"Eheu,

Quam temere in nosmet legem sancimus iniquam!".

66 Alas, with what rash haste we make a law that will be soon turned against ourselves!" Henry and his Parliament robbed the greater monasteries with the same instruments that Wolsey had forged against the small ones.

Wolsey, too, was the first to suggest to Henry the possibility of a divorce from Catherine. But we will not enter into this question; we will only show that precisely the same sanction was given to the Church robberies of the French Revolution as had been given to those of the English Reformation. Clement XIV., awed by the threats and deceived by the forgeries of Apostolic and Catholic and most Christian potentates, allowed an order that had almost monopolised education to be suddenly suppressed, its schools and colleges extinguished, and its funds to be confiscated by the governments on pretence of paying debts due by the order, or in some feeble proportions to be handed over to other communities, to which the original devisers of the property had no intention whatever of giving it. After this endorsement by ecclesiastical authority of the principle that robbery might sometimes be committed, and that schools and colleges might be shut up suddenly, who can wonder at secular governments assuming the same right? We do not wish to be misunderstood; we do not deny the right of a Pope to suppress orders, and to redistribute their funds; but though he has the right, it does not follow but that he may sometimes exercise his right wrongfully. "Cæsar did never wrong but with just cause." Power can always find a

law to excuse its abuse.

These instances show how power and wealth necessarily grow weak. Injustice is committed; a few well-meant attempts to repair this injustice are made: these attempts are interpreted to be a confession of weakness; the power is attacked, and falls. Thus society always consists of a dominant majority, and a minority gradually boring through it, undermining it, occupying its vitals, till it is strong enough to make the explosion, to blow the dead shell of the majority to atoms, and to occupy its place. Not that the course of the minority can be always smooth; not but that the majority will at times trample it down. Nevertheless it is a law of nature, as true for the religious as for the political phases of society, that the dominant conservative element gets old by degrees, becomes hateful, and is at last superseded by some radical change, which brings the former struggling minority into power.

Now the question is, Do we Catholics of England consti

tute a minority of this kind, a fermenting, leavening mass, gradually influencing the masses around us; or are we but the dying embers of a party formerly strong, now ruined, and its ashes buried beneath the ruins of other parties that have risen and fallen since our fall? To one looking at us in our present state, the answer to this question is by no means easy. Great signs of vitality are no doubt present; but they are balanced by many a sign of death. The most encouraging answer to the question, whether we are a leaven capable of transforming the mass, or whether our salt has lost its savour, is that which may be derived from our history since the Reformation. Such struggles belong to no moribund cause. The Church was never yet finally suffocated in the blood of martyrs, or strangled in the chains of confessors.

"Can we religiously suppose," says Dr. Newman," that the blood of our martyrs, three centuries ago and since, shall never receive its recompense? Those priests, secular and regular, did they suffer for no end? or rather, for an end that is not yet accomplished? The long imprisonment, the fetid dungeon, the weary suspense, the tyrannous trial, the barbarous sentence, the savage execution, the rack, the gibbet, the knife, the cauldron, the numberless tortures of those holy victims,—O my God, are they to have no reward? Are Thy martyrs to cry from under Thine altar for their loving vengeance on this guilty people, and to cry in vain? Shall they lose life, and not gain a better life for the children of those that persecuted them? . . . . In that day of trial and desolation for England, was not every tear that flowed, and every drop of blood that was shed, the seeds of a future harvest, when they who sowed in sorrow were to reap in joy?"

But, on the other hand, those who do not cultivate the spirit of the martyrs can hardly count on their assistance. Do we, then, give the same signs and token of an aggressive and conquering minority as our forefathers gave in those times of blood? To answer this question, we must know what they did. And as, in several respects, it is more satisfactory to take an external view and a hostile testimony than an internal and too favourable one, we will show by what means the Church in the seventeenth century was repairing her losses of the sixteenth, from a book by Sir Edwin Sandys, son of the man whom Elizabeth made successively Bishop of London and Archbishop of York, written early in the seventeenth century, but published in 1673, and entitled Europe Speculum; or, a View or Survey of the State of Religion in the Western Parts of the World.

"One of the strongest weapons of the Papacy," he says, "stands in the multitude of hearts and hands, of tongues and pens, dispersed

in all countries, but united in the service of the Church, of men of most fiery and furious zeal, who with incessant industry and incre dible resolution give over no travail, and leave no exploit, however difficult or dangerous, unattempted, for the upholding of the Papacy and advancing of that religion on which all their comfort and credit in this life, and all their hope of prerogative in the life to come, dependeth."

On the Continent they were monks and friars that did this; in England the whole Catholic population was missionary, -men, women, and children alike devoted themselves to the extension of their religion. Their industry and talent was undoubted; and yet, says Sir Edwin, the Protestants esteemed them "the most lousy companions, the most unprofitable drones, the most devouring locusts, the most reprobate, ignoble, ignominious and wicked race that ever the world was yet pestered with." A proselytising zeal is not the readiest means to gain the world's favour.

