bishop can err, for that nobody denies; but that all can, or any considerable number can, in what pertains to faith and morals, no Catholic can assert or admit. If he said a council might err, he meant a particular council, that is, a provincial or national council, not an ecumenical council; for every Catholic holds as an article of faith the infallibility of œcumenical councils. He may have said the Pope can err in matters of administration, acting on misinformation or as a private doctor; but, if he said he might err as visible head of the Church, when deciding for the whole Church, ex cathedra, a question of faith or morals, he uttered a private opinion, which few Catholics share with him. The difficulty the Reviewer has conjured up is one which has no real existence. The sense of the Church is easily ascertained on any point of faith or morals.

"Upon Mr. B.'s theory," says the Reviewer, "all we would have to do would be to consult the Holy Father' at Rome, and implicitly submit to his decisions."- p. 466. Not on our theory, but on the Catholic theory, for we have no theories of our own. Certainly, when the Pope decides, we submit, for we recognize his right to decide, and we believe his decisions are infallible. But," continues the Reviewer, "when the decisions of one Pope contradict those of another, and especially when the same Pope decides different ways at different times, it is a little difficult to determine which is right, or to see the signs of infallibility anywhere." — ib. Unquestionably. But we deny the supposition. One Pope has never in his decisions contradicted those of another, and no Popehas ever decided different ways at different times. Protestants make the assertion, but why do they not adduce the instances, at least one instance, of such contradiction? Show us from ecclesiastical history one single well authenticated instance of such contradiction, and we are for ever silent. Bring forward, then, the instance, or never again make the

assertion.

But

The Reviewer tries to be quite witty in relation to the degree of liberty which, according to the view we gave, Catholics must enjoy, which he defines to be the "liberty to hold and teach what his Holiness the Pope says they may." wit is not our friend's forte. Nevertheless, we have no objection to his definition. Liberty to hold and teach what the Sovereign Pontiff says we may is all the liberty we ask; for it is liberty to hold and teach the word of God in its purity and integrity," the faith once delivered to the saints,"

which is all the liberty Almighty God allows to any man. The Reviewer, we presume, holds that he is amenable to law, and that he is at liberty to do only what the law permits. Why should not we ridicule him for this? Has he yet to learn that law is the basis of liberty, and that where there is no sovereign authority there is no law? Liberty is not in being free of all law, but in being held only to the law. We believe the Church, and the Pope as visible head of the Church, is the organ through which Almighty God promulgates the law. Consequently, in our own estimation at least, in submitting to the Pope, we find, instead of losing, our liberty. At any rate, we have all the liberty we want. We know from experience what Protestant liberty is. We know all that it has to attract, but we never conceived of true liberty till we became a Catholic. In the absolute surrender of ourselves to Jesus Christ, in becoming his slaves, we become true freemen. "If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed." It is idle, so far as we are concerned, to sneer at us for our submission to the Pope. Call us slaves, if you will, you will not move us. We know your slavery and our freedom. We ask no other freedom than that of absolute obedience to God in his Church; and you, if you knew any thing of the glorious Gospel of Him whose name you bear, "to take away your reproach," would also ask no other. Did not St. Paul glory in being the slave of Jesus Christ?

But it seems, after all, that we mistook in our reply the thesis of the Reviewer. He did not mean to say that Rome had produced no literary men, or that she had really warred upon literature as such, but only upon "every species of literature which could not be made tributary to her hierarchy."— p. 468. All we have to say in our defence is that we took the author's thesis according to his own formal and official statement of it. If he stated his design to be to prove one thing, but really attempted only to prove another thing, that was not our fault. If men will write without method, in a loose, declamatory style, paying no attention to the relation there may or may not be between their positions and their proofs, their premises and conclusions, they must be answerable for the consequences. The Reviewer stated positively that his design, among other things, was, "to exhibit the proofs that the Church of Rome had ever waged a deadly war upon literature." The proposition here set forth we denied, and we asserted that the Reviewer had not adduced a single fact in proof of it. In this we

were right. Whether he had or had not proved something else, and some things not at all to his own credit, we neither asserted nor denied.

