If it is matter of great triumph over our fellow Christians of the Latin Communion, that we in some particulars are more like the Roman Church of the first martyrs than they are, ought we not to ask why we do not amend our practice in some other things, in which they confessedly have the advantage in their closer conformity? In other words, has this ancient Church any authority, and what? Dr. Maitland, in common with the school to which he seems to belong, cares very little, we fear, in his heart, for primitive Christianity. He tries it all by his own Protestant standard, and only appeals to it—and that, we think, unfairly-because he thought he could make a point. However, to a candid mind the book carries with it its own antidote. Though the writer may slur over our own many discrepancies from the practice of the early Church, his readers need not do so. They may observe, that if the first Christians received in both kinds, a privilege denied to our Roman brethren, they also reserved the Blessed Sacrament. If they did not venerate relics, at least so unguardedly as their successors, they still valued them most religiously and strove to be buried near CHRIST'S Martyrs, while we scattered their bodies at the Reformation, and would probably do so again: and they used the stone slabs of their tombs for altars, while we are ordered to use a moveable altar of wood. We are not going to retort on Dr. Maitland by showing that after all the modern Roman Church is more like the ancient one than our own is-though perhaps from these materials an ingenious advocate might make a better case than Dr. Maitland imagines-but we shall shortly notice a few points in which it is so, and in some of which we believe we might very much amend our own Church's system by a closer adherence to primitive practice. Let us consider the ancient order of Fossores, set apart for the burial of the Christian dead. How miserable is the whole of our own system connected with interment! The Roman Catholic confraternities are on the contrary, with allowances for the differences of the times, very fair successors to the Fossors of the catacombs. At page 27 we read, "That the catacombs were throughout well known to them" (the Christians) "is evident; for every part of them was completely taken possession of by them, and furnished with tombs and chapels: paintings and inscriptions belonging to our religion are to be seen every where." We contend that this description is calculated to remind us that a Puritanical antipathy to Christian art, in sculpture and painting, is very unlike Primitive Christianity. It must be granted that the numerous altars and chapels in the catacombs, with all their decorations, much more recall the idea of the devotions of the modern Italian Church than of our own. Dr. Maitland quotes a remarkable epitaph from Aringhi, containing an imprecation upon any one who should violate the grave. Male pereat. insepultus. jaceat. non resurgat. cum. Juda. partem. habeat. si . quis. sepulchrum. hunc (sic). violaverit. (p. 53.) This he considers "a superstitious awe," and he says in the preceding page, that the "feeling of the sanctity of tombs was inherited from the heathen." Yet he had himself, in page 45, referred to the beautiful hymn of Prudentius, Circa exequias defuncti (Cathemerinon X.) to show that it was the prospect of the Resurrection which made a Christian grave so sacred. Our readers will forgive us for quoting a few stanzas, if only by way of showing the "superstitious awe" about Christian graves in the primitive Church: Quidnam tibi saxa cavata ? Quid pulchra volunt monumenta ? Hoc provida Christicolarum Qui jacta cadavera passim Nunc suscipe terra fovendum Animæ fuit hæc domus olim Factoris ab ore creatæ ; Tu depositum tege corpus : Nos tecta fovebimus ossa Violis et fronde frequenti: Prudentius indeed, and S. Paulinus of Nola, are great puzzles to our author. He sees the pictures they give of the practices of their times, to be very unlike our own: candour might have led him to admit that here the modern Roman Church might, to a great degree, claim the benefit of his own argument, such as it is. These practices may be more or less right or wrong: we are only concerned to point out the hollowness of the appeal of mere Protestantism to antiquity. It is altogether unlike the appeal of our Church, which is that of a living body handing down the truth unflinchingly, and authoritatively dispensing with this or that external as it judges best-with whatever partial error-for edification; all the time claiming its descent from, and identity with, the ancient Church, and fearlessly looking to the hole of the pit whence it has been dug. This is especially true with regard to ceremonial, wherein a reform among us was evidently intended on a more primitive model, although the evil influence of foreign Protestantism has made our practice meagre and miserable to a degree quite inconsistent with our rubrical theory. Now Dr. Maitland-in the matter of lights, for example-assumes our Puritan innovations of practice, not our theoretical ritual, to be correct, and therefore, generally in ceremonial matters, he glories that our shorn and mutilated services are at first sight outwardly like the hurried hidden worship of the ages of persecution, instead of lamenting that they are not invested with the costly external garb of the beauty of holiness. Having thus expressed our opinion of the lamentable distortion of view which has made this volume an occasion of reviling, and that unfairly, a great branch of the Catholic Church, instead of a help to the profitable contemplation of these indelible monuments of the life and system of the first ages of that Church of Rome, which is our common Mother, we can recommend it, for the sake of its facts, to all who have an interest in Christian Archæology, as being the only easily accessible book we know of treating on this most fascinating subject and period. A controversialist is at best a bad guide over a cemetery, where all controversies are hushed in the long sleep of peace: but, in these days of disputes we can seldom be in repose without abstracting ourselves from what goes on around us. So we hope, that even with Dr. Maitland for a leader, our readers may learn a lesson of love, and breathe a prayer for unity, in considering the catacombs. MARY OF MODENA.