on those it has frowned, fulminated, or turned the cold shoulder. Maximisers. have shone in every Christian virtue-even humility, gentleness and moderation; minimisers have been false brethren, disloyal, weak in the faith, led astray by the pride of intellect. It has been argued that addition to our belief is less dangerous than subtraction-that it is better to have the entire truth and the fulness of revelation plus a trifling corruption here and there, than to inherit the divine traditions minus any essential and constituent part, however small. Nor would it be easy to gainsay this assertion; on the contrary, it may be assented to as true, but it may and must be added that those who make it, often turn it to a bad purpose, and in virtue of this undeniable verity take occasion to maximise in an alarming degree. It is of a tendency we are speaking, not of an action, however often repeated. Neither maximising nor minimising is wrong in itself, since it is our duty to ascertain as far as possible both the maximum and minimum of every revealed truth, that is, to reduce it to its exact dimensions in relation to our wants, capacity and responsibilities. But it has been found in every age that those whose habitual tendency it is to make the most of every thing taught authoritatively in the schools of religion, do not rest satisfied with dogmas and precepts in their just limits, but seek to extend them beyond their prescribed bounds, and thereby impose on themselves or others, and often on both, burdens too heavy to be borne. The danger and evil of such maximising has frequently been exposed and will have to be exposed again in every age and in every generation. The extremes of which we are writing re-act on each other, and, having their roots in human nature, the conflict between them will never end so long as human nature continues unchanged. If the tendency to minimise often results in individualism and unbelief, it is no less certain that the tendency to maximise engenders superstition, bigotry, intolerance, persecution and Pharisaism. Our Divine Lord and Master regarded it with special abhorrence, for while he rebuked the Sadducees, or Jewish minimisers, who denied the resurrection, saying:

"Ye therefore do greatly err," He denounced the Pharisees, or Jewish maximisers, saying: "You serpents, generation of vipers, how will you flee from the judgment of hell?" Not content with being Jewish, they would be hyper-Jewish-the types of so many who were to come after them, who instead of Christian have been hyperChristian and instead of Catholic, hyper-Catholic.

Foremost among these may be reckoned the advocates of persecution. It might have been It might have been thought that after the pagan persecutions of two centuries and a half, beginning under Nero and ending with Galerius and Maximin, Christians, having been the victims of sanguinary laws and barbarous executions, would never, in the person of their successors and offspring, imitate and renew spectacles equally odious in the sight of God and man. Who could have imagined that in later ages, when Christian priests should sit on the throne of the Cæsars at Rome, those priests, recognised as the vicars of Jesus Christ, would, after the example of Domitian, Trajan, Decius, Valerian and Diocletian, authorise, condone, or applaud, as for the glory of God, such massacres as those of St. Bartholomew's Day, and the Duke of Alva in the low countries; such burnings as those of Smithfield and the never sufficiently to be detested autos da fé of the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition? Who would have dared to predict that canonised saints and pontiffs, like Pius V. would verily think they did God service by imbruing their hands in the blood of their fellow-men and even of their fellow-Christians led astray? It is true that they did this in the name of Jesus Christ, as His vicars, and supreme heads of an infallible Church, who were full of zeal for the Christian religion, the unity of the Church and the extermination of heresy. But did the end justify the means? Was the system of persecution either right or politic? Can it be reconciled with the example and precept of Christ, who when His disciples James and John asked Him: "Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven and consume them (even as Elias did)?"* replied with a heart full of

* ὡς καὶ Ἡλίας ἐποίησε: omitted in the Catholic Bible translated from the

tenderness even for these Samaritans who would not receive Him: "You know not of what spirit you are. The Son of Man came not to destroy souls (men's lives) but to save"? This is recorded in the Gospel of St. Luke* the Evangelist, whose history is especially marked by words and acts of mercy and benignity in the life and sayings of Christ. Again, the question of persecution seems to be affected by the injunction given by our Lord to the first Pope when he had cut off the ear of Malchus, the High Priest's servant :† "Put up thy sword into the scabbard." If St. Peter, instead of being himself crucified at Rome, had, in virtue of his pontificate, obtained temporal power there and ruled as a king, would he not have remembered these words of Christ, and have regarded them as a prohibition of the use of arms, either by making war himself with troops levied in his name, or by sanctioning the extirpation of heresy by the sword, or in other words by "blood and iron"? The weapons of our warfare, the Apostle said, are not carnal, and Christ has distinctly prohibited the use of fire and sword in the service of religion. He prohibited the use of fire even though it should be called down from heaven, as the advocates of persecutions and champions of the inquistion would, no doubt, contend that the divine spark which kindled the faggots on the squares of Lisbon and in the market of Smithfield was, metaphorically speaking, a gift from on high.

