strengthening food of our poor weak souls? Why has He, for the little service of a little sojourn here, promised us a participation in His own infinite beatitude, to last for ever, fresh and new for ever? In answer to such questions it is enough to say, though we should be able to say no more, that in all these revealed works we adore the infinite wisdom and power, and, above all, the infinite goodness and bountifulness of God. But while it is as unreasonable as it is uncatholic to question the definitions of the Church in the spirit, at once so blindly ignorant and so proudly arrogant, of this bad writer, it is not only lawful, but laudable, to examine, with a humble and loving spirit, beyond the strict letter of the revelation, the works and ways of God, their designs and harmonies, in all their parts and adjuncts. It is in such investigations that so much of the beauty of the scholastic theology consists. Now, although the necessity for new doctrinal definitions is, as we remarked above, by no means a standing necessity, it is not of infrequent occurrence. See the number of unsound opinions and systems that have cropped up within the Church from the Council of Trent down to our own time. To say nothing of the loads of over-lax and over-rigid propositions condemned by the Popes, especially in the latter part of the seventeenth century, only three or four years after the close of the Council of Trent, arose Baianism; then, after a considerable interval, Jansenism, with its various developments, from the subject of grace to that of the Church and other matters; then Quietism, Semiquietism, Febronianism, Pistorianism, Hermesianism, Cavourism, Döllingerism. Against the tainting influence of these various errors the faith of the Church was to be, according to the Divine promise, preserved untainted and pure. But God, in His ordinary providence, works through second causes here Leto is with us. General Councils, if they could have assembled at all (and often this was impossible), could not have assembled so frequently without serious inconvenience. The Supreme Pastor ("Blessed Peter living and presiding in his own see") was the mean, the infallible mean (reasonably, Leto?) for preserving purity of faith in the infallible Church.

VI. "It did not occur to the bystanders that, being Catholics, they would retire to rest that night with the obligation of a new set of declarations and articles of faith weighing on their intellect and conscience. The only person whom I heard make an observation to this effect was a schismatical Greek, and the answer of the Catholic to whom he addressed himself did not indicate that the decrees would meet with much obedience" (p. 140).

1. "Weighing on the intellect." God's revelations, God's own truth, proposed as such by the authority established by God-this a weight on the intellect of a true Catholic! Of the Jansenist, the Protestant, the infidel, we have nothing to say; they deny and reject the authority itself, each in his own way and on his own principles. To an individual Catholic, the condemnation of opinions previously not only held but published by him, may be a trial, perhaps a severe trial. he be a man of strong faith and true humility, a Fénelon or a Gunther, the trial will purify him and prove him to be true gold; if he be a man of little faith and much pride, a Luther, a Döllinger, or a Lamennais, it will reduce him to ashes. But to the body of Catholics, the Church at large, the definitions of Pope or Council are always as so many new lights, cheering and gladdening.

2. "The Catholic" who uttered the aforesaid gloomy prediction-who was he? Could it have been Quirinus? Only think of Leto, Quirinus, and a schismatical Greek settling the future fate of the Catholic world among them. And rightly they did settle it, as we all now know! The decrees have not met with much obedience from schismatical Greeks, or from Leto, Quirinus, and company.

VII. The Council "affirms the supreme jurisdiction, ordinary and immediate, of the Pope over all churches, singly and collectively, over the pastors as well as the flocks; from which doctrine it follows that bishops, in exercising any jurisdiction or authority, only do so as official delegates of the Pope" (p. 174).

Again, zeal for episcopal authority assumed to cover an attack on the Pope's authority. It is plain that this writer is entirely ignorant of the meaning of delegated as distinguished from ordinary jurisdiction. The jurisdiction of bishops is, since the Vatican Council, ordinary and not delegated, in the same sense, and to the same extent, as it was before the Council. The jurisdiction of parish priests is, by the canon law, ordinary and immediate, though subject to the bishop, whose jurisdiction is ordinary and immediate in his whole diocese. The jurisdiction of bishops is, by divine law, ordinary and immediate, though subject to the Pope, whose jurisdiction is ordinary and immediate in the whole Church. But we need not pursue this subject further (see the extract given above from F. Perrone). Leto professes his ignorance of theology; but theology, had he known a little of it, would have taught him that, if ignorance is in certain cases blameworthy, error is much more so.

VIII. "Nothing can alter the final dilemma-either those who publicly and formally protested [against the definition of

Papal infallibility], adhered to their protest-and then it is impossible to maintain the universal acceptance of the dogma, for whatever may be said of the favourable votes, the number of Fathers who signed the protest is much too considerable to be overlooked-or supposing those who protested to have afterwards retracted, then their assent to the dogma was more detrimental to the object they had in view, than the most ardent opposition" (p. 217).

1. "It is impossible to maintain the universal acceptance of the dogma," &c. Suppose the whole sixty-three dissentients the number given by Leto-had all protested not against the expediency of the definition, but against the doctrine itself-suppose that they, not only in their hearts but openly and publicly, rejected the definition-in which case, according to the doctrine of all theologians, they would at once have ceased to be not only Catholic bishops, but even members of the Catholic Church. Suppose all this, how would their apostasy in any way affect the universal acceptance of the dogma by Catholics? Was the acceptance of the definition of Nice not universal because such a large number of Arian and Semiarian bishops refused to accept it? Suppose that, while the dissentients outwardly accepted the definition, they in their hearts disbelieved it; then, they would be concealed heretics, and, according to the opinion of many grave theologians, would still continue members of the Church, united to the body but not to the soul of the Church. In this case, the acceptance by the Episcopate or by all the members of the Church, would still be truly universal, not physically but morally so, acceptance by them as a Church as a body, as the mighty tree sprung from the grain of mustardseed is still the mighty tree, though some withered twigs hang on it.

