Protestantism in a Nutshell

Brownson's Quarterly Review, July, 1849

Art. I. - Le Protestantisme compare au Catholicisme dans ses Rapports avec la Civilisation Europeenne. Par M. l'Abbe Jacques Balmes. Paris: Debrecourt. 1842-44.    3 tomes.    8vo.

We briefly noticed this work by the Abbe Balmes in our Review for April, 1848; but we find it, as we continue study­ing it, so various in its topics, and so rich in its views and sug­gestions, that we cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of again directing to its eloquent and erudite pages the attention of our readers and the public generally, both Catholic and Protestant. Balmes is a Spanish priest, still comparatively a young man, we believe, but one of the best known and most influential of the contemporary political and philosophical writers of his country, enjoying a high European reputation, and deservedly ranking among the first authors of our times. He is at once learned, philosophical, profound, and popular, - a man of the nineteenth century, and a Catholic of the most Catholic days of "most Catholic" Spain, - rigidly orthodox, unaffectedly pious, and wholly free, as far as we have been able to discover, from those tendencies and seductive speculations which have ruined a La Mennais or a Ventura, and in many minds cast suspicion on a Gioberti.

We have seen few works written with a more just ap­preciation of our age than the one before us, or so well adapted to the present state of the controversy which we are always obliged to cany on with the enemies of the Church. Its author understands well the essential nature of Protestantism, and clearly and distinctly points out the proper  method of meeting it under the various forms it at present assumes, and of imposing silence on its arrogant and noisy pretensions. He does not confine himself to the field of theological controversy, properly so called, but he meets Protestants on their own chosen ground, on the broad field of European civilization, and shows them that, under the point of view of civilization, of liberty, order, and social well-being, Protestantism has been a total failure, and that, even in reference to this world, Catho­licity has found itself as superior to it as it claims to be in re­gard to the world to come. He does not merely vindicate Catholicity, in relation to civilization, from the charges preferred against it by the modern advocates of Liberalism and Progress-istn, but, by a calm appeal to history and philosophy, he shows that the opposing system has interrupted the work of civilization which the Church was prosecuting with vigor and success, and has operated solely in the interests of barbarism. In doing this, he has clone a real service to the cause of truth, and we learn witli pleasure that one of our friends in England has translated his work, - which he wrote originally both in French and Spanish, - and rendered it accessible to the great body of English and American readers.

Such a work as this was much needed in our language. We have, indeed, many able controversial works, - works admira­ble for the learning, ability, and skill of their authors; but we have comparatively few which are adapted to the present state of the controversy with.. Protestants. The greater part of those accessible to the mere English reader are well adapted only to (he few individuals whose hearts the grace of God has already touched, and whose faces are already set towards the Church. Truth is one and invariable, but error is variable and manifold. It is always the same truth that we must oppose to error, but it is seldom the same error for two successive moments to which we must oppose it. We must shoot error, as well as folly, <J as it flies," and we must be able to shoot it under ever varying and varied disguises. The works we have, excellent as they are in their way, and admirably fitted to guard the faithful against many of the devices of the enemy to detach them from the Church, and to aid and instruct persons in heretical communions who are virtually prepared to return to the Church, do not hit the reigning form of Protestantism; they do not reach the seat of the disease, and are apparently written on the supposition of soundness, where there is, in fact, only rottenness.    The principles they assume as the basis of their refutation of Protestantism, though nominally professed or conceded by the majority of Protestants, are not held with suflicient firmness to be used as the foundation of an argument that is to have any practical efficacy in their conversion. They all appear to assume that Protestants as a body really mean to be Christians, and err only in regard to some of the dogmas of Christianity and the method of determining the faith ; that Protestantism is a specific heresy, a distinct and positive form of error, like Arianism or Pelagianism, and that its adherents would regard themselves as bound to reject it, if proved to be repugnant to Christianity, or contrary to the Holy Scriptures. This is a natural and a charitable supposition; but we are sorry to say, that, if it was ever warrantable, it is not by any means warrantable in our times, except as to the small number of individuals in the several sects who are mere exceptions to the rule. Protestantism is no specific heresy, is no distinct or positive form of error, but error in general, indifferent to forms, and receptible of any form or of all forms, as suits the conven­ience or the exigency of its friends. It is a veritable Proteus, and takes any and every shape judged to be proper to deceive the eyes or to elude the blows of the champions of truth. It is Lutheran, Calvinistic, Arminian, Unitarian, Pantheistic, Atheistic, Pyrrhonistic, each by turns or all at once, as is neces­sary to its purpose. The Protestant as such has, in the ordinary sense, no principles to maintain, no character to support, no consistency to preserve ', and we are aware of no authority, no law, no usage, by which he will consent to be bound. Convict him from tradition, and he appeals to the Bible ; convict him from the Bible, and he appeals to reason ; convict him from rea­son, and he appeals to private sentiment; convict him from private sentiment, and he appeals to skepticism, or flies back to reason, to Scripture, or tradition, and alternately from one to the other, ¦-¦ never scrupling to affirm, one moment, what he denied the moment before, nor blushing to be found maintaining, that, of contraries, both may be true. He is indifferent as to what he asserts or denies, if able for the moment to obtain an apparent covert from his pursuers.

