Note, also, that there can no no more be two catholic churches in Christendom, than there can be two universal physical systems in the same universe. But the "Roman Catholic" scheme of catholicity accepts only the Western churches, and excludes the more ancient churches of the East, while ours includes just what the Nicene Creed includes; that is to say, all the Greek and Latin churches, and all other churches which preserve an apostolic episcopate and the Nicene faith. We recognize the Latin churches as part of the Catholic Church; "the Roman Catholic Church is a fiction, derived from the "Holy Roman Empire," which called itself the acumene, and hence considered its established church acumenical. Analyze this artificial system and you find it made up of ancient national churches which are all catholic in organic form, but orthodox just so far as they adhere to the primitive theology, and no further. With all her blemishes and failings, the Anglican Church is ready to be judged by this rule, and it is a rule which utterly destroys all claims of catholicity for those Latins who adhere to the modern Council of Trent, and the yet more modern nay, the recent additions of Pius IX., which reduce their creed to a thing of yesterday.1

21. BACON AND HIS IDOLS.

How comes it that many gifted men fail to see what is so evident when once set in the light of 1 See Note J.

facts and of common sense? I have spoken of the ruts of habit; let me refer to Bacon's forcible postulates concerning "Idols." That great inciter of all genuine "modern thought" threw down the idols of the Schoolmen which dominated in the realms of physical science; but even to our own times their idols have largely stultified the domain of theology and corrupted historic truth. He was himself an illustration of the sway of idols over the human intellect, for he remained a slave to the Ptolemaic astronomy, in spite of his emancipation from so much that clouded and fettered intellect in his times. He calls these idols, images, or, as we should name them, illusions, "the deepest fallacies of the human mind;" and he adds, "They do not deceive in particulars, as do other fallacies, which cloud and ensnare the judgment, . . . but they are imposed upon the understanding (1) by the general nature of the human race, or (2) by the particular nature of every several man, or (3) by words, or communicative nature." To expose, in some degree, the influence of a corrupt use of words in producing the confusions of historical authors and of popular thought is part of my plan. For the idols of the market-place, which still maintain themselves in our day are almost ineradicable and supremely mischievous. Words as understood in the streets and used by the vulgar, when adopted by the learned in all their ambiguity, are instruments for distilling nightshade alike inebriating and fatal to intelligence.1

1 See Note K.

22. DATES OF ANCHORAGE.

Such idols have too long neutralized the penetrating and generative sunlight of historic truth, as icebergs and fogs hinder the advance of spring. Let me present an outline of the points to be illustrated in these Lectures, which will be an effort to confute idols. For I pursue a practical plan, and am willing to let historic facts speak for themselves. But to be felt in all their force, let them be presented with method. What Ruskin 1 has called "dates of anchorage" are essential to the student of history, who would grasp and retain great facts and epochs, on which others turn as upon pivots or hinges. Geography and chronology are the eyes of historical science. Skeleton maps must be hung up before the mental eyesight, and they must be bordered with cardinal dates of the world's annals, - the epoch-marking dates, that is, or those which have created eras in history. An epoch is a point of time; an era is a period developed from it, as a line is generated in geometry. He who seizes these pivots, hinges, or "dates of anchorage," becomes master of the art. Minor dates and epochs marshal themselves naturally about these heights of command, which afford the soldier a masterly survey of fields where he may meet an enemy. Take, for illustration, some notable examples.

The most convenient and sharp-cut date in Christian history is that of Charlemagne's creation of the Latin Empire; he was crowned, or virtually

1 See Note L.

crowned himself, on Christmas day, A. D. 800. Nobody can forget such a date as this; and you observe that it divides modern history very equally, if we confine ancient history, as we should, to the periods before the Light of the World appeared. And note its commanding character: it marks the era of Western history, as distinct from that of the East. It is the index of Latin Christianity left to itself; severed from its parent stem; developing into something alien to catholicity; creating the Paparchy; involving the Latin churches in functional schism; defiling them with novelties; darkening their atmosphere with the mists of fable; disfiguring the worship of God with idolatries; inventing new theologies, and condemning the West to centuries of ignorance and superstition, not inappropriately called the "Dark Ages." Not that Charlemagne promoted this directly or intentionally. The reverse is eminently true. But his policy created the Paparchy, which had no existence before his time, nor while he lived; and to the Paparchy, based on the imposture of the Decretals, we owe the Dark Ages, which include the whole period from A. D. 900 to 1400. The Middle Ages include this period, and stretch from the eighth century to the sixteenth, from the imperial crowning of Charlemagne to the birth of CharlesQuint.

23. THE GREAT EPOCHS.

Observe other "dates of anchorage," in dealing with Western history, to which we shall be necessarily limited in these Lectures when once we

touch the era of Charlemagne. After the nativity of our Divine Lord, the great epoch of Constantine and the Council of Nice (A. D. 325) marks the close of the martyr ages and the subjection of the Cæsars to the cross. The period which closes with Charlemagne is that of Catholic unity, under the Synodical Constitutions. From Charlemagne to Charles-Quint, we have seven hundred years. of Western schism, the Paparchy and the inferior epochs of Imperial and Papal strifes, the Crusades and the Scholastics. From A. D. 1500, the epoch of Charles the Fifth, we date the increase of learning, the struggles for popular freedom, the Continental Reformers, the Anglican Restoration, and the creation of the "Roman Catholic Church," which, as such, is a modern organization, more recent than Lutheranism itself.

24. A PRACTICAL PLAN.

In establishing this reformed syllabus of historical science, my scheme is less bold than at first sight might appear. It pretends to no original discoveries as to matters of fact: every point on which the scheme depends has been proved, elucidated, overwhelmingly established, by learned writers, — as well among those who have retained communion with Rome, like Erasmus, Bossuet, and the Jansenists, as by the Continental Reformed and the grand old Caroline theologians of England. My only innovations are found in accepting the demonstrations of these authorities, and constructing a harmonious system accordingly, giving facts their