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place, enforcing their value, and calling things by their right names. For example, the unparalleled imposture of the Decretals is admitted by Jesuits and Gallicans; they are laughed out of court by the Ultramontanes themselves.1 Yet these "idols of the market-place" impose on Protestants generally. For they go on calling things by the fabulous. terms and phrases which the Decretals created. They ignore the East and the constitutions of Catholicity, and give to the parvenu system of Trent the old Nicene title of "the Catholic Church." They speak of the Roman pontiffs as "successors of St. Peter"; they dishonour the apostle's memory, by speaking of the criminal throne of the Vatican as the "chair of St. Peter"; they surrender history to the fabulists, by making the early Bishops of Rome into a succession of "Popes," created by Christ himself, and they confound the canonical "primacy," conferred by the Councils of Nice and Constantinople, with an usurped "supremacy," which, had it existed, would have made the action of all councils equally superfluous and impertinent.2 Modern "Protestantism" clings to its name all the more stoutly because it has ceased to protest. It believes in God with all its heart, but, after all, feels very charitably about the Devil. It glorifies Martin Luther, but cannot but think he went a little too far when he burnt the Pope's bull. It adopts Galileo's conviction that the earth moves, but would not wholly censure the Roman court for putting him to torture and making him abjure it as heresy. In short, it always holds with

1 See Note M.

2 See Note N.

the hare, but prefers to run with the hounds, especially if it be in a question of politics. It accepts the Messiah, and feels the force of Ecce homo ! but its sympathies are always with poor Pilate, except when even Pilate ceased to be a politician, and said, "What I have written I have written."

25. THE SURVEY.

On the principles I have thus illustrated, and exposing the illusions I have mentioned to a searching comparison with facts, I invite you, then, to survey with me the outlines of Christian history, in its majestic sweep through the ages which we owe to the light of the Gospel. This survey will prepare you for many departments of study, and will give you a delight in the ennobling researches to which it is an introduction. Open your eyes, young men, and if you would know the world you have so lately entered, ask how it came to be what you see it, and then trace its progress upward through the ages before you, till your familiarity with past times gives you mastery over your own. The lives of the world's benefactors

will inspire your life career. The fatal mistakes and failures so sadly marking the pages of biography will warn you off from shoals and quicksands which have proved so fatal to your predecessors. You will be philosophers from the start; the experiments of others will make your career a success. You will go "from strength to strength," and age itself will find you invested with immortal youth in the prospect of eternity.

26. A PRACTICAL USE OF HISTORIC SCIENCE.

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When you begin your travels, my beloved young friends, recall "the dates of anchorage" to which I have endeavored to introduce you. On the Via Sacra of old Rome, take your stand beneath the Arch of Titus: it marks1 the close of the generation which crucified the Son of God, and verifies his prediction of the consequent downfall of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the Jews. Turn then to the stupendous Coliseum, which, reared in large measure by the captive Jews, was the scene of the martyrdom of Ignatius, and stands an imperishable memorial of the ages of heroic suffering which saw the Church in conflict with the princes of this world. Hard by rises the Arch of Constantine, a memorial of the Nicene age, and of the triumph of the cross over Paganism. The Column of Phocas, on the other hand, beyond the Arch of Titus and under the Capitol, marks the decline of the Synodical Period, and reminds us of two clouds, not bigger than a man's hand, that became visible just at that epoch: one was the cloud of Islam in the East, and the other that of a Papacy in the West. Cross the Alps and stand beneath the cathedral domes of Aix-la-Chapelle; under your feet is the sepulchre of Charlemagne, with whom the Middle Ages began, and there was crowned Charles the Fifth, his successor with whom the Middle Ages expired. Last of all you reach Paris, and survey that arch of vanity which lifts its majestic bulk on the crown of the Champs Elysées.

1 A. D. 70.

It stands for the close of the eighteenth century and the extinction of "the Holy Roman Empire," so called. It marks the end of just one thousand years between Charlemagne and Napoleon. These are the landmarks of these Institutes; they indicate our "dates of anchorage." Blind must he be, and dull beyond comparison, who sees not in the precision of these periods, in the characters and the events that created them, and even in these monuments which Providence has allowed proud men to rear, and which Providence only has preserved, tokens of an overruling Hand in history, which the wise and true of heart must recognize and understand.

LECTURE II.

THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS AND NEXT AGES.

THE

1. ANTIOCH.

HE disciples were called Christians first at Antioch, says St. Luke. Justly have the antecedents of St. Paul been noted as providentially shaping him into the vessel of election for mankind: not sufficiently have the specialties of Antioch been regarded as forming that marvellous capital to be the cradle of the infant Church. Strange indeed that so dissolute a city should become the source of human regeneration, but even in this paradox we discover a divine plan. The good physician attacks disease at its seat, and pestilence must be stayed at its source. Our Lord had promised that his disciples should do greater works than his own; and surely, when the Church, in all her virgin glory, rose up in Antioch and issued from its port bearing the new life to a world "lying in the Evil One," there was a greater miracle than when Lazarus obeyed the command of Jesus, and came forth from his dank grave, a putrid corpse made whole. Here was a dead man revived: but from Antioch began the resurrection of nations that lay festering in moral darkness,

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