DEVOTION TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN.
It has been anxiously asked, whether the honours paid to St. Mary, which have grown out of devotion to her Almighty Lord and Son, do not, in fact, tend to weaken that devotion; and whether, from the nature of the case, it is possible so to exalt a creature without withdrawing the heart from the Creator.
In addition to what has been said on this subject in foregoing Chapters, I would here observe that the question is one of fact, not of presumption or conjecture. The abstract lawfulness of the honours paid to St. Mary, and their distinction in theory from the incommunicable worship paid to God, are points which, have already been dwelt upon; but here the question turns upon their practicability or expedience, which must be determined by the fact whether they are practicable, and whether they have been found to be expedient.
Here I observe, first, that, to those who admit the authority of the Fathers of Ephesus, the question is in no slight degree answered by their sanction of the 0eoTOKo<;,oT "Mother of God," as a title of St. Mary, and as given in order to protect the doctrine of the Incarnation, and to preserve the faith of Catholics from a specious Humanitarianism. And if we take a survey at least of Europe, we shall find that it is not those religious communions which are characterized by devotion towards the Blessed Virgin that have ceased to adore her Eternal Son, but those very bodies which (being unfettered by State law) have renounced that devotion. The regard for His glory, which was professed in that keen jealousy of her exaltation, has not been supported by the event. They who were accused of worshipping a creature in His stead, still worship Him; their accusers, who hoped to worship Him so purely, they, wherever obstacles to the development of their principles have been removed, have ceased to worship Him altogether.
Next, it must be observed, that the tone of the devotion paid to the Blessed Mary is altogether distinct from that which is paid to her Eternal Son, and to the Holy Trinity, as we must certainly allow on inspection of the Catholic services. The supreme and true worship paid to the Almighty is severe, profound, awful, as well as tender, confiding, and dutiful. Christ is addressed as true God, while He is true Man; as our Creator and Judge, while He is most loving, gentle, and gracious. On the other hand, towards St. Mary the language employed is affectionate and ardent, as towards a mere child of Adam; though subdued, as coming from her sinful kindred. How different, for instance, is the tone of the Dies Irce from that of the Stabat Mater. In the " Tristis et aiflicta Mater Unigeniti," in the " Yirgo virginum prceclara Mihi jam non sis amara, Pcenas mecum divide," in the " Fac me vere tecuni flere," we have an expression of the feelings with which we regard one who is a creature and a mere human being; but in the " Rex tremendse majestatis qui salvandos salvas gratis, salva me Fons pietatis," the "Ne me perdas ilia die," the " Juste judex ultionis, donum fac remissionis," the " Oro supplex et acclinis, cor contritum quasi ciDis," the " Pie Jesu Domine, dona eis requiem," we hear the voice of the creature raised in hope and love, yet in deep awe to his Creator, Infinite Benefactor, and Judge.
Or again, how distinct is the language of the Breviary Services on the Festival of Pentecost, or of the Holy Trinity, from the language of the Services for the Assumption! How indescribably majestic, solemn, and soothing is the "Yeni Creator Spiritus," the "Altissimi donum Dei, Fons vivus, ignis, charitas," or the " Yera et una Trinitas, una et summa Deitas, sancta et una Unitas," the " Spes nostra, salus nostra, honor noster, 0 beata Trinitas," the " Charitas Pater, gratia Filius, communicatio Spiritus Sanctus, 0 beata Trinitas;" " Libera nos, salva nos, vivifica nos, 0 beata Trinitas! " How fond, on the contrary, how full of sympathy and affection, how stirring and animating, in the Ofiice for the Assumption, is the " Yirgo prudentissima, quo progrederis, quasi aurora valde rutilans? filia Sion, tota formosa et suavis es, pulcra ut luna, electa ut sol;" the " Sicut dies verni circumdabant earn flores rosarum, et lilia convallium;" the " Maria Yirgo assumpta est ad aethereum thalamum in quo Rex regum stellato sedet solio;" and the " Gaudent Angeli, laudantes benedicunt Dominum." And so again, the Antiphon, the " Ad te clamamus exules filii Hevse, ad te suspiramus gementes et flentes in hac lacrymarum valle," and et Eia ergo, advocata nostra, illos tuos misericordes oculos ad nos converte/' and " 0 clemens, O pia, 0 dulcis Virgo Maria." Or the Hymn, " Ave Maris Stella, Dei Mater alma,'"' and " Yirgo singularis, inter omnes mitis, nos culpis solutos, mites fac et castes."
