tions; (1.) that the Church will always lead, and that nothing else will ever lead, to general progress in virtue; and (2.) that where there is not such progress, individual sanctification is impossible (!!) An awful piece of antichristianism this last! though it would be most unjust to the author to suppose he intended it: he appears to have as little notion of the second part of logic as of the third; as little notion of the force of propositions as of the laws of reasoning.

In the mean time, supposing he had got over all these difficulties, and proved that an order of ministers is essential to the holiness of the people, how does this tend even remotely to explain the precise thing he professed to explain? how does this tend to reconcile the "antinomy," that ministers have a divine right, and have the keys of the Kingdom, the power to bind and loose, and yet that a minister is no more a priest than is any other Christian?

We suppose the author must have had some idea in his mind, however dimly and obscurely conceived, and however inconsistently expressed, while he was committing to paper this heap of nonsense. We will therefore, with all diffidence, offer a suggestion as to what that idea may have been; and it is the only one which the utmost stretch of our ingenuity can imagine for his benefit. We observe that he words one side of his "antinomy antinomy" as follows:-"from this doctrine the ministry might appear to have a right, superior to all rights, of the Christian laity." It is just possible, so it has occurred to us, that the notion in his mind was, that the power of "binding and loosing" &c. was not at last so precious a gift, as the power possessed by all Christians, through Divine Grace, of conquering their evil nature and becoming transformed into the image of God. He certainly has not placed this idea consistently before his own mind, as any one may see by the extracts we have made; on the contrary, the mode he takes of harmonizing the "antinomy" is the explaining away the whole force of such expressions as binding and loosing," &c., and reducing them to a mere preaching of doctrine. However, the idea itself, whether M. Bunsen's or no, is a very just one; and one which, in a certain sense, all Catholics heartily embrace. He would indeed be a strange Catholic who would deny, that it is beyond all possible comparison a greater personal privilege to be a Saint than to be a priest; or who would deny that laymen

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possess to the full, through God's mercy, all such means of grace as are necessary for Sanctity. Indeed it happens, remarkably enough, that She, who next to God, is ever the chief subject of a Catholic's devotional contemplation, She whom he reverences as incomparably the holiest and most perfect of all merely human beings, and as the nearest of all creatures to the throne of God,-that She has no part or lot in the priestly character.

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But now to descend at one leap from a serious subject to a very comical one. This amusing subterfuge of the antinomy," irresistibly recals to our mind a farce called the "Irish Tutor;" the plot of which is something like the following. An illiterate fellow is anxious to procure for his son a better education than he has himself received; accordingly an Irish valet, out of place, palms himself upon him, not only as being fitted, like ordinary tutors, to carry on the son's education, but as being quite above others of his profession, in professing a peculiar system of his own: a system which in a few years will turn any young man, however undisciplined, into a paragon of virtue. The tutor and pupil soon come to an understanding with each other; and the father surprises them occasionally in positions, which might have been supposed self-condemnatory. On one occasion the tutor is discovered blacking his pupil's shoes very briskly, and with a perfect air of business; on another occasion playing the fiddle, while the young man is taking part in a midnight dance, in the neighbouring village. But the excuse is always ready; the clever Irishman winks at the perplexed father, and tells him "it is all part of the system." We hope the Chevalier will not feel degraded by the comparison. But with a mixture of blundering and ingenuity which exceedingly reminds us of our Irish friend, he steps into the arena of controversy, armed with a pretension, which both gives him an apparent title to an air of superiority over all his brethren, and also supplies him with an excuse ready at hand for any little argumentative scrape. He comes forward as a representative to the English public of Kant's philosophy; and then, when pressed in argument, he can always fall back upon the excuse, "it is part of the system" "it is no contradiction; it is only one of my friend Kant's' antinomies.'

Having taken our sample of the Chevalier's logic from his treatment of the first of his two fundamental prin

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ciples, we will illustrate his historical powers from the second; and in this instance we need not proceed to nearly so great a length as in the former. "The Catholic Church," he tells us, "as an Institution, is the divinely appointed means for restoring shattered and disunited humanity to peace with God," &c., &c., an Institution however which is so ordered, that "the Christian nation. possesses "independence of clerical decrees." (p. 39.) This," he adds, "is the evangelical import of the words, Catholic and Catholicity." As by evangelical" he means "Protestant," of course he is the best judge of this fact; and no doubt it is as he states it. But he then proceeds, "In this sense is [the word] Catholic.....employed in the old creeds." (p. 41.) By "creeds" he cannot intend merely the Apostles' Creed, because he speaks in the plural number: he must at least mean to include the Nicene Creed as completed at Constantinople, and probably the Athanasian. As to the Apostles' Creed, there are many Protestants, both learned and honest, who are led to believe that at the time it was put together the word "Catholic" had this indefinite sense; so on that head we may waive our opposition. But only to think of the Fathers of Constantinople holding such a view of the Church, as would consider each individual nation independent of clerical decrees! As well say at once, that they were firm believers in phrenology and animal magnetism. M. Bunsen seems really to hold this opinion; for in more than one place he describes the present Catholic belief on the Church's privileges, as having been characteristically the mediaval view: as though the Nicene were different. What will his learned friends in Germany say of such a notion as this?

