tutions may be improved or perfected miraculously by the supernatural providence of God, or without a miracle, by transplanting the institutions of one country to those of another, by missions, colonization, or conquest; and civil institutions also by colonization, conquest, or the aid of religious institutions already established and in their vigor; but not otherwise. This is philosophically demonstrable, and historically verifiable. There is no such thing as self-perfecting institutions. Without one, or another, or all of the efficient causes we have mentioned, improvement in religious or civil institutions is absolutely impossible; for the simple reason, that the imperfect can never without the aid of a foreign power become perfect, nothing can make itself more than it is; or, as we say, there is no motion without rest, no man can lift himself up by his own

waistbands.

The

If we turn to history, we shall find that institutions, though they may decline, are never progressive. There is no instance on record of a spontaneous civilization, no instance of a savage people emerging of itself from the savage state. The earliest period of all civil and political institutions is their pur est and best period. The history of all states is a history of decline, corruption, deterioration of their institutions. struggle of nations is always for lost rights, lost privileges. Magna Charta is but an attempt to stay the progress of corruption, and to preserve a portion of what had been enjoyed from time immemorial. The earliest of the pyramids is the most perfect as a work of art. The Cloaca Maxima of Rome was built before the epoch of authentic history. The traditions of every people point to a state of society in the past superior to that which is at present enjoyed. The wisest and most salutary laws of all modern nations, save such as are derived from Christianity, have their origin in the night of ages, have existed and been in force from time immemorial, for a time so long that "the memory of man runneth not to the contrary," Never expect from institutions a worth or adaptedness they do

not possess in their origin.

The historian of modern society can trace a progress of civilization effected by Christianity, but no progress in institutions, properly so called. Improvements in administration may have been introduced, though even this, if taken absolutely, may be questioned; but in all cases where change, innovation, has struck at fundamental institutions, it has been a corruption, the sign of decay, and the precursor, if not the cause, of evil.

England has suffered from every change in her old constitution. France by her changes was brought to the very brink of ruin; she owes the preservation of her nationality to the mercy or the policy of her conquerors, and it has only been in proportion as she has restored the old order that she has begun to resume her rank among the nations. Spain lies bleeding at every pore; her whole energy is relaxed; and she seems almost on the verge of dissolution. What has brought her to her present deplorable condition ? The party of progress, the innovators, the lovers of change, the madmen who would improve her institutions. There is of old a curse pronounced against all who remove "the ancient landmarks"; and Sallust, when he would brand a man with infamy, designates him as one who is rerum novarum cupidus.

We admit the Church does not take sides with the mad dreamers, and we assure the revolutionists that she will never be their accomplice. They may rail as they will, they may appeal to the "irrepressible instincts of humanity," talk largely of liberty (meaning thereby license), of progress, of science, of light, and in the excess of their philanthropic zeal convulse the nations, and turn the ruthless hordes of their myrmidons against her, sack her temples, desecrate her altars, violate her virgins, massacre her priests, imprison her sovereign Pontiff, as they did in the memorable French Revolution; but they will never seduce or drive her from her fidelity to her heavenly Spouse. She will remain immovable while all around her is in commotion, and her calm, unalterable voice will make itself heard above the confused roar of maddened millions, command the strife to cease, and be obeyed. That she does not do what she is asked to do by these men greedy of new things is among the proofs that she is from God, and that he continues to fulfil his promise to be always with her unto the consummation of the world. If these men want progress, let them learn submission, let them obey the Church and be counselled by her, and not undertake to counsel her. She has received the authority to teach; they have received only the command TO OBEY. The progress they should seek is progress in obedience, in meekness, in humility, in patience, resignation; for with their present tempers there is, and can be, no good for them.

Our space will not permit us to discuss now the question M. Quinet raises in its bearing on nationalities. He praises Voltaire for his universality, and condemns the Church because

she is not, in his view, as broad as humanity. Yet he wishes her to league with nationalities, be Gallican in France, Spanish in Spain, German in Germany, English in England, Italian in Italy, American in America. A singularly consistent view of Catholicity this. The Church knows no distinction of races or of nations. She deals with all as simple human beings, and seeks to bring all into the unity of one fold, to make all hearts one, in the unity of the same faith, the same hope, and the same charity. To her the soul of the Flathead Indian is as precious as the soul of a professor in the College of France. If civil governments receive her law, and serve her, it is well and good; she accepts their service, and they do their duty ;-if they refuse to do so, she leaves them to take their own course, and proceeds on without them in her work of love and mercy. She holds her authority not from them; and she will continue to maintain and teach that the law of God is paramount to theirs. They may rebel, they may conspire against her, and seek her destruction; but He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh at their folly, in his hot displeasure shall chastise them with his rod of iron, and break them in pieces as a potter's vessel. It is for them to fear, not for her. It is idle to summon up national prejudices against her. She disdains them. Before her, as the Irish proverb says, "Man is man the world over, nothing less, nothing more.

The danger of Catholicity to liberty is an idle dream. You can have no true liberty without her, and the only liberty that is endangered by her is the liberty of those who desire no law but their own will, no restraint but their own caprice. If this is against her, so be it. Be willing to love God and do your duty, and you will have nothing to fear from the Church.

1.

ART. VI. — LITERARY NOTICES AND CRITICISMS.

La Reforme contre la Reforme; ou Retour à l'Unité Catholique, par la Voie du Protestantisme. Traduit de l'Allemand de HOENINGHAUS. Par MM. W. et S., précédé d'une Introduction par M. AUDIN. 2 vol. 8vo.

