66 Strike out religion and morality, and nothing remains but our animal nature and its objects. The sensualist did not begin in gross sensualism. He began in soft and sweet sentiments, which, as he was conscious of no impure intention, he imagined to be pure, and such as he could safely indulge. Nay, he imagined it almost a sin to forego them. Day by day they grew upon him by indulgence, till they became too strong for ordinary virtue to repress, and then he found them to have been only the germs of beastly vices and grievous sins. The beginnings of all vice and crime are pleasant and sweet to our animal nature; but all emotions or sentiments originating in that nature are vice and crime, when fully developed. Every man is tempted, being drawn away by his own concupiscence, [or lusts,] and allured. Then when concupiscence hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin; but sin when it is completed begetteth death." The modern world followeth concupiscence, the inferior or irrational nature. It began in what is most pleasing and seductive in that nature, which it dignifies with the names of liberty and philanthropy. But these when taken as affections of the animal, not of the rational soul, can be followed only on condition that we gradually discard both revealed religion and natural. Hence you find that your modern reformers, notwithstanding their fine words and lofty phrases, tend with all their energy to establish the supremacy of the flesh over the spirit. Hence their breach with the past. The past has labored, not indeed always with complete success, to institute and maintain a social and political order in which the rational nature should be supreme, and the animal be subordinate, and held, as far as possible, in subjection. This our reformers condemn; they seek to organize society and the state on an entirely different set of principles, so that intellect and reason shall be the mere instruments of appetite and passion. It could not be otherwise; for the flesh knoweth not God, and, if followed, excludes God and the whole rational nature. Freedom of inquiry, thought, speech, and action, rightly understood, are no doubt good things; but your friends who claim their exclusive possession have very little right to them. All they understand by them is freedom to think, speak, and act against religion, without losing their reputation, or suffering any social or civil inconvenience. The pickpocket, the thief, the robber, the adulterer, the murderer, the traitor, wish, no doubt, as much, and with as much justice. I have never found unbelievers actuated by a love of truth; I have never found one of their number going forth in pursuit of it with a free mind, and an open heart, ready to receive it. They are all disciples of some master, and if they inquire at all, it is only to confirm their prejudices. I have no reason to think that I was, when among them, less candid, open, and truthful than the rest; yet I never knew what it was to seek for the truth, till I became a believer. I sought to refute that doctrine, or to establish this, never distinctly to ascertain what is true doctrine; and I embraced the truth only as it forced itself upon me. I had no intention, no thought, of becoming a Catholic; I did not even ask myself whether Catholicity was true or false. Its truth burst of itself upon me, while I was busily engaged with something else; and I accepted it only because I could not help it. It interfered with all my plans of life, with all my old habits, with all my associations, and was any thing but pleasant to flesh and blood. But it broke upon my mind with such clearness, distinctness, and force, that I had no power to resist it. I did not seek it, it came of itself; I did not find it, it found me, and took me captive, and carried me away in spite of myself. I have looked over no small portion of the literature of the modern Liberal world; I have looked in vain for some trace of free, strong, and manly thought. Your most admired authors are cramped in their movements, narrow and superficial in their views, and generally weak and flippant in their expressions. They are strong only in their appeals to passion, and invariably fall far below the better sort of enlightened heathen. Out of the departments of physical science and mathematics, which do not require a very high order of intellect, the greatest names you can boast are Bayle and Voltaire, and these have been able to make no real advance on Celsus and Julian. Jean Jacques Rousseau was a sophist, a puny sentimentalist, and a disgusting sensualist, who set forth nothing novel that was not false. Your English deists, Lord Herbert, Tindall, Toland, Woolston, &c., are the dullest of mortals. I never could fairly read through one of their stupid producYour liberals have succeeded in shaking the faith of many, in sowing doubt and despair; but I do not call to mind a single subject on which their lucubrations have thrown new light. They only repeat one another, and are tediously monotonous in error. What are the greatest of them by the side of such men as St. Athanasius, St. Basil, St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. John Chrysostom, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, St. Austin, St. Gregory the Great, St. Bernard, St. Thomas of Aquin, Suarez, Bossuet, the great Fathers and Doctors of the Church, the really great men of the human race, great as men, as scholars, thinkers, philosophers, as well as great in sanctity, the highest order of greatness, what beside these men are your Bayles, your Voltaires, your Rousseaus, your Tom Paines, your Saint-Simons, your Owens, your Fouriers? These men were at the summit of their respective epochs, and every one of them has contributed to the sum of human knowledge and virtue. There is no doubt the age would respect religion, if religion would respect it; but religion gives the law, it does not receive it. Unbelievers, no doubt, would accept religion, if she would make herself infidel; but has it never occurred to our wise young men, that religion become infidel is no longer religion? You remind me of my old friends, the Unitarians, who are in the habit of maintaining that their religion is the best in the world for checking the spread of infidelity, -because it presents nothing that an unbeliever can find any