Nor does it avail to object that, in this contrast of devotional exercises, the human will supplant the Divine, from the infirmity of our nature; for, I repeat, the question is one of fact, whether it has done so. And next it must be asked, whether the character of much of the Protestant devotion towards our Lord has been that of adoration at all; and not rather such as we pay to an excellent human being, that is, no higher devotion than that which Catholics pay to St. Mary, differing from it, however, in often being familiar, rude, and earthly. Carnal minds will ever create a carnal worship for themselves; and to forbid them the service of the Saints will have no tendency to teach them the worship of God.
Moreover, it must be observed, what is very important, that great and constant as is the devotion which the Catholic pays to the Blessed Mary, it has a special province, and has far more connexion with the public services and the festive aspect of Christianity, and with certain extraordinary offices which she holds, than with what is strictly personal and primary in religion.
Two instances will serve in illustration of this, and they are but samples of many others.3
(1.) For example, St. Ignatius* Spiritual Exercises are among the most approved methods of devotion in the modern Catholic Church; they proceed from one of the most celebrated of her Saints, and have the praise of Popes, and of the most eminent masters of the spiritual life. A Bull of Paul the Third's " approves, praises, and sanctions all and everything contained in them;" indulgences are granted to the performance of them by the same Pope, by Alexander the Seventh, and by Benedict the Fourteenth. St. Carlo Borromeo declared that he learned more from them than from all other books together; St. Francis de Sales calls them *f a holy method of reformation," and they are the model on which all the extraordinary devotions of religious men or bodies, and the course of missions, are conducted. If there is a document which is the authoritative exponent of the inward communion of the members of the modern Catholic Church with their God and Saviour, it is this work.
The Exercises are directed to the removal of obstacles in the way of the soul's receiving and profiting by the gifts of God. They undertake to effect this in three ways; by removing all objects of this world, and, as it were, bringing the soul "into the solitude where God may speak to its heart;" next, by setting before it the ultimate end of man, and its own deviations from it, the beauty of holiness, and the pattern of Christ; and, lastly, by giving rules for its correction. They consist of a course of prayers, meditations, self-examinations, and the like, which in its complete
" Spiritual Combat," the " Anima Divota," the ** Paradisus Animse," the " Regula Cleri," the " Garden of the Soul," &c. &C; [Also, the Roman Catechism, drawn up expressly for Parish instruction, a book in which, out of nearly 600 pages, scarcely half-a-dozen make mention of the Blessed Virgin, though without any disparagement thereby, or thought of disparage* ment, of her special prerogatives.]
extent lasts thirty days; and these are divided into three stages, — the Via Purgatwa, in which sin is the main subject of consideration; the Via Illuminativa, which is devoted to the contemplation of our Lord's passion, involving the process of the determination of our calling; and the Via Tfnitiva, in which we proceed to the contemplation of our Lord's resurrection and ascension.
No more need be added in order to introduce the remark for which I have referred to these Exercises; viz. that in a work so highly sanctioned, so widely received, so intimately bearing upon the most sacred points of personal religion, very slight mention occurs of devotion to the Blessed Virgin, Mother of God. There is one mention of her in the rule given for the first Prelude or preparation, in which the person meditating is directed to consider as before him a church, or other place with Christ in it, St. Mary, and whatever else is suitable to the subject of meditation. Another is in the third Exercise, in which one of the three addresses is made to our Lady, Christ's Mother, requesting earnestly " her intercession with her Son;" to which is to be added the Ave Mary. In the beginning of the Second Week there is a form of offering ourselves to God in the presence of " His infinite goodness/' and with the witness of His " glorious Virgin Mother Mary, and the whole host of heaven." At the end of the Meditation upon the Angel Gabriel's mission to St. Mary, there is an address to each Divine Person, to " the Word Incarnate and to His Mother." In the Meditation upon the Two Standards, there is an address prescribed to St. Mary to implore grace from her Son through her, with an Ave Mary after it.