2. But why waste words on mere brain-created hypotheses. The dissentients did accept the definition. "Then," says Leto, "their assent to the dogma was more detrimental to the object they had in view, than the most ardent opposition." What object? What object has any man in retracting a a statement, except to signify that he no longer holds by that statement? How the assent implied in such a retractation can be in any way detrimental to such object is to us really and truly incomprehensible. While Fénelon's book on the "Maxims of the Saints" was under examination at Rome, he strained every nerve to avert the condemnation of it.*

Fénelon, it is well known, was a strenuous defender of the Papal infallibility.

When the book was condemned by the Pope, twenty-three propositions having been specifically selected from it for censure, the illustrious author-in this above all things illustrious-at once cordially accepted the brief of condemnation, and retracted the doctrines he had previously so firmly held. Was this retractation detrimental to the object Fénelon had in view in making it? Was it more detrimental than if he had clung obstinately to his errors?

Suppose, with Leto, that the sixty-three bishops objected, not merely to the expediency of the definition, but to the truth of it, what else did they do, in retracting their objection, but what one of the elementary principles of their religion taught them to do; what every sincere Catholic is prepared to do, and which, if any one is not prepared to do, he is no Catholic; namely, to submit his judgment, in all doctrinal questions (to say nothing now of other matters), to the clear and express definition of the supreme authority of the Church? If that authority exists anywhere, it exists in an ecumenical council; and if the Vatican Council was not ecumenical, in all things ecumenical, then, as we have shown in our former article, there never has been an ecumenical council held in the Church.

IX. This last extract reminds us of our promise to give some additional specimens of the muddy, unmeaning verbiage with which the pages of Leto abound.

The Vatican resumed its course, feeling secure against all further interruption from that quarter [diplomatic interference], and as France was just then engrossed in the second plébiscite, ordered by the Emperor Napoleon as a means of strengthening a government which, already tottering, urgently needed the support of all the proselytes it could gain; the Pope was able to convince himself that the fallibility of the "plébiscite might be an excellent argument for his own infallibility (pp. 137-8).

Such is the tone of respect and reverence in which the Head of the Church is spoken of by a "sincere Catholic," who writes with "a genuine desire to promote the welfare of that religion."

The frequent result of such teaching [in one of the schemata] is this, that people finding themselves abandoned in the darkness of the supernatural, without the safe guidance of reason, easily become a prey to that vague mystical feeling which is often superstitious, not infrequently fierce and sullen, always prejudicial, and always a serious obstacle to the acquisition of the energetic and useful habits of civilized life (pp. 144-5).

Having already spoken of logic, we would here protest very strongly against the manner in which it is used. Owing to the scholastic form in which it has mingled with the traditions of the period of our intellectual

development, logic has often proved a source of evil, and has led to disastrous conclusions. In the form in which it has passed into our method of reasoning and thinking, logic is an imperfect instrument, by which man endeavours to reach the truth; it is a machine to create truth. No doubt on many occasions this artificial process has been helpful to the weakness of the human mind, especially in the earlier ages; it was a means of eliciting the truth on testing a subject by two propositions, just as a spark is produced by two currents of electricity. But, granting all the services rendered us by logic, we must not forget that it is only an artifice, that the infinite can never be contained in the finite; and that, though all can aspire to the truth, and find it in some degree, it is not given to all to possess it. . . . . The religious principle, guided only by logic to its utmost development often becomes abstract, mystical, and intolerant; it loses its chief characteristic, that of being the companion, the creator, and the soul of civilization ; it isolates itself, &c. &c. (pp. 248-9).

Sydney Smith once received a letter from his friend Jeffrey (they both wrote a very unreadable hand), to which he replied:-"My dear Jeffrey,-We are much obliged by your letter, but should be still more so were it legible. I have tried to read it from left to right, and Mrs. Sydney from right to left, and we neither of us can decipher a single word of it." If any of our readers can decipher the preceding extract, as to a clear and coherent meaning, he must have an idea of logic very different from that which is given in text-books of Protestant or Catholic authors, of Whately or Jennings; he must have an idea of "the religious principle" very different from that which all Catholics have.

But we are weary to death in wading so long through this repulsive book-repulsive to the intellect, from the frequency of its cumbrous sophisms and heavy mistiness; repulsive to Catholic feeling, from the strong anti-Catholic rancour which steams out from it, as from a very dungheap of heresy. While refuting the arguments or exposing the blunders of an avowed Protestant, we can entertain for the writer himself feelings of genuine respect and kindliness: but it is not thus that Leto has been introduced to the public. We had, in going over the volume, noted down so many passages for censure-besides so many similar ones already disposed of in our previous article-that to criticise them all, or even onehalf of them, would render this paper as dull and depressing, even as Pomponio Leto's own "Eight Months at Rome." We flatter ourselves that we have given abundant specimens of our author's writing, to show that, whatever he may be,an apostate or from the beginning an infidel,-he is clearly no Catholic. It is noteworthy that the translators and editors and eulogists of Janus, Quirinus, and Leto are all non-Catho VOL. XXVII.-NO. LIV. [New Series.]

X