* THAT jealousy with which ALMIGHTY GOD regards His own honour, which is displayed to us in the rigidity of the enactments respecting idolatry, seems also to show itself in the view in which Holy Scripture regards the kingly power. It is not until the Incarnation * Lives of the Queens of England, by Agnes Strickland, vol. ix. had "sweetly disposed all things," and the Cross, like the tree of Marah, had sweetened all the bitter waters of this world, that it appears in the light which we regard it now. Under the old law, royalty seemed something that infringed upon the Majesty of GOD, it was something that "set itself up," in contradistinction to Him, and the power of all the kingdoms of the earth, was the peculiar province of Satan. Hence the punishment of the Israelites when they demanded a king; hence the grievous corruption of manners under the royal rule; hence the marked difference between the elect Theocracy and the monarchical Heathen States they were in conflict with. It became the type of that unsanctified pride which is the hatred of ALMIGHTY GOD, and even when sanctioned by Him for His people, and therefore commended to their allegiance, we find it, in the book of Proverbs, classed among those things which, though capable of being put to a good and holy use, are yet in themselves snares and temptations. Since the birth of our LORD this is changed. The Prince of Peace has imparted His Holiness to the condition of His Vicegerents on earth, and by Him "Kings do reign," and His ministers they are. The Kingship of CHRIST has sanctified that estate, as His poverty has hallowed the sacred condition of the lowly, and it is the glory of those who hold sway over the earth, that they bear the sword by His commission. And that this was deeply felt in the youth of the civilization of Europe, may be found in the titles that still remain among the different states. The religiousness of all rule is recalled to us by the title of the "Holy" Empire, and the greatest of European powers, from the vocabularies of praise and adulation, have extracted no nobler epithets than that of "most Catholic" or "most Christian" jesty. Solemnly inaugurated and celebrated, a coronation is but a dedication to GOD. The ceremonial is a pure Church one. It is still so with us. The very material crown of England, with its crosses and fleurs-de-lys, reminds us of our LORD and His Spotless Mother. ma But as in the regenerate person after the seal of Baptism, there still remains a principle of sin within them, a fomes peccati, liable at every moment to lead him into sin, so royalty, though sanctified and blessed, is still liable to much that is dangerous. Who can tell how strong the temptations are which attend that condition? Who can estimate the evil effects of early knowledge of his own importance, and of the want of the moral influence of equals on the child of royalty? Who can measure the enslaving effects of the world at its brightest choking the good seed from the tenderest years? It is on this principle that so much of our prayers in public worship are occupied in suffrages for our potentates. Their critical situation renders them more liable than others to temptation, and the English Church having alone, of all the Churches of the West, entrusted so much of her ecclesiastical power to royalty, feels as it were the responsibility of the innovation, and therefore reiterates her prayers. But as in ages of wickedness and corruption, the exceptions to the universal evil shine out more brightly from the contrast, so, where virtue and goodness are found in regal station, the examples of it are specially admirable. It is so with the case of Mary of Modena, in whom exalted birth, personal attraction, and high saintliness, combine to form a person of no ordinary stamp. Nor is her case the less refreshing, that hers is one of the few foreign influences that have told favourably upon England. In most cases the effect of foreign taste and feeling has been uniformly pernicious; and it is hard to say whether our country has suffered more from the bad foreign morals of Charles' ladies, or from the bad foreign theology of Edward's favourites. But in the instance of the subject of the memoir before us all is different. Every thing that can lead to dignity and elevate those who surround her, is found in Mary of Modena, by whom an atmosphere of purity and holiness is introduced into the well-bred but infamous Court of King Charles II. And the interest of the matter is enhanced by the fact, that till now her goodness has been concealed; for it has been the fashion to brand every thing Jacobite as corrupt and abominable, while the plausible pen of the unprincipled Burnet has not been wanting both in suppressio veri et suggestio falsi, to conceal and obscure her virtues. Sed non semper pendebit inter latrones crucifixa veritas. Calumnies do not last for ever, though holiness does, and the graces of the HOLY SPIRIT are often in the end shown forth and manifested to the world. To Miss Strickland, both religion and history owe a considerable debt; she has brought to light from the Archives au Royaume de France, many private letters of this Queen, during thirty years of her life, to the Superior of the Convent of Chaillot, and part of a journal kept by one of the nuns of the same house, which illustrate the conduct both of James and Mary, in a very different light from that which history generally assigns them. We find James as a true penitent, brought by temporal misfortunes to a deep sense of sin,-rewarded by GoD for a conscientious course of what the world profanely calls wrongheadedness, in other words following the dictates of his conscience, with grace to pursue such a course of discipline as brought him to a true sense of the nothingness of the things of this earth, and of the heinous transgressions by which, carried away by the effects of an irregular education and the seductions of a profligate court, he was for years habitually led astray. We find his beauteous consort one of GOD's saints, placed in a position to shed a pure ray on all around her, guiding her husband to good, bringing up her children well and devoutly, and all the while, both by the outward misfortunes of a lost kingdom and an empty coffer, and by the racking pains of a most awful disease, perfected by suffering. The instance |