In the beginning of the Third Week one address is prescribed to Christ; or three, if devotion incites, to Mother,
Son, and Father. In the description given of three different modes of prayer we are told, if we would imitate the Blessed Mary, we must recommend ourselves to her, as having power with her Son, and presently the Ave Mary, Salve Itegina, and other forms are prescribed, as is usual after all prayers. And this is pretty much the whole of the devotion, if it may so be called, which is recommended towards St. Mary in the course of so many apparently as a hundred and fifty Meditations, and those chiefly on the events in our Lord's earthly history as recorded in Scripture. It would seem then that whatever be the influence of the doctrines connected with the Blessed Virgin and the Saints in the Catholic Church, at least they do not impede or obscure the freest exercise and the fullest manifestation of the devotional feelings towards God and Christ.
(2.) The other instance which I give in illustration is of a different kind, but is suitable to mention. About forty little books have come into my possession which are in circulation among the laity at Rome, and answer to the smaller publications of the Christian Knowledge Society among ourselves. They have been taken almost at hazard from a number of such works, and are of various lengths; some running to as many as two or three hundred pages, others consisting of scarce a dozen. They may be divided into three classes: — a third part consists of books on practical subjects; another third is upon the Incarnation and Passion; and of the rest, a portion is upon the Sacraments, especially the Holy Eucharist, with two or three for the use of Missions, but the greater part is about the Blessed Virgin.
As to the class on practical subjects, they are on such as the following: "La Consolazione degl' Infermi;" "Pensieri di una donna sul vestire moderno;" " I/Inferno
Aperto;" "II Purgatorio Aperto;" St. Alplionso Liguori's " Massime eterne;" other Maxims by St. Francis de Sales for every day in the year; " Pratica per ben confessarsi e communicarsi;" and the like.
The titles of the second class on the Incarnation and Passion are such as " Gesu dalla Croce al cuore del peccatore;" " Novena del Ss. Natale di G. C.;" " Associazione pel culto perpetuo del diviii cuore;" "Compendio della Passione."
In the third are " II Mese Eucaristico/' ll II divoto di Maria," Feasts of the Blessed Virgin, &c.
These books in all three divisions are, as even the titles of some of them show, in great measure made up of Meditations; such are the " Breve e pie Medituzioni " of P. Crasset; the " Meditazioni per ciascun giorno del mese sulla Passione;" the " Meditazioni per Fora Eucaristica." Now of these it may be said generally, that in the body of the Meditation St. Mary is hardly mentioned at all. For instance, in the Meditations on the Passion, a book used for distribution, through two hundred and seventyseven pages St. Mary is not once named. In the Prayers for Mass which are added, she is introduced, at the Confiteor, thus, " I pray the Virgin, the Angels, the Apostles, and all the Saints of heaven to intercede," &c.; and in the Preparation for Penance, she is once addressed, after our Lord, as the Refuge of sinners, with the Saints and Guardian Angel; and at the end of the Exercise there is a similar prayer of four lines for the intercession of St. Mary, Angels and Saints of heaven. In the Exercise for Communion, in a prayer to our Lord, " my only and infinite good, my treasure, my life, my paradise, my all,"" the merits of the Saints are mentioned, " especially of St.
Mary." She is also mentioned with Angels and Saints at the termination.
In a collection of " Spiritual Lauds " for Missions, of thirty-six Hymns, we find as many as eleven addressed to St. Mary, or relating to her, among which are translations of the Ace Man's Stella, and the Stabat Hater, and the Salve Regina; and one is on " the sinner's reliance on Mary." Five, however, which are upon Repentance, are entirely engaged upon the subjects of our Lord and sin, with the exception of an address to St. Mary at the end of two of them. Seven others, upon sin, the Crucifixion, and the Four Last Things, do not mention the Blessed Virgin's name.
To the Manual for the Perpetual Adoration of the Divine Heart of Jesus there is appended one chapter on the Immaculate Conception.