difficulty in accepting. It brings Christianity down to the level of the unbeliever's capacity, that is, strips it of every thing, except its name, that distinguishes it from infidelity. I know no solid reason why an unbeliever should hesitate to accept of a Christianity which requires him to change only his name. The clergy very possibly stand in their own light by not conforming to the dominant spirit of the age, if religion be, as our sage liberals pretend, mere priestcraft, and if they seek only temporary popular applause. But the clergy are the ministers of religion, and have no authority over it. If they were at liberty to mould it to the various and ever-varying caprices of the multitude, to make it one thing in one age or country, and another thing in another, no sensible man could respect either it or them. It is singular that our liberals take it upon them to advise the clergy, in order to secure respect for religion, to adopt a policy which would show on its very face that they hold religion to be mere craft and imposition, and still more singular that they should suppose any friend to religion should not see that their advice is that of an enemy. O. Yet the clergy, as a body, have always shown themselves hostile to liberty, and have never sufficiently urged the importance of improving society, and elevating the lower classes. C. Their chief study relates to another world, and they NEW SERIES. VOL. IV. NO. I. 13 appear to have proceeded on the principle, that it matters little what is our condition in this world, if we but secure the salvation of our souls in the world to come. F. They proceed as if the chief business of religion were not to teach us how to live, but how to die, as if we had nothing to do in this world but to get out of it the best way we can! B. That the clergy have as a body been opposed to what is sometimes called liberty is no doubt true, but this is to their honor. There can be no question that they have taken the words of their Master literally, "Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice"; but this does not prove that they have at all neglected man's social well-being, for the only certain way of making sure of earth is first to make sure of heaven. He who lives solely for heaven lives the best life even for this world. The clergy, as a body, have always been the friends of liberty, but they very frequently deny that what some men call liberty is liberty, and I know no reason for asserting that they have less authority than their opponents to define what is, or is not, true liberty. They certainly teach that this world is not our abiding-place, that we are here only pilgrims and sojourners, that we are here to prepare for another world, for the return to our native country. If in this they are right, and which of my young friends dares say they are wrong? - this world is, in itself considered, a matter of no importance, and social well-being, save in its bearing on our eternal welfare, deserves no attention. That state of society which is the most favorable to preparation for heaven, is the best. Supposing, then, the clergy do as you allege, it is only a proof that they are faithful to their God and to the human soul; and if my young friends were to inquire into the matter, they would find that the evils they complain of result solely from attachment to the world, from giving it an undue place in our affections, and from not following the teaching of the clergy, and trampling the world beneath our feet. If all men would live for heaven, and not for earth, there would be no tyranny, no oppression, no political or social evils. "Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things shall be superadded to you." This world feeds only our animal nature, and you should be prepared to maintain that man ought to live as a mere animal, before you venture to urge your objection to the Christian doctrine of detachment and selfdenial. 0. Supposing Christianity to be true, the clergy are, no doubt, justifiable; but the very fact that it enjoins this detachment and self-denial is to me the best of all reasons for believing it false. B. That is, Christianity is false because it asserts in man something superior to the human animal, and for man a higher destiny than that of the beasts that perish! Whatever asserts the superiority of the soul over the body, and teaches us to live for the soul instead of the body, is false! My young friend, I grant, is consistent with himself. F. But is it not an objection to the Church, that she uniformly frowns upon all efforts to ameliorate the political and social condition of mankind? B. I am not aware that she ever does so. She may frown upon the efforts of hot-headed radicals and savage revolutionists, for she does not recognize the so-called "sacred right of insurrection" as one of her dogmas. She enjoins obedience to legitimate authority, so long as it commands nothing contrary to the law of God, and therefore regards sedition, insurrection, rebellion, as sins against God, no less than as crimes against the state. But she is always on the side of honest freedom, and never fails to exert all her influence to lessen political and social evils, and to augment the sum of political and social well-being. C. Before you became a Catholic, you were the friend of the people, ready to do battle to the best of your ability in their cause; now we find you siding with the people's masters, sympathizing with the despotic governments that, in the recent revolutions in Europe, have repressed the popular movements for liberty. Is it not because your religion requires you to do so? B. There are several ways of telling a story. In my youth I was a wild radical, and sympathized with rebels wherever I found them, unless rebels against the authority of the mob. I took it for granted, that all old institutions are bad, and tend only to restrain the free spirit of man, and I looked upon every established government as necessarily tyrannical, and hostile to liberty. Whoever seeks to demolish old institutions, and to overthrow all fixed government, belongs, I said, to the party of progress, and is on the side of humanity. I sympathized with Lucifer in his rebellion against the Almighty, and with admiration heard him say, in Milton, after his defeat, "All is not lost; the unconquerable will, |