24. THE FALL OF THE PAPAL THRONE.

Even Laynez could not have conceived of the ultimate results of the mastery he gained for his Society at the Council of Trent. In that Council his manipulations subverted the Latin Episcopate, reducing it to a mere Papal Vicariate: his policy has since reduced the Papacy itself to a mere mask for the "black pope," the General of the Jesuits, the autocrat of the "Roman Catholic" world. The rod of its nominal despot is really held by him; his military forces submit with the "passivity of a corpse," and obey with the activity of Napoleon's flying artillery. The pontiff, be it Pius IV. or be it Pius IX., is merely a voice to send forth the oracles of the Society. But by its fatal blunder, when it bolstered up the feeble Pio Nono to issue his late decrees, it committed the Roman system to an irreparable breach with all antiquity, and the end is not yet. It dealt a death-blow to Gallicanism, which can no longer exist in communion with the Papacy, but its sting was like that of the serpent which strikes venom into its victim with a fury that destroys itself.

At that same moment when in his " Synod of Sacristans," amid darkness that might be felt, amid thunders and lightnings that made the foundations shake around him, the pontiff proclaimed himself Infallible, there went forth a voice, "yea, and that a mighty voice," which instantly took effect. His last temporal support perished at Sedan; and the temporal royalties of the Papacy perished with it. The voice said, "Remove the diadem and take off

the crown; . . exalt him that is low, and abase him that is high." Men fail to see the meaning of contemporary events, because they read not history, nor the word of God. But it is a great thing to be alive when so quietly, and by means apparently so insignificant as the red shirt of Garibaldi, is wrought a change that Emperors and nations. have struggled for in vain. Since Pepin gave the Exarchate of Ravenna to the Roman patriarch, in A. D. 754, the Bishops of Rome have been “princes of this world." The fall of the "Holy Roman Empire," under Napoleon, carried this logically with it, but "the mills of God grind slowly." We have seen a consummation which may be momentarily defeated by diplomacy, but the thunderbolt has fallen. For the first time in a thousand years, not a single power in Europe is identified with the Papacy. The Syllabus has made it impossible for kings and peoples to submit to its yoke. The "Old Catholics may seem a feeble folk, but the testimony of Döllinger and his noble allies is as imperishable as that of Wiclif. You, young gentlemen, may live to see fresh struggles for Ultramontane supremacy, but the issue is inevitable. An epoch of prophecy has been signalized: a new era begins with hope.

25. SURVEY OF CHRISTENDOM.

The present aspects of Christendom I venture to suppose are hopeful, and give blessed promise of reconstruction. The signs of the times point to the speedy overthrow of Islam in Europe, and the

Patriarchate of New Rome is rising into importance with the gradual increase of learning and piety in Russia. Such a theologian as Bishop Macarius of Vinnitza assures us that the study of the Greek Fathers must soon bear fruits of reformation throughout the ancient churches of the East. A Russian diplomatist1 remarked to me not long ago, that the theologians of St. Petersburg, over whom Macarius presides, were now the only Russians who could even appreciate the Anglican doctors; but, said he, "we are educating a new class for the future." He had recently visited England, and he said, “There is no church equal to the Anglicans for learning and character; every parish priest has scholarship enough for a bishop." But the Russian Church is not sterile. She has studded Northern Asia with missions; they stretch to our own Alaska, by the Aleutian Isles. I have had Bishop Nestor of Alaska at my table, as my guest. The Holy Ghost is moving the hearts of fathers to children, and of children to their fathers, everywhere where the Nicene Council and its "ancient usages" are revered and maintained.

26. NICENE CONSTITUTIONS IMPERISHABLE.

For the Nicene Unity of Christendom is imperishable, and God has protected it everywhere among the nations. By its canon of threefold concurrence in ordinations, the historic episcopate is woven into a net-work, instead of drawn out in a chain where one broken link ruins all. It is

1 Prince Orloff, late Russian Ambassador in Paris, A. D. 1877.

impossible that the Apostolic Succession should fail where this law is observed. So the canon of Holy Scripture and its sacred text have been maintained and preserved. The Nicene Creed is thus perpetuated, and the Christian year is guarded by the Paschal Canons of the Council. Thus, and by other providential contrivances, it is a most striking fact, that organic unity has been maintained even where functional unity is lost. There is a fundamental Unity, and all men see it, between Greek and Latin and Anglican Christians, because the Nicene foundations alike underlie them all. Even Trent, though it nearly smothered Nicene vitality beneath accumulated fables, has left the old bases solid underneath. Hence it is, that, in spite of new dogmas and of all the Roman superstitions, many "Roman Catholics" live on the old bases, while they outwardly conform to the new. How I have blessed God, that millions of the peasantry, nominally conformed to Trent, know very little practically of its heresies. Simple folk! They know the Apostles' Creed, and have read the Nicene, and can sing pious hymns; so that, like Goethe's Gretchen before her fall, yes, and even when they fall, they love to worship Christ and to trust in him for salvation. Now, what is held alike, and from the beginning, by Greeks and Latins and Anglicans, - that is Catholicity, and in that we all consent. The specialties of each communion are not Catholic, and with them we are not called to communion by Nicene law. Woe to those who erect local and provincial specialties into articles of faith, and cast

out brethren for not accepting them. We appeal against Diotrephes to the Common Judge, "but when they curse, we bless." That Church which refrains from narrowing the limits of Catholic communion, and includes all who would have been included at Nicæa, is therefore the most truly Catholic. Where is it found? Judge ye.

27. PRACTICAL UNITIES.

Our Anglican desire for Unity is no ambitious longing for "lordship over God's heritage." It is pure and "unfeigned love of the brethren for Christ's sake. Leaving Him to be the only umpire and judge, I have enjoyed through a long life the Unity I have illustrated, in practical ways, among foreign churches, "no man forbidding me." The Catholic spirit renders it impossible to wear the fetters of a sect. Only less does it forbid a life virtually sectarian, which is cooped up in one's local or provincial church. The whole Church of the Creed is ours to live in. No pope can hinder us. Often have I knelt at the altar of St. Peter's in Rome, and in almost all the great cathedrals of Europe. On such occasions I have recited the Nicene Creed, and offered our Anglican prayer "for the good estate of the Catholic Church." While they have mumbled their mass in an unknown tongue, I have prayed God to accept what he found acceptable in it, and have read in my prayer-book the service for the day. This I have done in the chapel of the great St. Bernard, as the sunrise gilded the