am only telling the Protestant world why it is they ever persecute, in spite of their professions. It is because their doctrine of private judgment, as they hold it, is extreme and unreal, and necessarily leads to excesses in the opposite direction. They are attempting to reverse nature, with no warrant for doing so; and nature has its ample revenge upon them. They altogether ignore a principle which the Creator has put into our breasts; and, in consequence, they deprive themselves of the opportunity of controlling, restraining, and directing it. So was it with the actors in the first French Revolution: never were there such extravagant praises of the rights of reason; never so signal, so horrible a profanation of them. They cried," Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” and then proceeded to massacre the priests, and to hurry the laity by thousands to the scaffold or the

stream.

Far other is the wisdom of the Church. It is plain, if only to prevent the occurrence of persecution, she mustto use a phrase of the day-head a movement, which it is impossible to suppress. And in the course of eighteen hundred years, though her children have been guilty of various excesses, though she herself is responsible for isolated acts of most solemn import, yet for one deed of severity with which she can be charged, there have been a hundred of her acts, repressive of the persecutor and protective of his victims. She has been a never-failing fount of humanity, equity, forbearance, and compassion, in consequence of her very recognition of natural impulses and instincts, which Protestants would vainly deny and contradict: and this is the solution of the paradox stated by the distinguished author I just now quoted, to the effect, that the religion which forbids private judg

ment in matters of revelation, is historically more tolerant than the religions which uphold it. His words will bear repetition : “We find, in all parts of Europe, scaffolds prepared to punish crimes against religion; scenes which sadden the soul were every where witnessed. Rome is one exception to the rule; Rome, which it has been attempted to represent as a monster of intolerance and cruelty. It is true, that the Popes have not preached, like the Protestants, universal toleration; but the facts show the difference between the Protestants and the Popes. The Popes, armed with a tribunal of intolerance, have scarce spilt a drop of blood; Protestants and philosophers have shed it in torrents 1."

1 Since this Lecture has been in type, I have been shown De Maistre's Letters on the Inquisition, and am pleased to see that in some places I have followed so great a writer.

[Lectures on the Present Position of Catholicism in England, by the Rev. J. H. NEWMAN, D.D.]

LECTURE VI.

PREJUDICE THE LIFE OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW

IN attributing the extreme aversion and contempt in which we Catholics are held by this great Protestant country, to the influence of falsehood and misrepresentation, energetic in its operation and unbounded in its extent, I believe in my heart I have referred it to a cause, which will be acknowledged to be both real and necessary by the majority of thoughtful and honest minds, Catholics or not, who set themselves to examine the state of the case. Take an educated man, who has seen the world, and interested himself in the religious bodies, disputes, and events of the day, let him be ever so ill-disposed towards the Catholic Church, yet I think, if he will but throw his mind upon the subject, and then candidly speak out, he will confess that the arguments which lead him to his present state of feeling about her, whatever they are, would not be sufficient for the multitude of men. The multitude, if it is to be arrested and moved, requires altogether a different polemic from that

S

which is at the command of the man of letters, of thought, of feeling, and of honour. His proofs against Catholicism, though he considers them sufficient himself, and considers that they ought to be sufficient for the multitude, have a sobriety, a delicacy, an exactness, a nice adjustment of parts, a width and breadth, a philosophical cumulativeness, an indirectness and circuitousness, which will be lost on the generality of men. The problem is, how to make an impression on those who have never learned to exercise their minds, to compare thought with thought, to analyse an argument, or to balance probabilities. The Catholic Church appeals to the imagination, as a great fact, wherever she comes; she strikes it ; Protestants must find some idea equally captivating as she is, something fascinating, something capable of possessing, engrossing, and overwhelming, if they are to battle with her hopefully: their cause is lost, unless they can do this. It was then a thought of genius, and, as I think, superhuman genius, to pitch upon the expedient which has been used against the Church from Christ's age to our own; to call her, as in the first century, Beelzebub, so in the sixteenth, Anti-Christ; it was a bold, politic, and successful move. It startled men who heard; and, whereas Anti-Christ by the very notion of his character will counterfeit Christ, he will therefore be necessarily like Him; and if Anti-Christ is like Christ, then Christ, I suppose, must be like Anti-Christ; thus there was, even at first start, a felicitous plausibility about the charge, which went far towards securing belief, while it commanded attention."

This, however, though much, was not enough; the charge that Christ is Anti-Christ must be sustained; and sustained it could not possibly be, in the vastness