Perhaps it will be answered that the days of persecution are over; that they belong to a past age and never can return. They do indeed belong to a past age-an age in which zeal and devotion were too often blended with what was savage and dark. They were wrought by the maximisers of those days, by those who made the most, and more than the most, of the precepts enjoining discipline and the unity of the Church. But unfortunately though fire and faggot are out of date, maximisers are still alive and flourish. They often sit in Vulgate, commonly called the Douay Bible-a version of the Scriptures which sadly needs improvement.

*Chap. ix. 54, 55.

+ St. John xviii. 10, 11.

high places, and their teaching is favourable to persecution. They defend it in principle, and they would revive it in practice if they could. They censured Montalembert because he denounced it as hateful and unchristian, and all who express their abhorrence of it, like Lingard, are 'suspected" in their eyes. They would gladly enact such measures as might lead up to it, particularly the censorship of the press, and though their brethren vehemently disowned any sympathy with it during those years in which they were seeking political emancipation, it may reasonably be doubted whether they could safely be trusted with any more power in the State than such as is balanced, checked and controlled by other interests and schools of thought. If the maximisers of whom we speak were supreme, civil liberty would be trampled in the dust, and freedom of opinion would be exchanged for hollow uniformity and wide-spread hypocrisy. Society has nothing to fear from Christians, much from hyperChristians; society has nothing to fear from Catholics, from hyper-Catholics everything.

Another class of maximisers to whom we would call attention are those who, not satisfied with the high dignity ascribed by the Church to the blessed mother of our Lord and the saints, would push beyond all authorised bounds and employ language in reference to them, and specially in reference to her, for which no justification can be found in theology, in Scripture, or in reason. We yield to none in our reverence for her who was chosen to be the mother of the Incarnate Word. It would seem, at first sight, as if human language would be unable to ascribe to her more honour than is her due, and yet maximisers are so possessed of the spirit of monstrous exaggeration that they have often contrived, and do still often contrive to address her in terms which are not merely theologically incorrect but absolutely dishonouring to the incommunicable majesty of her divine Son. They do this also very frequently in spite of the definitions and limitations of accurate divines, and sometimes in disregard of the warnings of authority. A decree of the sacred congregation has lately (Feb. 28, 1875) censured the title of "Queen of

the heart of Jesus," used by a certain Sodality, and it has before now warned and reprehended those who have attributed power to Mary, as issuing from her divine. maternity, beyond its due limits, and reminded them that though she has great influence with her Son, it cannot be properly affirmed that she exercises command over Him. Yet from the time of St. Peter Damiani in the eleventh century and Albertus Magnus in the twelfth, how constantly have books of devotion (we have one before us at this moment*) been approved by the archbishop and bishops of an entire province, in which Mary is declared to approach the throne of her Son not as a handmaid but as a mistress, not in the language of supplication but of command. Maximisers have always "friends at court" who are lenient enough to their peccadilloes. Nor is it only in the addresses presented to St. Mary and the saints that the spirit of extravagance so often manifests itself. The anecdotes and legends respecting them inserted in books of devotion and biography, and published by the permission and with the approbation of ecclesiastical Superiors, are sometimes, and that not rarely, incredibly absurd. Those which follow are quoted from the book just referred to, the Ancora de Salvacion. They could find no entrance into the minds of any but the exceedingly ignorant, and into theirs only by first overriding the little reason with which nature has gifted them. Yet these fables are endorsed with the approval and indulgences of the archbishops of Aragon, Valencia, and Cataluña, and the bishops of Tarragona and Zaragoza.

"St. Stanislas Kotska on two occasions communicated by the hand of angels, and most holy Mary placed the infant Jesus in his arms." p. 227.

Where did most holy Mary find the infant Jesus? Did she go back for him through time and space to Bethlehem?

"St. Ignatius Loyola was thirty times visited by the Virgin, and, as it is believed, she kindly dictated to him. the admirable book of the Exercises."

P. 232.

"Mary appeared most beautifully to the Venerable

*Ancora de Salvacion, Barcelona, 1866, p. 217.