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We observe that in one or two places the Chevalier is far from complimentary to his "high-church" Anglican friends. These, our brethren," he says, in terms which hardly disguise the contempt he feels for their opinions, "evidently believe that they are riding at anchor in the safe harbour of evangelical Christianity," (p. 57, 8.) and “I must expressly guard myself against the supposition that the free exposition of my views......is intended in the remotest degree.........to express an uncalled-for judgment on the Anglican......communion;" (p. 57,) only these said dear brethren "appear to us to be holding

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on convulsively to the mere shadow of Christian truth." (p. 58.) How gratifying to their feelings!

And in the same connection we may mention a very grand and emphatic sentence, of which, when you look beneath the fine array of words, it is extremely difficult to make out the meaning.

"If an angel from Heaven should manifest to me, that by introducing, or advocating, or merely favouring the introduction of such an episcopacy into........Germany, I should not only make the German nation glorious and powerful above all the nations of the world, but should successfully combat the unbelief, pantheism, and atheism of the day, I would not do it: so help me God. Amen!" -P. xlvii.

We have seldom met such a specimen of the "forcible feeble!" Something very energetic must be meant by all this, but it is exceedingly difficult to make out what it is all about. Dr. Pusey, we think, makes very naturally a similar complaint of the same passage, though we have not the reference at hand. Does the Chevalier merely mean that he would not advocate what he thinks false, (in other words, would not lie on sacred subjects,) for the sake of any possible benefit? We are very glad to hear it; but such a resolution does not seem any very heroic stretch of virtue. Or (2) does he mean that if an Angel from Heaven should tell him that such an Episcopacy would have all these mighty effects, this hypothetical revelation would not bring him one step nearer to believing that Institution to be divinely supported? rather an extreme point of sceptism that, is it not? Or (3) does he mean that he regards Mr. Gladstone's Episcopacy as a greater evil than unbelief, pantheism, atheism, and all the rest together? Mr. Gladstone can hardly have been prepared for so solemn an anathema; and the promoters of the Jerusalem Bishopric seem to have been more discordant even than the world supposed.

As to M. Bunsen's absurd idea that Catholics hold the doctrine of "justification by outward works" as distinct from "inward disposition," (p. 17.) it is not worth while seriously to meet a charge made in so silly a book. And his comments on mediæval history (p. 60, 61.) only show how far the current course of historical thought and enquiry has left him behind. The only favourable comment, in fact,

we are able to make, is on the general temper of the work. The Chevalier does not show to much advantage, whether as logician, historian, or philosopher; but he writes quite like a gentleman.

ART. IX.-La Lecture de la Sainte Bible en langue vulgaire, jugée d'apres l'écriture, la tradition, et la saine raison. Ouvrage dirigé contre les principes, les tendences, et les defenseurs les plus recents des Sociétés Bibliques, comprenant une histoire critique du canon des livres Saints, du vieux Testament, des versions protestantes de la Bible, et des missions protestantes parmi les paiens. Suivi des documents relatifs à la lecture de la Sainte Bible en langue vulgaire, emanés du Saint Siège depuis Innocent III. à Grégoire XVI. Par J. B. MALOU, Professor of Theology in the University of Louvain, &c., &c. J. Fonteyn Louvain. 1846.

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HE work of varied and extensive erudition to which we now draw attention for the sake of the matter discussed in its pages, comes from the pen of a professor in the Catholic University of Louvain,-a seminary with whose interesting history we propose at some future opportunity to make our readers better acquainted. It has been written to meet the state of the controversy in his own country, which, for something less than ten years, has been the field chosen by the industrious emissaries of the British and Foreign Bible Society for their most persevering efforts. From the diversified and surprising erudition that it contains, and from its superabundance of language, it would seem calculated rather to be placed in the hands of the parochial clergy of his own country, in order to stimulate them to second the measures prescribed by their bishops, than to produce much effect with the public generally, who, if they are to be influenced by argument at all, require to have it placed before them in a terse, pointed, and spirited manner. Learned and diffusive statement, which runs out into a luxuriance of detail, is more for men of erudition and leisure than for the busy and impatient public.

M. Malou's work, however, seasonably calls to mind how eminently important is the question of which it treats, as a social and religious problem. And in the remarks

VOL. XXIII.—NO. XLV.

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