thought very differently of the Popes from Mr. Blanco White. "It must be acknowledged," he says, "that the vigilance of the Popes for the observance of the canons, and the support of Church discipline, has produced from time to time very excellent effects, and that exercising an influence with kings, in season and out of season, either by remonstrances, which the authority of their charge entitled them to make, or by the fear of ecclesiastical censures, they prevented many disorders."*

We repeat then, that if the church of Christ had needed a reform in faith, such men as Luther and his brother reformers would never have been chosen for its reformation. But the But the very idea of reforming the faith of the Church, is an insult to its divine Founder, Jesus Christ. He had promised to be with his Church to the end of time; he declared it built upon a rock, and proof against the gates of hell; he promised that the Holy Spirit should guide it into all truth: who then will say that he did not fulfil his promises? What are we to think of men pretending to reform the Church of Christ, and loudly proclaiming that it had become corrupt in faith and discipline, that its doctrine was erroneous, its worship superstitious, and its discipline full of abuses? Far be from us the blasphemous idea. that the promises of Eternal Truth should have failed; or that the increated wisdom of God should have founded a Church liable to become

See the admirable work of a Protestant minister, the Baron de Starck, entitled, “ Entretiens philosophiques sur la Réunion des différentes Communions Chrétiennes," page 396.

corrupt and erroneous! Against the empty boasts about the glorious work of the pretended Reformation, we shall shew, that this Reformation was unlawful in its principle, criminal in its means, and fatal in its effects: it was the work of human passions, and not of divine grace.

The pretended reformers were, in the first place, men without mission, ordinary or extraordinary; they could shew no proofs of a supernatural commission; though so great a work as that of reforming the Church of God, would have demanded no less powerful signs than those given by Moses, by Christ our Lord, and his Apostles. When Luther and Calvin arose, there was already in the Church a public ministry appointed to teach, a body of pastors claiming an ordinary mission, which came down to them in regular succession from Jesus Christ and his Apostles. When the Sacramentarians and Anabaptists preached contrary to Luther, he haughtily required them to shew supernatural proofs of their mission, as if he had been able to exhibit any such of his own. When Servetus and others taught against Calvin, he drove them out of Geneva, or punished them by the arm of the secular power. This was not acting like the Apostles; they employed against those who opposed them only the gifts of the Holy Ghost, and the ascendancy of their eminent virtues. The reformers claimed the right of preaching against the faith of the whole Christian world, and they refused every one the liberty of preaching against them. As the reformation proceeded, confusion and dissention daily increased; there

was soon a swarm of sects, Lutherans, Anabaptists, Calvinists, Zuinglians, Church of England, &c. Calvin began to see the disgraceful consequences, and wrote thus to Melancthon, a brother Reformer: "It is of the greatest importance, that no account of the divisions that are amongst us should go down to future ages: for it is worse than ridiculous that, after breaking off from all the world, we should have agreed so little among ourselves, ever since the beginning of the Reformation." Another leading Protestant says: "Our people are carried away by every wind of doctrine. If you know what their belief is to-day, you cannot tell what it will be to-morrow. Is there one article of religion in which the Churches that are at war with the Pope agree together? If you run over all the articles, from the first to the last, you will not find one which is not held by some of them as an article of faith, and rejected by others as an impiety." (Dudith inter Epist. Bega.) Nothing then could be more contrary to all law and order, than the assumption of Luther and his followers, to be divinely commissioned to reform a Church founded and preserved by the Eternal Truth.

Let us next examine the means adopted by the Reformers. Their conduct contradicted their principles. They laid down as a fundamental maxim, that the Bible was the sole rule of faith and morality; and that every one could inter pret it as he pleased, since it was clear in all things necessary for salvation. Yet they themselves disputed eternally about the meaning of the Scriptures; they did not begin to study the

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Bible coolly and impartially; but they boldly contradicted the Catholic doctrines, and then looked out texts and accommodated them to their own dogmas. After promising the people the great evangelical liberty of reading and judging for themselves, they drew up various Confessions of Faith and Catechisms; and, as the Protestant Mosheim acknowledges, obliged people to follow them, under pain of excommunication, prison, exile, and even the sword (sect. 37, 38, 39). Thus, in professing to free the people from the authority of the Catholic Church, they laid upon them a yoke a hundred times more insupportable. In this kingdom Queen Elizabeth was not behind them with her Act of Uniformity and High Commission Court, which was a real Inquisition. The historian Hume declares that this court was an inquisitorial tribunal, with all its terrors and iniquities. Maclaine shews that the High Commission Court" was empowered to make inquiry, not only by legal methods, but also by rack, torture, inquisition, and imprisonment; that the fines and imprisonments to which it condemned persons were limited by no rule, but its own pleasure." Thus the Reformers never adhered in practice to their leading principle of the Bible, and every man his own interpreter.

*

A second means, equally criminal, which the Reformers adopted, was that of misrepresenting the Catholic doctrines. To instance one in which Mr. Blanco White closely treads in the steps of those who founded his adopted Church. The

* History of England, James I. chap. vi. + Notes on Mosheim, vol. iv. p. 395.

Catholic Church has ever taught that the rule of faith is the whole word of God, unwritten as well as written; that the Bible is not the sole rule of faith, but the Bible explained and understood by the tradition and belief of the Church; that though any point be not formally and evidently taught in the Scripture, we are still obliged to believe it, if it be taught by the constant and uniform tradition of the Church. But the Protestants have always accused us of taking for our rule of faith, not the Bible, but tradition; of exalting the word of man above the word of God; of following traditions contrary to the Scripture. These are egregious misrepresentations and calumnies.

A third means to establish the Reformation was, revolts against all authority, seditions, wars, massacres, and especially pillage of churches and monasteries. The original design of the Reformers was to abolish the Catholic Religion altogether, and to employ for this end all possible means. This fanaticism prevailed in much the same manner in Germany, Switzerland, France, England, and Scotland. Thus were the means of the Reformers criminal,

How could the effects of such a Reformation be otherwise than fatal? This blessed and glorious work, as it is called, produced furious and interminable disputes, national and intestine hatreds, and new schisms, constantly arising. There were twelve sects of the reformed in the first fifty years; and they are now multiplied to a prodigious extent. If any one imagines that this pre. tended reformation contributed to establish purity of morals, he is much deceived. From the testi