the title of Apollonius's Sancho Panza, which several subsequent writers have repeated. Whether Michael de la Roche, a man of considerable learning, who edited a periodical publication in London called Memoirs of Literature, in the years 1712-1717, had seen this opinion of Parker, we do not know; he does not intimate that he had; but he expressed his conviction to Dr. Lardner, after careful consideration, that "Philostratus had said nothing more in the Life of Apollonius than he would have said if there had been no Christians in the world." He read Philostratus purposely to judge whether he had intended a parallel between Apollonius and Jesus Christ or not, and, after having finished his reading," was fully persuaded that he never designed to draw such a parallel."* Mr. De la Roche's remarks led Dr. Lardner, one of the most honest of men and writers, to consider the question also, and he arrived at the same conclusion; though he appears previously to have been of a contrary persuasion. A few of his remarks may very well be given here. He says,— "It is manifest that Philostratus compared Apollonius and Pythagoras, but I do not see that he endeavoured to make him a rival with Jesus Christ. Philostratus has never once mentioned our Saviour, or the Christians his followers, neither in this long work, nor in the Lives of the Sophists; nor is there any hint that Apollonius anywhere in his wide travels met with any followers of Jesus. There is not so much as an obscure or general description of any men met with by him, whom any can suspect to be Christians of any denomination, either catholics or heretics. Whereas I think that if Philostratus had written with a mind averse to Jesus Christ, he would have laid hold of some occasion to describe and disparage his followers, as enemies of the gods and contemners of their mysteries and solemnities, and different from all other men. Our "Nor is there any resemblance between Jesus and Apollonius. Apollonius travelled from Spain to the Indies,-à Gadibus ad Gangem. Lord never travelled abroad; He never was out of the small tract of the land of Israel, excepting when He was carried into Egypt to avoid the design of Herod upon his life; and He ate and drank and dressed like other men, without any affectation of austerities like those of the Pythagoreans. Nor has Philostratus told any such wonderful works of Apollonius as should make out any tolerable resemblance between Jesus and him in that respect." Yet, though such evidence, from men who have read and studied Philostratus, has been offering itself to the eyes of Englishmen, not to say of other nations, for scores of years, we still find Apollonius and his biographer mentioned in our literature, time after time, as if the object of Philostratus had been the same as that of Hierocles. It is considered, by numbers who never read Philostratus, as indis*Memoirs of Literature, vol. i., art. xiii., p. 99. Lardner, chap. xxxix., vol. viii., p. 269, ed. Kippis. putable, that he set up Apollonius as a rival to Jesus Christ. The Germans Neander, Buhle, and Jacobs, indeed, as Dr. Réville admits, have advanced a contrary opinion, but to them very few in this country, and not many, it would seem, in any other, have been disposed to give heed. The notion of Dr. Réville that Julia Domna and her party directed Philostratus's pen against the Christians is not new. We find it intimated in Huet, and asserted in the "Biographie Universelle,” as many other things are asserted in biographical dictionaries, without any attempt at proof. "There is no doubt," says the writer of the article in the "Biographie," "that the Life of Apollonius was undertaken at the instigation of the Empress Julia in hatred of Christianity, and with the insidious intention of weakening the authority of the Gospel." And so repeats Dr. Réville, " there is no doubt." We have been astonished to see how readily many of our contemporary papers catch up the statements of Dr. Réville, and repeat them as if there was no doubt. "Julia Mæsa and Julia Mamaa," says one, "carried out what Julia Domna had begun;" as if he knew it to be indubitable that Julia Domna did begin. We could quote several others to the same effect, but it is needless. Hobbes said that writers were like sheep, treading in the steps of one another; and certainly, in this matter, there has been much sheep-like following of tracks. We trust that we have now given our readers some reason to believe that which it was our desire at the commencement of this article to establish. We hope we have made it apparent that there is an utter want of proof that Julia Domna set Philostratus to write the Life of Apollonius in order to confound the Christians. We would think it must now seem credible, too, that however strongly Philostratus himself may have desired to exalt his hero, and make him a wonder to the world in his character of a Pythagorean, he had no thought of attempting to make him, as Cudworth expresses it, "a corrival to Christ," an attempt left to be made in after times by Hierocles, and those by whom Hierocles has been too inconsiderately followed. It would afford us satisfaction if we could consider that by our little discussion of these matters we have at all contributed to discourage that great corrupter of history, assertion without proof. J. S. WATSON. THE Méditations sur l'Etat Actuel de la Religion Chrétienne. Par M. GUIZOT. Eugénie de Guérin. Journals Fragments. Par G. S. TREBUTIEN. Onzième 1864. Lettres d'Eugénie de Guérin. Par G. S. TREBUTIEN. Neuvième Edition. Maurice de Guérin. Journals, Lettres et Poëmes. Septième Edition. Paris. first work prefixed to our article is one which is interesting, both in itself, and from the eminence of its author. M. Guizot, purposing to close an active life of politics with a philosophical view of the principles and present position of Christianity, has chosen a noble occupation for his later years. He had already published one part on the dogmas of the Christian revelation, and his second volume was to have taken up the subject which Mr. Westcott has treated so ably in his works on the "Bible in the Church." But M. Guizot proceeded at once to the topic which he had reserved for his third series, but which he felt was specially called for now, the actual state of the Christian religion, and the revival which has sprung up in our own times, both in the Romish