posed to you; necessarily there is some, and always will be; but the question is, to discover whether some other truth, which ought to have served as complement or counterpoise to the one you are struck with, has not been suppressed. Ask your adversary how, in the system he propounds, he disposes of that truth; insist upon his finding it a place, and see both of you what, as regards the mystery of Jesus Christ, is the result of the restitution of this lost truth. Hold fast this legitimate, this incontestable principle, and you will see many phantoms vanish away.

How the human mind stunts itself in sophistry, but above all, in religious sophistry! There are no smaller intellects than those which treat great subjects with small thoughts; instead of growing they dwindle; and under this head we may affirm, that if there be no knowledge so calculated as that of religion to elevate and enlarge thought, on the other hand, no other scientific sphere presents us with such striking and complete examples of silliness and puerility amongst its votaries. This is, and must be so. Truth, when we have narrowed it, revenges itself in narrowing us.

In all times, the arguments of incredulity have been more readily disposed of than the subtleties of heresy; and it has always been easier to defend the truths of the Christian religion, taken in the mass, than each one of its constituent truths separately. Heresy has a more specious language, a more de

cided prestige, than incredulity, and foremost among its claims is the not being incredulity.

III. PROTESTANTISM AND CATHOLICISM.

1. Catholicism (its Characteristics), and Jesuitism.

If we go to the root of the matter, we shall find that authority, so often said to be the very essence of Catholicism, is only its means. Its actual end, its spirit, is the triumph of form over substance, of the work of the hands over that of the heart, of matter over spirit, of the image over the reality. It aims at perpetuating what, at the price of his own blood, Christ came to abrogate,-the temporary reign of rites and symbols.

It is not because St. Peter came to Rome that Rome is the centre of the universe; it is because Rome had long been the centre of the universe that St. Peter had to be brought thither. If there had been no Rome, there would have been no Papacy; this pedestal was needed by that idol.

Catholicism is not a system, but a historical and moral fact. It derives its force from facts, and it could show no more decided symptom of decadence than a readiness to deduce itself from a metaphysical system. The real heads of Catholicity have ever had an instinctive perception of this truth. They have not allowed themselves to be taken off their guard, either by the lustre of talent or the light of analogy; and it is not by them, or under

their auspices, that the Church will ever be replunged into metaphysical abstractions. An edifice founded on centuries and on human nature has nothing to gain by transposing itself to a philosophical basis.

Catholicism has for author man himself, or rather human nature, which, not being able to dry up the stream, has tried to divert it, and has more or less succeeded in so doing. A delicate blending of authority and condescension-the authority always manifest, the condescension only vaguely felt-skilfully manages the masses, and even, which might seem less easy, choice spirits as well. Sublime or vulgar at will, Catholicism makes itself "all things to all men" in a manner which would probably have astonished St. Paul, though he had adopted these words for his own motto. In the inferior sense of the word, Catholicism is more human than the gospel. A number of men of the world, for whom the teachings of this religion are fables and its practices absurdities, wish it well nevertheless; take up, on occasion, its defence against heresy, and accept it as a barrier against the invasion of some other religion, which would at length oblige them, whether affirmatively or negatively, to treat God with some earnestness.

It is impossible to refuse one's admiration to the sequence and connexion of ideas in Catholicism, and nothing can better confirm what we have said of the spontaneous character of this work, and of the

nature of its development. Never could anything at once so vast and so closely connected have been premeditated; all works perfect in these points are involuntary. From one end to the other of the system, no joins, no knots-these are only found at the extremities. In particular, the internal dogmas or the theology of Catholicism is intimately related to the great external dogma,-I mean the doctrine of the Church. Whether the former were conceived for love of this doctrine, or whether the doctrine owes its birth to them (and these two conclusions do not exclude each other), it is certain that we cannot conceive them without it or it without them. The Church of authority must believe in the opus operatum; the Church, wherein triumphs the opus operatum, must be a Church of authority. I understand by the opus operatum, the intrinsic virtue of the act or fact; the positive separation between the subjective and the objective; the substitution of doing for being, and, consequently, the principle of arbitrariness in morality and in religion. If this doctrine does not necessarily imply that of the merit of works, it at least connives at it and prepares its way, seeing that the idea of merit is more easily attached to that of doing than that of being; since one can say to a moral creature, Do, because you are; whereas one cannot in an absolute sense say to him, Be. In any case, these two dogmas, so evidently cognate, are two characteristic features of Catholic theology, and this fact avails to support, even if it do not amount to prove, what we

have elsewhere said, that Catholicism is a grand transaction entered into with the natural man; for to what does the natural man cling with all his might, but, in the first place, to substituting doing for being, or works for faith, and, in the next, merit to grace,

a man himself for God? What the gospel has come to snatch away, Catholicism aims at restoring. Hence the sacrifice, hence the priest, the hierarchy; the Church, the whole system: others may reverse the terms, but the relation always subsists.

Strange antithesis, of which, nevertheless, one may see the terms rejoin and blend in the parent idea of Catholicism. The Catholic faith, which effaces as much as lies in its power the consummatum est, in which everything has constantly to begin over again, is at the same time the theology of the opus operatum, or the accomplished fact. To begin once and continue for ever is the idea of the gospel ; but it is not that of the natural man, and as we have said, Catholicism is, in several respects, the Christianity of the natural man.

To die, is the first and last word of the Christian philosophy of Rancé; and I am far from being surprised at it. What does surprise me, and what I cannot sufficiently admire, is that this word should not have been the first and last of the apostolic teaching. All religions and all philosophies had only attained to cursing matter or to divinizing it. In the midst of an appalling and universal corruption of manners, an excessive asceticism appeared to be en