One of - the most important of these books is the French Pensez-y bleu, which seems a favourite, since thero are two translations of it, one of them being the fifteenth edition; and it is used for distribution in Missions. In, these reflections there is scarcely a word said of St. Mary. At the end there is a Method of reciting the Crown of the Seven Dolours of the Virgin Mary, which contains seven prayers to her, and the Stabat Mater.
One of the longest in the whole collection is a tract consisting principally of Meditations on the Holy Communion; under the title of the " Eucharistic Month/* as already mentioned. In these " Preparations," " Aspirations/' &c., St. Mary is but once mentioned, and that in a prayer addressed to our Lord. " 0 my sweetest Brother," it says with an allusion to the Canticles, " who, being made Man for my salvation, hast sucked the milk from the virginal breast of her, who is my Mother by grace," &c. In a small " Instruction " given to children on their first Communion, there are the following questions and answers: " Is our Lady in the Host? No. Are the Angels and the Saints? No. Why not? Because they have no place there."
Now coming to those in the third class, which directly relate to the Blessed Mary, such as "Esercizio ad Onore dell' addolorato cuore di Maria," " Novena di Preparazione alia festa delP Assunzione," " Li Quindici Misteri del Santo Rosario/' the principal is Father Segneri's " II divoto di Maria," which requires a distinct notice. It is far from the intention of these remarks to deny the high place which the Holy Virgin holds in the devotion of Catholics; I am but bringing evidence of its not interfering with that incommunicable and awful relation which exists between the creature and the Creator; and, if the foregoing instances show, as far as they go, that that relation is preserved inviolate in such honours as are paid to St. Mary, so will this treatise throw light upon the rationale by which the distinction is preserved between the worship of God and the honour of an exalted creature, and that in singular accordance with the remarks made in the foregoing Section.
This work of Segneri is written against persons who continue in sins under pretence of their devotion to St. Mary, and in consequence he is led to draw out the idea which good Catholics have of her. The idea is this, that she is absolutely the first of created beings. Thus the treatise says, that " God might have easily made a more beautiful firmament, and a greener earth, but it was not possible to make a higher Mother than the Yirgin Mary; and in her formation there has been conferred on mere creatures all the glory of which they are capable, remaining mere creatures/' p. 34. • And as containing all created perfection, she has all those attributes, which, as was noticed above, the Arians and other heretics applied to our Lord, and which the Church denied of Him as infinitely below His Supreme Majesty. Thus she is " the created Idea in the making of the world," p. 20; " which, as being a more exact copy of the Incarnate Idea than was elsewhere to be found, was used as the original of the rest of the creation," p. 21. To her are applied the words, " Ego primogenita prodivi ex ore Altissimi," because she was predestinated in the Eternal Mind coevally with the Incarnation of her Divine Son. But to Him alone the title of Wisdom Incarnate is reserved, p. 25. Again, Christ is the First-born by nature; the Virgin in a less sublime order, viz. that of adoption. Again, if omnipotence is ascribed to her, it is a participated omnipotence (as she and all Saints have a participated son ship, divinity, glory, holiness, and worship), and is explained by the words, " Quod Deus imperio, tu prece, Yirgo, potes."
Again, a special office is assigned to the Blessed Virgin, that is, special as compared with all other Saints; but it is marked off with the utmost precision from that assigned to our Lord. Thus she is said to have been made " the arbitress of every effect coming from Grod's mercy." Because she is the Mother of God, the salvation of mankind is said to be given to her prayers " de congruo, but de condigno it is due only to the blood of the Redeemer," p. 113. " Merit is ascribed to Christ, and prayer to St. Mary, p. 162. The whole maybe expressed in the words, " Unica spes mea Jesus, et post Jesum Virgo Maria. Amen."
Again, a distinct cultus is assigned to St. Mary, but the reason of it is said to be the transcendent dignity of her Son. " A particular cultus is due to the Virgin beyond comparison greater than that given to any other Saint, because her dignity belongs to another order, namely to one which in some sense belongs to the order of the Hypostatic Union itself, and is necessarily connected with it," p. 41. And " Her being the Mother of God is the source of all the extraordinary honours due to Mary," p. 35.