Then, for the particular things in which these zealous apostles matched themselves with the Protestants, and beat them on their own ground, Sir Edwin mentions four matters -preaching, books, conferences, and education-in which they had quite vanquished their adversaries. And first for preaching, which had been one of the Reformers' most powerful weapons: it was now employed by the Papacy, which,

"In the choice of those sent out to preach, in the diligence and pains they take in their sermons, in the ornaments of eloquence and grace of action, in their show of piety and reverence towards God, of zeal towards His truth, of love towards His people, which even with their tears they can testify,- matches with its adversaries in their best, and far exceeds them in the rest. But herein the Jesuits do carry the bell from all others; having attained the commendation, and working the effect, of as perfect orators as these times do yield."

For literary labours, such as translating and commenting the Scriptures, making treatises of systematic theology and Church history; for commonplaces, controversies, replies, and books of devotion, Sir Edwin gives the Catholics of his day credit for being far superior to their enemies:

"For books of prayer and piety, all countries are full of them at this day in their own language to win the love of the world to them by their more inward and lively show of true sanctity and godliness; wherein they conceive themselves to have so surpassed their opposites, that they forbear not to reproach unto them their poverty, weakness, and coldness in that kind, as being forced to take the Catholic books to supply therein."

Sandys admits the truth of this; but wishes at the same time that the piety of the writers had been equal to the unction of the books. He instances F. Parsons, and laments that his Resolutions seemed rather to be the fruit of his brains than of his heart and conscience; while for the other kinds of writing,

"There is scarce one of them (save the translating of the Bible into vulgar languages) wherein the Romanists have not already, or are not like very shortly, to equal, or to exceed their adversaries ; in multitude of works, as being more of them that apply to those studies; so in diligence, and in exactness: . . . . though in truth," he adds, "they come short, and in ingenuity, truth's companion. But as for the controversies themselves, the main matter of all other, therein their industry is at this day incomparable; they have altered their tenures, refined their states, subtilised the distinctions, sharpened their own proofs, and devised answers."

One very telling topic on which Sandys tells us they wrote much, was "the discovery of blots:"

"The Catholics have taken a toil, how meritorious God knows, but surely very laborious, out of infinite huge volumes which Protestants have written, to pick out whatsoever may seem to be either absurdly, or falsely, or fondly, or scandalously, or dishonestly, or passionately, or sluttishly conceived or written; and these, with their crossings and contradictings one of another, set cunningly together, they present to the view of the world, and demand whether it be likely that these men should have been chosen extraordinarily by God to be the reformers of the Church and restorers of His truth, who, besides their vicious lives and hateful conditions, in their more sober thoughts and very doctrine itself were possessed with so fantastical, so wild, so contrary, so furious, so maledicent, and so slovenly spirits."

Another topic was the history of persecutions. Fox had shown what a powerful weapon a "martyrology" might be; the Catholics had martyrs, and there was no reason why they should not be used. In this matter, says Sandys, "they have England for their field to triumph in; whose proceedings against their later priests and complices they aggravate to the height of Nero's and Diocletian's persecutions; and the sufferers, in the merit of their cause, in the extremity of torments, and in constancy of patience, they equal to the renowned martyrs of that heroical Church age.

Besides the pulpit and printing-press, the Catholics of the seventeenth century knew how to use the platform. Trusting, says Sandys, "to their well-furnished memories, and to their promptness of speech and wit, which by continual exercise they aspire to perfect,

They dare enter into combat even with the best of their oppugners, and will not doubt but either to entangle him so in the snares of their own quirks, or at least so to avoid and put off his blows with the manifold words of their multiplied distinctions, that an ordinary auditor shall never conceive them to be vanquished, and a favourable shall report them vanquishers. Whereupon, to be quit with their adversaries, and by the very same art to draw away the multitude, they cry mainly in all places for trial by disputation. This Campion the Jesuit did many years since with us. This, as I passed through Zurich, did the Cardinal Andrea of Constance and his Jesuits with their ministers. Not long before the same

was done at Geneva; and very lately the Capuchins renewed the challenge. In which parts I observed this discreet valour on both sides ; that as the Romanists offer to dispute in the adversaries' own cities, which they know their magistrates will never accord, so the ministers in supply thereof offer to go to them to their cities; and that now is as much disliked on the other part, each side being content that the fire should be kindled rather in his enemy's house than his own."

But it is manifest that a campaign carried on with such tactics requires an army in the highest state of discipline; accordingly we find that the most exquisite pains of the Catholics of the seventeenth century were bestowed on education, and that the object of the education was to form a man competent to advance the cause of religion in any of the ways we have enumerated. At first, says Sandys, when the Reformation broke out, the Protestants drew all education to themselves; now the Catholics have recovered their ground, except perhaps in schools for the poor,-a class that was always too much neglected by us in England, and among which, in consequence, scarcely a remnant of Saxon blood remains true to the Church. But for the middle and upper classes

"What is it they have omitted? what colleges for their own, what seminaries for strangers, to support and perpetuate their factions and practices in their enemies' dominions, have they not instituted almost in all parts of Christendom? Is it a small brag that some of their side do make, that their English seminaries abroad send forth more priests than our two universities at home do ministers? Behold also the Jesuits, the great clerks, politicians, and orators of the world, who vaunt that the Church is the soul of the world, the clergy of the Church, and they of the clergy, do stoop also to this burden, and require it to be charged wholly upon their necks and shoulders. In all places, wherever they can plant their nests, they open freeschools for all studies of humanity. To these flock the best wits and principal men's sons, in so great abundance, that wherever they settle, other colleges become desolate, or frequented only by the baser sort and of heavier metal; and, in truth, such is their diligence