, pretending that it is the creation of fear, of habit, or of early education. Their cure is not to be effected by syllogisms, or mere reasoning. Their disease lies in the fact, that they close, instead of opening, their hearts to the truth. Take a man brought up in their school, who has all his life been poring over dry psychological conceptions, and resolutely refusing to admit as true every thing he is unable to comprehend in his contracted and dead formula, and bring him one day to leave his empty conceptions, to turn his mind to the contemplation of the objects revealed to him in his intuitions, and he is surprised to see how rapidly the mists disperse, the darkness rolls back, his doubts melt away, and the glorious reality appears before him, informing with its light his intellect, and enrapturing his heart with its beauty. He stands amazed at his former blindness, astonished at his doubts of yesterday, so clear is the light to his unclosed eye, so easy is it to

his open heart to believe. No doubt the grace of God is operating within him, but, so far as the change depends on human effort, it consists in the fact, that he has turned round with his face towards God in his intuitions, and beholds reality in the light, no longer in the shadow cast by himself. What, humanly speaking, will best serve those who esteem themselves atheists, are such considerations as tend to draw them off from mere reflection on their own psychological phenomena, and set them with free mind and open heart to contemplating the objects revealed to them and to all men in direct and immediate intuition. These are, no doubt, such as are usually presented by the patrons of the argument a posteriori, and, if presented in the light of a sound philosophy, for what they really are, and not for what they are not, they are all, the grace of God supposed, that can be required.

If the entire drift of our reasoning be not misapprehended, the question whether God is living God or not will present no difficulty. It has been our endeavour to enter our solemn protest against the dead abstractions of modern psychologism, to prove that there are no abstractions in nature, that abstractions are nullities, and yield only nullity, that ideas are not mere words, are not mental conceptions, are not intellections, are not subjective forms of the understanding, are not ours, but are real intelligibilia, intelligible objects, objects of our intellect, not our intellect nor the products of our intellect itself, and that they are in the Divine Mind or Eternal Reason, infinite in number considered in relation to the effects God is able to produce, considered in relation to his ability, one, and identical with himself. We have also endeavoured to establish that God reveals himself immediately to us in direct intuition as creator, actually creating, according to his own will, out of nothing, therefore as free, voluntary creator, therefore as living, personal, and therefore as proper object of worship, prayer, praise, love, and

reverence.

One word more we must add, to prevent misapprehension. From the fact that we assert direct and immediate intuition of God, it must not be inferred that we assert, or intend to assert, either that we see God intuitively by himself alone, or as he is in himself, the former of which it would be at least temerity, and the latter undeniably heresy, to assert. We assert, indeed, intuition of intelligibles, but we do not assert pure intellections, as does exaggerated spiritualism. Of pure intellections we are not naturally capable; for we are not pure intelligences, but in

telligence wedded to body, and therefore can naturally apprehend the intelligible only in union with the sensible. What we have denied and attempted to disprove is, that God is known only as contained implicitly in his works and discursively obtained from them; but we have not asserted, or intended to assert, that he is known as God without his works. Invisibilia ipsius, a creatura mundi, per ea quæ factæ sunt, intellecta, conspiciuntur, (Rom. i. 20,) says St. Paul, and he seems to us to express precisely our meaning. If we see God only discursively, as implicitly contained in his works, we do not see him clearly, for such implicit seeing is not clear seeing. It is not thus we see God; but we clearly see him or the things of God, otherwise unknown or invisible to us, in understanding, or by understanding, his works, as we see the light in seeing the visible body which it renders visible. We actually see the light; it is the primary and immediate object of our vision, and the medium by which we see all else that we do see; but we do not see it in itself, nor by itself alone, for our eyes are too weak for that, and it would strike us blind were we to attempt to look directly into it, as any one may satisfy himself by attempting at mid-day to look directly into the sun. So in the intelligible world, we really and truly see God; he is the primary and immediate object of the intellect, and the medium by which we intellectually see all else that we do intellectually see, understand, or know, but not as he is in himself; for if we cannot look into the sun, which is but the shadow of his light, without being struck blind, how much less can we look into him who is light itself; nor do we know him by himself alone, that is, apart from his works, but we know him in knowing objects, which are made intelligible objects only in and by his intelligibility, as they are made existence only by and in his creative act, or omnipotent power.

There are several things in the author's book of considerable importance, which we have passed over; but if he seizes the real import of what we have advanced, he will have no difficulty in understanding how we view them. We have aimed, not so much to refute his particular views, as to point out what we consider to be the fundamental mistakes into which he, misled by prevailing psychologism, has fallen, and to explain their origin and establish the principles on which they can be and are to be corrected. We take our leave of the book with kind feelings towards its author, and with the confident hope of meeting him hereafter in a work which we can cordially accept.

ART. II. Dissertatio Historico-Dogmatica de Sacrarum Imaginum Cultu Religioso Quatuor Epochis complectens Dogma et Disciplinam Ecclesiæ super Sanctus Imagines. Auctore ABB. ÍOSEPHO GUEVERA, Hispano. Fulginiæ.

1789.

Ir is our object, not so much to review the able and learned treatise, the title of which we have prefixed to this article, as to arrange in an independent essay some facts, authorities, and arguments in support of the Catholic doctrine respecting the veneration of images. We shall, however, have occasion to borrow largely from the rich stores of the Abbate Guevara, and we therefore, in the outset, acknowledge our obligations to him for the chief portion of our materials.

Our design leads us to present our subject, first in an historical light, leaving the consideration of the difficulties usually brought up from the Old Testament for after consideration. In the treatise of the Abbate Guevara, the history of Christian sacred images is divided into four epochs :- 1. From the death of our Lord to the conversion of Constantine; 2. From the reign of Constantine to that of Leo the Isaurian; 3. From the time of the Emperor Leo to that of the Second Nicene, or Seventh Ecumenical Council; and 4. From the Second Council of Nice to the Council of Trent. During the first period, says our learned author,

"Aliquæ sanctæ imagines fuere in usu, eosque religioso cultu, clam, ut ita loquor, timore et tyrannorum persecutione cogentibus, Christifideles prosequebantur." "Some sacred images were made use of, and the faithful of Christ honored them with religious veneration, privately so to speak, through the compulsion of fear and of the persecution of tyrants."

"In secunda, serenitatis aurora Ecclesiæ oborta, sine ullo timore, in templis haberi cœptum; ipseque pius Constantinus multas coloribus effigiatus, auro argentoque cœlatas fusilesque, qua late ejus imperium porrigebatur, collocari jussit, maxima Christiani orbis lætitia." "In the second, the dawn of peace having arisen upon the Church, they began to be placed, without the least fear, in the temples; and the pious Constantine himself commanded many, both images painted with various colors, and such as were formed from silver and gold, and also sculptures, to be erected, throughout the whole wide extent of his dominions, to the extreme joy of the Christian world." "In tertia, Leo Isauricus," etc. "In the third, Leo the Isaurian," and other persecutors.

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