It is remarkable that the " Monstra te esse Matrem " is explained, p. 158, as " Show thyself to be our Mother;" an interpretation which I think I have found elsewhere in these Tracts, and also in a book commonly used in religious houses, called the " Journal of Meditations," and elsewhere.4
It must be kept in mind that my object here is not to prove the dogmatic accuracy of what these popular publications teach concerning the prerogatives of the Blessed Virgin, but to show that that teaching is not such as to obscure the divine glory of her Son. We must ask for clearer evidence before we are able to admit so grave a charge; and so much may suffice on the Sixth Test of fidelity in the development of an idea, as applied to the Catholic system.
WE have arrived at length at the seventh and last test, which was laid down when we started, for distinguishing the true development of an idea from its corruptions and perversions: it is this. A corruption, if vigorous, is of brief duration, runs itself out quickly, and ends in death; on the other hand, if it lasts, it fails in vigour and passes into a decay. This general law gives us additional assistance in determining the character of the developments of Christianity commonly called Catholic.
"When we consider the succession of ages during which the Catholic system has endured, the severity of the trials it has undergone, the sudden and wonderful changes without and within which have befallen it, the incessant mental activity and the intellectual gifts of its maintainers, the enthusiasm which it has kindled, the fury of the controversies which have been carried on among its professors, the impetuosity of the assaults made upon it, the everincreasing responsibilities to which it has been committed by the continuous development of its dogmas, it is quite inconceivable that it should not have been broken up and lost, were it a corruption of Christianity. Yet it is still living, if there be a living religion or philosophy in the world; vigorous, energetic, persuasive, progressive; vires acquirit eundo; it grows and is not overgrown; it spreads out, yet is not enfeebled; it is ever germinating, yet ever consistent with itself. Corruptions indeed are to be found which sleep and are suspended; and these, as I have said, are usually called " decays:" such is not the case with Catholicity; it does not sleep, it is not stationary even now; and that its long series of developments should be corruptions would be an instance of sustained error, so novel, so unaccountable, so preternatural, as to be little short of a miracle, and to rival those manifestations of Divine Power which constitute the evidence of Christianity. "We sometimes view with surprise and awe the degree of pain and disarrangement which the human frame can undergo without succumbing; yet at length there comes an end. Fevers have their crisis, fatal or favourable; but this corruption of a thousand years, if corruption it be, has ever been growing nearer death, yet never reaching it, and has been strengthened, not debilitated, by its excesses.
For instance: when the Empire was converted, multitudes, as is very plain, came into the Church on but partially religious motives, and with habits and opinions infected with the false worships which they had professedly abandoned. History shows us what anxiety and effort it cost her rulers to keep Paganism out of her pale. To this tendency must be added the hazard which attended on the development of the Catholic ritual, such as the honours publicly assigned to Saints and Martyrs, the formal veneration of their relics, ^and the usages and observances which followed. What was to hinder the rise of a sort of refined Pantheism, and the overthrow of dogmatism paripassu with the multiplication of heavenly intercessors and patrons? If what is called in reproach " Saint- worship " resembled the polytheism which it supplanted, or was a corruption, how did Dogmatism survive? Dogmatism is a religion's profession of its own reality as contrasted with other systems; but polytheists are liberals, and hold that one religion is as good as another. Yet the theological system was developing and strengthening, as well as the monastic rule, which is intensely anti-pantheistic, all the while the ritual was assimilating itself, as Protestants say, to the Paganism of former ages.