THE German title of this work is, "Das Resultat meiner Wanderungen durch das Gebiet der Protestantischen Literatur: oder, die Nothwen

digkeit der Rückkehr zur Katolischen Kirche, ausschliesslich durch die einigen Eingeständnisse Protestantischer Theologen und Philosophen, dargethan; von Dr. Julius v. Höninghaus. Aschaffenburg. 1837." We have not ourselves as yet read this work, but we have seen a very able and interesting review of it in the Dublin Review, which Messrs. Casserly and Sons have done well to republish in their valuable little volume, entitled The Bible Question fairly Tested; New York, 1844. The author was, we believe, a distinguished Protestant minister of Berlin, but is now a member of the Catholic Church. This work was the result of his inquiries as a Protestant, and, though an able defence of Catholicity, is taken, with the exception of the brief analysis which the author places at the head of each chapter, entirely from Protestant writers. We translate the following brief but interesting notice of the work from the Ami de la Religion, Sept. 2, 1845.

Catholics eminent for their knowledge and penetration comprehended and announced, from the very origin of the Reformation, that the principle of free inquiry, which serves as the foundation of the Protestant edifice, would in its inevitable consequences end in the total denial and ruin of all revealed religion. This truth, which was perceived in the beginning only by the more advanced minds, has at length become manifest to all, and at this moment is a fact evident in the highest degree to minds of the least penetration. To become so, it only needed to leave it to time to bring about the development of the erroneous principle which the schism of the sixteenth century assumed as its point of departure. Often already had Catholic writers, following the footsteps of the immortal author of the Variations, pointed out in the writings or in the situation of the dissident churches a tendency, more or less striking, to an early dissolution; but we own we were scarcely prepared to find a Protestant writer, grave and earnest, weeping in the sorrow of his heart over the anarchy which everywhere afflicts the dispersed and isolated Protestant churches, coming forward to unveil before the Christian world the scandal of these intestine dissensions, and to expose the death with which for the most part they are already struck. Never before has the Reformation been so vigorously attacked as in this work of Höninghaus. He has laid under contribution the most distinguished and best known among Protestant writers. It is their confessions, their declarations, which he extracts and combines in a speaking picture, as it were, that accuse the schism of Luther of the evil it has done to Christian unity, and the deplorable ravages it has made since that fatal epoch. It is deeply interesting to see a partisan of the Reformation, an adept, establishing, clearly demonstrating, from the writings of Protestants themselves, that Protestantism never had the capacity to found a veritable church; that the evil it has done it is impotent to repair; that it ought never to have abandoned tradition; that the faith taught by the Catholic Church reaches back to apostolic times; that there is no possible salvation but in returning to the Catholic Church, &c. M. Audin, so honorably known in the religious world by his learned and conscientious researches on Luther and Calvin, crowned with a wellmerited success, and who seems to have received from heaven the mission and the gift to denude the wounds of Protestantism, and at the same time to apply the remedy, has not contented himself with simply making known to us the remarkable work of Höninghaus by a French edition and translation, but has in some sort identified himself with the author, and so appropriated to himself the subject treated by the German as

to give us a clear and detailed analysis of it. This analysis forms the introduction to the book; it is a complete summary of its contents, and its perusal will fully initiate the reader into the plan and labors of the author.

The work is comprised in eleven chapters. The author begins by depicting the actual state of Protestantism in the different countries which have embraced the Reformation; and from this he arrives easily and naturally to the conclusion, that Protestantism does not form a veritable church; that it nowhere offers unity of doctrine; that it resembles a worm cut up into pieces, each of which moves and writhes so long as there remains something of the original vital impulse, but which gradually loses even that remnant of mutilated life. It is only an aggregation of a multitude of churches of different opinions, with nothing external or internal to unite them in one communion. And, in fact, there can be no union among them, for they everywhere hold different dogmas and principles.

Having enumerated the divers sects scattered over Europe, the author continues:

"The_population of America is broken up into innumerable religious fractions. Besides the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Calvinists, Baptists, Quakers, Swedenborgians, Universalists, Unitarians, Tunkers, &c., there is a multitude of minor sects flowing from these as from their source, and of which each has its own distinct hierarchy. The Catholics alone have been able to avoid these internal divisions. . . Protestant missionaries sent among idolatrous nations help effectually to spread disunion. One instructs them in the spirit of the Baptists; another teaches them Methodism; a third makes of them Hernhutters; a fourth, Quakers; a fifth, Calvinists; a sixth, rigid Lutherans; a seventh makes the souls confided to his care learn by rote the Thirty-nine Articles of Anglicanism, -— each acting always in the spirit of his

sect.

The doctors of the Protestant churches contradict each other on the most important points of religion (they are Protestant authors only who speak in Höninghaus). Thus, one will declare that original sin is a fundamental article of faith, inseparably connected with doctrines absolutely essential to the very preservation of faith, such as the doctrine of grace, the doctrine of the necessity of works, of revelation, and of redemption; another will teach that in the progressive spirit of the Evangelical Church the dogma of original sin is left behind, as unsupported by Scripture, and as repugnant to the development of the Christian spirit. The most essential Christian dogmas, such as the Holy Trinity, the Resurrection of the Body, the Last Judgment, the Eternal Pains of Hell, admitted by some, rejected by others.

are

In the fourth chapter the author proves that the only remedy for the evils to which Protestantism is the prey would be to return to the Catholic system of the infallibility of authority. And, in fact, revelation once admitted, the Bible once received, if in religion you start from a supernatural principle, you must necessarily acknowledge that the Divinity who has deigned to grant us a revelation must take care that its sense be not abandoned to the arbitrary judgment of men. The very enunciation of doctrines which are to remain above the province of reason suffices to preclude the possibility of their being left to the arbitrary interpretation of the human mind. For, if God has really revealed those doctrines as truths indispensable to salvation, their interpretation can belong