But take his thesis as amended, we are ready to meet it. Fairly translated, it means that the Church of Rome has never encouraged, but has done her best to discourage, every species of literature not consistent or at war with the religion of Jesus Christ, as she had received the authority and the command to hold and teach it. So understood, we are far from controverting the thesis of the Reviewer. If the Church has so done, it is only another proof of her fidelity to her sacred trust. We hold religion before literature and science, and are barbarian enough to say that we have not the least conceivable respect for any literature or science not directly or indirectly enlisted in the service of religion, or, if you prefer, in the service of the Roman Catholic Church. Infidel literature, or science pressed into the service of infidelity, or even into the service of mammon, we grant, has no attractions for us, and, in our judgment, contributes nothing not really injurious to the best interests of mankind. If the Reviewer thinks differently, we thank God the Church does not think with him. What benefit to mankind does the reviewer think has accrued from the writings of Hobbes, Tindal, Collins, Morgan, Mandeville, Voltaire, Rousseau, Helvetius, D'Holbach, Dupuis, Cabanis, Destutt de Tracy, Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Heine, Eichhorn, Gesenius, Paulus, Strauss, Feurbach, Godwin, Byron, Shelley, Bulwer, Victor Hugo, De Balzac, George Sand, Paul de Kock, Eugene Sue, and hundreds and hundreds of others we might mention had we room? Genius, talent, learning, are never respectable, unless enlisted in the cause of religion, unless they bow low at the foot of the cross, and lay their offerings on the altar of the crucified God. Is the Reviewer prepared to deny this? If not, let him say no more against the expurgatory and prohibitory indexes of the Church. The Church was not instituted to foster literature or science, but to train men up for God. Yet she has never ceased to honor men of science, to patronize men of literature, and of every species of literature, when they did not seek to abuse their gifts and prostitute their genius, ability, and acquirements to the injury of religion, to the corrupting of men's minds and hearts, to leading them into doubt and darkness to their everlasting ruin. This was all that she had a right to do, and all that could be asked of her. If the Church

in her relations with literary and scientific men has erred at all, it has been in the fostering care she has extended to them, and in the leniency with which she has viewed their aberrations. She has always proved herself a kind, affectionate, and forbearing mother to them.

The Reviewer abandons the case of Virgil, Bishop of Salzburg, which he had before adduced as proving the hostility of the Church to science, but holds on to the case of Galileo. He makes two points against us. 1. That Galileo's doctrine was actually condemned as a heresy; and 2. That the Inquisition, which condemned him, claims infallibility for its decrees. In proof of the first he cites at length what he asserts is the sentence of the Inquisition. But as he does not tell us whence he obtained this document or where it may be found, and as he cites it in English, not in the original Latin, it is not admissible testimony. That in the sentence of the Inquisition the doctrine of the earth's motion is declared to be a heresy, we have not denied, and do not now deny. But this is the language of the theological qualifiers who examined the case in 1616, and is merely recited in the sentence in 1633. In 1616, the case, at the request of Galileo and his friends, was sent to the Inquisition, and the theological qualifiers to whom it was committed qualified the doctrine as heresy; but, in consequence of Galileo's promise to refrain from teaching the doctrine, no final action was had on the subject, and the fact whether the doctrine was or was not a heresy was not decided, but remained as the report of the qualifiers. In 1633, when Galileo was finally condemned, the question did not turn on the point whether his doctrine was or was not heretical, but on the point whether he had actually taught the doctrine after he had been forbidden to teach it. The Inquisition merely cites the report of the qualifiers, without passing upon the question of the heretical character of the doctrine itself, and condemned Galileo not because his doctrine was a heresy, but because he had continued to teach it in contempt of authority. The fact, then, that the Inquisition employs the terms heresy and heretical does not prove that it adjudged the doctrine itself to be heretical. In order that it should prove this, the character of the doctrine should have been the precise question before the court. Any lawyer will inform the Reviewer that the court decides only the precise point or points before it. What else it may allege is an obiter dictum, or the mere private opinion of the judge, and without authority. The terms heresy and

heretical also prove nothing, because they are the mere stylus curia, and are frequently adopted by the Inquisition where it is manifest the offence is not, strictly speaking, heresy. That Galileo was condemned for teaching, or rather, for the manner in which he taught, the doctrine of the earth's motion, we did not deny ; but that the doctrine itself was condemned as heretical we did, and do still, deny. We quoted, in proof of our denial, the words of the Pontiff under whose reign he was condemned, and of Galileo himself. We also showed that the reigning Pontiff was himself favorable to the doctrine, and that at the very moment of the condemnation of Galileo it was publicly taught in Rome by the professor of astronomy in the Pope's own college. It is idle, then, to pretend that it was condemned as a heresy.

The doctrine of the motion of the earth as a scientific hypothesis had long been promulgated at Rome, and Galileo might have taught it undisturbed, if he had chosen to observe certain very proper restrictions. The difficulty was in the fact, not to be denied, that the doctrine of the earth's motion is repugnant, or apparently repugnant, to the literal sense of the Holy Scriptures. It was never held that the literal sense of Scripture might not be set aside on competent authority, and a less literal construction adopted. But this can never be done to make way for a conjecture or a hypothesis. Science and revelation can never be in contradiction; but what you allege as science must be science, must be absolutely demonstrated, before it can be taken into the account in the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. Now, in the time of Galileo, the doctrine of the earth's motion was not demonstrated, was at best a mere hypothesis; and therefore to have undertaken to explain the texts which seemed to contradict it, and which, as they had hitherto been understood, did contradict it, so as to make them conform to it, was, to say the least, rash, and implied a heretical disposition on the part of him who should so undertake. Here was the rock on which Galileo split. He undertook to explain the Scriptures in accordance with his theory, and treated the Scriptural objections with a degree of levity and contempt incompatible with a becoming respect for the language of the inspired writings. Had he followed the direction of Cardinal Bellarmine, who suggested that it would be time enough to take into consideration the interpretation of the texts which seemed to oppose the theory after the theory should be prov