Nor was the development of dogmatic theology, which was then taking place, a silent and spontaneous process. It was wrought out and carried through under the fiercest controversies, and amid the most fearful risks. The Catholic faith was placed in a succession of perils, and rocked to and fro like a vessel at sea. Large portions of Christendom were, one after another, in heresy or in schism; the leading Churches and the most authoritative schools fell from time to time into serious error; three Popes, Liberius, Vigilius, Honorius, have left to posterity the burden of their defence: but these disorders were no interruption to the sustained and steady march of the sacred science from implicit belief to formal statement. The series of ecclesiastical decisions, in which its progress was ever and anon signified, alternate between the one and the other side of the theological dogma especially in question, as if fashioning it into sha.pe by opposite strokes. The controversy began in Apollinaris, who confused or denied the Two Natures in Christ, and was condemned by Pope Damasus. A reaction followed, and Theodore of Mopsuestia suggested by his teaching the doctrine of Two Persons. After Nestorius had brought that heresy into public view, and had incurred in consequence the anathema of the Third Ecumenical Council, the current of controversy again shifted its direction; for Eutyches appeared, maintained the One Nature, and was condemned at Chalcedon. Something however was still wanting to the overthrow of the Nestorian doctrine of Two Persons, and the Fifth Council was formally directed against the writings of Theodore and his party. Then followed the Monothelite heresy, which was a revival of the Eutychian or Monophysite, and was condemned in the Sixth. Lastly, Nestorianism once more showed itself in the Adoptionists of Spain, and gave occasion to the great Council of Frankfort. Any one false step would have thrown the whole theory of the doctrine into irretrievable confusion; but it was as if some one individual and perspicacious intellect, to speak humanly, ruled the theological discussion from first to last. That in the long course of centuries, and in spite of the failure, in points of detail, of the most gifted Fathers and Saints, the Church thus wrought out the one and only consistent theory which can be taken on the great doctrine in dispute, proves how clear, simple, and exact her vision of that doctrine was. But it proves more than this. Is it not utterly incredible, that with this thorough comprehension of so great a mystery, as far as the human mind can know it, she should be at that very time in the commission of the grossest errors in religious worship, and should be hiding the God and Mediator, whose Incarnation she contemplated with so clear an intellect, behind a crowd of idols?
The integrity of the Catholic developments is still more evident when they are viewed in contrast with the history of other doctrinal systems. Philosophies and religions of the world have each its day, and are parts of a succession. They supplant and are in turn supplanted. But the Catho- lie religion alone has had no limits; it alone has ever been greater than the emergence, and can do what others cannot do. If it were a falsehood, or a corruption, like the systems of men, it would be weak as they are; whereas it is able even to impart to them a strength which they have not, and it uses them for its own purposes, and locates them in its own territory. The Church can extract good from evil, or at least gets no harm from it. She inherits the promise made to the disciples, that they should take up serpents, and, if they drank any deadly thing, it should not hurt them. When evil has clung to her, and the barbarian people have looked on with curiosity or in malice, till she should have swollen or fallen down suddenly, she has shaken the venomous beast into the fire, and felt no harm.
Eusebius has set before us this attribute of Catholicism in a passage in his history. " These attempts," he says,
speaking of the acts of the enemy, " did not long avail him, Truth ever consolidating itself, and, as time goes on, shining into broader day. For, while the devices of adversaries were extinguished at once, undone by their very impetuosity, — one heresy after another presenting its own novelty, the former specimens ever dissolving and wasting variously in manifold and multiform shapes, — the brightness of the Catholic and only true Church went forward increasing and enlarging, yet ever in the same things, and in the same way, beaming on the whole race of Greeks and barbaria-ns with the awfulness, and simplicity, and nobleness, and sobriety, and purity of its divine polity and philosophy. Thus the calumny against our whole creed died with its day, and there continued alone our Discipline, sovereign among all, and acknowledged to be pre-eminent in awfulness, sobriety, and divine and philosophical doctrines; so that no one of this day dares to cast
any base reproach upon our faith, nor any calumny, such as it was once usual for our enemies to use." l
The Psalmist says, " "We went through fire and water;" nor is it possible to imagine trials fiercer or more various than those from which Catholicism has come forth uninjured, as out of the Egyptian sea or the Babylonian furnace. First of all were the bitter persecutions of the Pagan Empire in the early centuries; then its sudden conversion, the liberty of Christian worship, the development of the cultus sanctorum, and the reception of Monachism into the ecclesiastical system. Then came the irruption of the barbarians, and the occupation by them of the orbis terrarum from the North, and by the Saracens from the South. Meanwhile the anxious and protracted controversy concerning the Incarnation hung like some terrible disease upon the faith of the Church. Then came the time of thick darkness; and afterwards two great struggles, one with the material power, the other with the intellect, of the world, terminating in the ecclesiastical monarchy, and in the theology of the schools. And lastly came the great changes consequent upon the controversies of the sixteenth century. Is it conceivable that any one of those heresies, with which ecclesiastical history abounds, should have gone through a hundredth part of these trials, yet have come out of them so nearly what it was before, as Catholicism has done? Could such a theology as Arianism have lasted through the scholastic contest? or Montanism have endured to possess the world, without coming to a crisis, and failing? or could the imbecility of the Manichean system, as a religion, have escaped exposure, had it been brought into conflict with the barbarians of the Empire, or the feudal system?
