I shall both weary and offend you, my Brothers, if I proceed. Even absurdity becomes tiresome after a time, and slanders cast on holy things and persons, when dwelt on, are too painful for a Catholic's ears; yet it was necessary for my subject, to give instances of the popular views of us and our creed, as they are formed by the operation of the Tradition of Elizabeth.

Here I am reminded of another sort of tradition, started by a very different monarch, which in the event was handled very differently. It is often told how Charles the Second once sent a grave message to the Royal Society. That scientific body was founded in his reign, and the witty king, as became his well-known character, could not help practising a jest upon it. He proposed a question for its deliberation; he asked it, as I dare say you have often heard, to tell him how it was that a live fish weighed less heavily in water than after it was dead. The Society, as it was in duty bound, applied itself to solve the phenomenon, and various were the theories to which it gave occasion. At last it occurred to its members to determine the fact, before deciding on any of them; when, on making the experiment, to their astonishment they found, that the hypothesis was a mere invention of their royal master's, because the dead fish was not heavier in water than the living.

Well would it be, if Englishmen in like manner, instead of taking their knowledge of us at a royal hand, would judge about us for themselves, before they hunted for our likeness in the book of Daniel, St. Paul's Epistles, and the Apocalypse. They then would be the first to smile at their own extravagances; but, alas! as yet, there are no signs of such ordinary prudence. Sensible

in other matters, they lose all self-command when the name of Catholicism is sounded in their ears. They trust the voice of Henry or Elizabeth, with its thousand echoes, more than their own eyes, and their own experience; and they are zealous in echoing it themselves to the generation which is to follow them. Each in his turn, as his reason opens, is indoctrinated in the popular misconception. At this very time, in consequence of the clamour which has been raised against us, children in the streets, of four and five years old, are learning and using against us terms of abuse, which will be their tradition, all through their lives, till they are grey-headed, and have, in turn, to teach it to their grandchildren. They totter out, and lift their tiny hands, and raise their thin voices, in protest against those whom they are just able to understand are very wicked and very dangerous; and they run away in terror when they catch our eye. Nor will the growth of reason set them right; the longer they live, and the more they converse with men, the more will they hate us. The Maker of all, and only He, can shiver in pieces this vast enchanted palace, in which our lot is cast; may He do it in His time!

LECTURE III.

FABLE THE BASIS OF THE PROTESTANT VIEW.

It was my aim, Brothers of the Oratory, in my preceding Lecture, to investigate, as far as time and place allowed, how it was that the one-sided view of the great religious controversy, which commenced between Rome and England three centuries since, has been so successfully maintained in this country. Many things have changed among us during that long period; but the hatred and the jealousy entertained by the population towards the Catholic Faith, and the scorn and pity which is felt at the sight of its adherents, have not passed away, have not been mitigated. In that long period, society has undergone various alterations, public opinion has received a development new in the history of the world, and many remarkable revolutions in national principle have followed. The received views on the causes and the punishment of crime, on the end of Government, on the mutual relations of town and country, on international interests, and on many other great political

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questions have sustained, to say the least, great modifications; sciences, unknown before, bearing upon the economy of social life, have come into being; medicine has been the subject of new doctrines, which have had their influence on various civil and municipal arrangements; how is it then, that the feeling against Catholicism has remained substantially what it was in the days of Charles the Second or of George the Third? How is it that Protestantism has retained its ascendancy, and that Catholic arguments and Catholic principles are at once misconstrued and ignored? And what increases the wonder is, that it has happened otherwise externally to our own island; there is scarcely a country besides, where Catholicism at least is not respected, even if it is not studied; and what is more observable still, scarcely a country besides, once Protestant, in which Protestantism even exists at present,-if by Protestantism is understood the religion of Luther and Calvin. The phenomenon, great in itself, becomes greater, by its seeming to be all but peculiar to the British population.

And this latter consideration is important also, as it anticipates a solution of the difficulty which the Protestant, were he able, would eagerly adopt. He would be eager to reply, if he could, that the Protestant spirit has survived in the land amid so many changes in political and social science, because certain political theories were false, but Protestantism is true: but if this is the case, why has it not kept its ground and made its way in other countries also? What cause can be assigned for its decay and almost extinction in those other countries, in Germany, Holland, Switzerland, and New England, diverse from each other in situation, in government, in language, and in character, where once it flourished?

Evidently it must be a cause peculiar to England; those foreign countries must have something in common with each other which they have not in common with us. Now what is peculiar to our country is an established tradition of Protestantism; what those other countries have in common with each other, is the absence of such tradition. Fact and argument have had fair play in other countries; they have not had fair play here the religious establishment has forbidden them fair play. But fact and argument are the tests of truth and error; Protestantism then has had an adventitious advantage in this country, in consequence of which it has not been tried, (as in the course of years otherwise it would have been tried, and has been tried elsewhere,) on its own merits. Instead then of concluding that it is true, because it has continued here during three centuries substantially the same, I should rather conclude that it is false, because it has not been able during that period to continue the same abroad. To the standing, compulsory Tradition existing here, I ascribe its continuance here; to fact and reason, operating freely elsewhere, I ascribe its disappearance elsewhere.

This view of the subject is confirmed to us, when we consider, on the one hand the character of our countrymen, on the other the character of those instruments and methods by which the Tradition of Protestantism is perpetuated among them. It has been perpetuated, directly or indirectly, by the sanction of an oath, imposed on all those several sources of authority and influence, from which principles, doctrines, and opinions are accustomed to flow. There is an established Tradition of law, and of the clergy, and of the court, and of the Universities, and of literature, and of good society;