and in the Protestant Churches. Regarding this revival as alike remarkable in both, M. Guizot has placed Romanism and Protestantism alongside of each other with entire impartiality. He gives us no direct sign of his preference for the one system over the other. We shall hereafter, in the course of our remarks on the effects of Christianity on the character and life, be constrained to point out some distinctions between the Protestant and Romish systems of faith which appear to us just, and are certainly very striking in their consequences. But for the present we content ourselves with one observation, which must have been strongly present to the mind of a politician. so eminent as M. Guizot, though, writing as he does with the recollection of his duties as the chief minister of a Roman Catholic state, he has abstained from bringing it into view. We mean the corporate position and political influence of the Church of Rome. That influence has been sufficiently marked in the events of our own days. We have seen the Church of Rome confronting the policy and resisting the laws of the kingdom of Italy. We saw it fighting a long battle with Victor Emmanuel, Cavour, and the Parliament of Turin, anathematizing and conspiring, and only after a hard conflict put down. At an earlier period we observed it, under Archbishop Droste, confronting the authority of the King of Prussia, and there put down only after a sharp struggle. At a still earlier period (1815) the Romish prelates of Belgium denounced the acts of the King of Holland, who had granted to that country a constitution tolerating all sects. They warned him that, if this plan was persevered in, it would shake his throne; a prophecy which, in 1830, they helped to fulfil. If we review the case of those states which have made their laws conformable with the Romish canons, we shall find that the result has been to place Government in antagonism to the opinions of its subjects. Thus in Austria, where the Concordat, made some years ago with the Pope, gives the head of the Church absolute power over the lower orders of the clergy; the decision of all causes, ecclesiastical and matrimonial; and the oversight of all schools, public and private, and their teachers, within its realms,-the result has been to cause a wide dissatisfaction; so that when the system worked by the Jesuits was about to be introduced last year into Bohemia, the Bohemians declared they would rather leave the Church of Rome than submit to it. The like system, threatened in Baden a few years ago, led to such a storm that the ministry resigned, and the Grand Duke had to cancel the Concordat. The same demands made upon the Emperor of Mexico, when the Pope announced that the liberation of other religions was a violation of the canon law, have caused a quarrel between the Emperor and the Church of Rome, which has seriously added to the difficulties of Maximilian's position. It seems, then, that the canon laws of Rome, which every bishop swears to obey, "have always rejected schism and heresy from the bosom of the Church. The Christian emperors thought it their duty to maintain these laws, and to secure their execution."* The corollary from which follows clearly, that if the fundamental laws of the state protect the public profession of heretical doctrines, "we should be in formal opposition to the laws of the state." And if any one imagines * Address of the Belgian prelates in 1816 to the King of Holland. that these doctrines of the Church of Rome are obsolete, the answer is, that in the last document of authority, the Pope's Encyclical, they are given in the plainest terms, and all the organs of the papacy, not in Italy only, but in England, enforce them,-Archbishop Manning's sermons and pamphlets, the Dublin Review, and all the Romish newspapers here and in Dublin. Gallican doctrines are now universally disclaimed, and the Jesuit or Ultramontane view is accepted wherever Rome prevails. If we bear this in mind, and recollect at the same time, that the policy of a full toleration and liberty of religious opinion is now the accepted creed of all liberal politicians in all parts of the world, we shall see reason to expect a wide divergence between the civil power and the Church, wherever the Church is represented by Rome. That divergence may be kept from open sedition (as it is now in France) by the firm hand of a powerful despotism. But it has taxed all the skill of the Emperor, and has cost him more thought and anxiety than any other circumstance in the condition of France. It has led him to a formidable step in Italy, from which only now, with infinite trouble, after repeated changes of ministry and domestic squabbles, he has extricated himself. How it affects states where the Government is weaker, parties more divided, and the acts of the papacy have greater power and a wider scope, the present condition of Ireland and the action of the Romanists in our Parliament prove. No one who looks back on the action of the clergy of Rome for the last fifty years in England, can predict what may be its influence on our politics in the difficult times which are before us. This at least is plain, by the last acts of the late Government, and the first engagements of the present Government, that the English Cabinet is in the hands of the two Romish Archbishops, to dictate their own terms, with only the reserve of common prudence and the discretion of making one step at a time. On the subject of the temporal power of the papacy we say nothing: we have no expectation that the decision of that question will affect the spiritual power of Rome. The loss of Italy is a great loss to the papacy but that loss is already suffered, for the allegiance of the Italians to the Pope is estranged. They have lived too near the Vatican, and have seen too much of its doings behind the scenes. But in more distant lands the traditions of the papacy are entire, and its power is unbroken. What that power is we may gather from a single fact. A corporation invested with authority over the thoughts of men; served by thousands of able and skilful men, all disciplined, all accustomed to suppress their own will, and obey the will of their superiors; cut off by celibacy from the interests of life; fixed with a single aim on one object, on which depends their wealth, reputation, and means of gratifying ambition; scattered through all nations, |