A similar contrast discovers itself in the respective effects and fortunes of certain influential principles or usages, which have both been introduced into the Catholic system, and are seen in operation elsewhere. When a system really is corrupt, powerful agents, when applied to it, do but develope that corruption, and bring it the more speedily to an end. They stimulate it preternaturally; it puts forth its strength, and dies in some memorable act. Very different has been the history of Catholicism, when it has committed itself to such formidable influences. It has borne, and can bear, principles or doctrines, which in other systems of religion quickly degenerate into fanaticism or infidelity. This might be shown at great length in the history of the Aristotelic philosophy within and without the Church; or in the history of Monachism, or of Mysticism; — not that there has not been at first a conflict between these powerful and unruly elements and the Divine System into which they were entering, but that it ended in the victory of Catholicism. The theology of St. Thomas, nay of the Church of his period, is built on that very Aristotelism, which the early Fathers denounce as the source of all misbelief, and in particular of the Arian and Monophysite heresies. The exercises of asceticism, which are so graceful in St. Antony, so touching in St. Basil, and so awful in St. Grermanus, do but become a melancholy and gloomy superstition even in the most pious persons who are cut off from Catholic communion. And while the highest devotion in the Church is the mystical, and contemplation has been the token of the most singularly favoured Saints, we need not look deeply into the history of modern sects, for evidence of the excesses in conduct, or the errors in doctrine, to which mystics have been commonly led, who have boasted of their possession of reformed truth, and have rejected what they called the corruptions of Catholicism.
It is true, there have been seasons when, from the operation of external or internal causes, the Church has been thrown into what was almost a state of deliquium; but her wonderful revivals, while the world was triumphing over her, is a further evidence of the absence of corruption in the system of doctrine and worship into which she has developed. If corruption be an incipient disorganization, surely an abrupt and absolute recurrence to the former state of vigour, after an interval, is even less conceivable than a corruption that is permanent. Now this is the case with the revivals I speak of. After violent exertion men are exhausted and fall asleep; they awake the same as before, refreshed by the temporary cessation of their activity; and such has been the slumber and such the restoration of the Church. She pauses in her course, and almost suspends her functions; she rises again, and she is herself once more; all things are in their place and ready for action. Doctrine is where it was, and usage, and precedence, and principle, and policy; there may be changes, but they are consolidations or adaptations; all is unequivocal and determinate, with an identity which there is no disputing. Indeed it is one of the most popular charges against the Catholic Church at this very time, that she is " incorrigible •" — change she cannot, if we listen to St. Athanasius or St. Leo; change she never will, if we believe the controversialist or alarmist of the present day.
Sucli were the thoughts concerning the " Blessed Vision of Peace/' of one whose long-continued petition had been that the Most Merciful would not despise the work of His own Hands, nor leave him to himself; — while yet his eyes were dim, and his breast laden, and he could but employ Reason in the things of Faith. And now, dear Reader, time is short, eternity is long. Put not from you what you have here found; regard it not as mere matter of present controversy; set not out resolved to refute it, and looking about for the best way of doing so; seduce not yourself with the imagination that it comes of disappointment, or disgust, or restlessness, or wounded feeling, or undue sensibility, or other weakness. Wrap not yourself round in the associations of years past; nor determine that to be truth which you wish to be so, nor make an idol of cherished anticipations. Time is short, eternity is long.