Protestants do not study for the truth, and are never to be presumed vvilling to accept it, unless it chances to be where and what they wish it. They occasionally read our books and listen to our arguments, but rarely to ascertain our doctrines, or to learn what we are able to say against them or for our­selves.    The thought, that we may possibly be right, seldom occurs to them; and when it does, it is instantly suppressed as an evil thought, as a temptation from the Devil. They take it for granted, that, against us, they are right, and cannot be wrong. This is with them a " fixed fact," admitting no question. They condescend to consult our writings, or to listen to our ar­guments, only to ascertain what doctrines they can profess, or what modifications they can introduce into those which they have professed, that will best enable them to elude our attacks, or give them the appearance of escaping conviction by the authorities from tradition, Scripture, reason, and sentiment which we array against them. Candor or ingenuousness to­wards themselves even is a thing wholly foreign to their Prot­estant nature, and they are instinctively and habitually cavillers and sophisticators. They disdain to argue a question on its merits, and always, if they argue at all, argue it on some unim­portant collateral. They never recognize - unless it is for their interest to do so - any distinction between a transeat and a concet/o, and rarely fail to insist that the concession of an irrelevant point is a concession of the main issue. They have no sense of responsibleness, no loyalty to truth, no mental chastity, no intellectual sincerity. What is for them is authori­ty which nobody must question ; what is against them is no authority at all. Their own word, if not in their favor, they refuse to accept; and the authority to which they professedly appeal they repudiate the moment it is seen not to sustain them. To reason with them as if they would stand by their own pro­fessions, or could or would acknowledge any authority but their own ever-varying opinions, is entirely to mistake them, and to betray our own simplicity.

Undoubtedly, many of our friends, who have not, like our­selves, been brought up Protestants, and have not to blush at the knowledge their Protestant experience has given them, may feel that in this judgment we are rash and uncharitable. Would that we were so. We take no pleasure in thinking ill of any portion of our fellow-men, and would always rather find ourselves wrong in our unfavorable judgments of them than right. But in this matter the evidence is too clear and con­clusive to allow us even to hope that we are wrong. There is not a single Protestant doctrine opposed to Catholicity that even Protestants themselves have not over and over again com­pletely refuted ; there is not a single charge brought by Prot­estants against the Church that some of them, as well as we, have not fully exploded ; and no more conclusive vindication of the claims of Catholicity can be desired than may be - nay, than in fact has been - collected from distinguished Prot­estant writers themselves. This is a fact which no Protestant, certainly no Catholic, can deny. How happens it, then, that the Protestant world still subsists, and that, for the last hundred and fifty years, we have made comparatively little progress in regaining Protestants to the Church ?
We may, it is true, be referred to the obstinacy in error characteristic of all heretics; but, in the present case, - unless what is meant is obstinacy in error in general, and not in error in particular, - this will not suffice as an answer; because, dur­ing this period, there has been no one particular form of error to which  Protestants have uniformly adhered.    No  class  of Protestants adheres to-day to the opinions it originally avowed. In this respect, there is a marked difference between the Prot­estant sects   of  modern times and the early Oriental sects. The Jacobite holds to-day the same specific heresy which he held a thousand years ago; and the Nestorian of the nineteenth is substantially the Nestorian of the fourth century.    But noth­ing analogous is true of any of the modern Protestant sects. Protestants boast, indeed, their glorious Reformation, but they no longer hold the views of its authors.    Luther, were he to ascend to  the scenes of his earthly labors, would be utterly unable to recognize his teachings in the doctrines of the modern Lutherans ;  the Calvinist remains a Calvinist only  in name ; the Baptist disclaims his Anabaptist original ; the Unitarian points out the errors he detects in his Socinian ancestors ; and. the Transcendentalist looks down with pity on his  Unitarian parents, while he considers it a cruel persecution to be excluded from the Unitarian family.    No sect retains, unmodified, un­changed, the precise form of error with which it set out.    All the forms Protestants have from time to time assumed have been developed, modified, altered, almost as soon as assumed, - always as internal or external controversy made it necessary or expedient.    Here is a fact nobody can deny, and it proves conclusively that the Protestant world does not subsist solely by virtue of its obstinate attachment to the views or opinions to which it has once committed itself, or in consequence of its aversion to change the doctrines it has once professed.

This fact proves even more than this. Bossuet very justly concludes from the variations of Protestantism its objective falsity, because the characteristic of truth is invariability; but we may go farther, and from the same variations conclude the subjective falsity of Protestantism, or that Protestants have no real belief in, or attachment to, the particular doctrines they profess, - not only that Protestants profess a false doctrine, but that they are insincere, and destitute, as a body, of real honesty in their professions. If they believed their doctrines, they could never tolerate the changes they undergo. New sects might, indeed, arise among them, but no sect would suffer its original doctrines to be in the least altered or modified. The members of every sect, if they believed its creed, would, so long as they adhered to it, be struck with horror at the bare idea of altering or modifying it; for it would seem to them to be altering or modifying the revealed Word of God. This is a point of no slight importance in judging the Protestant world, and seems to us to deserve more attention than the great body of Catholics even are disposed to give it. These variations prove, at least, that Protestantism is something distinct from the formal teachings of Protestants, and something that can and does sur­vive them.

That we are neither rash nor uncharitable in our judgment of Protestants, severe as it unquestionably is, may be collected from facts of daily occurrence. The great body of Protes­tants, it is well known, labor unceasingly to detach Catholics from the Church, and to this end use all the means the age and country will tolerate. It was to combine their forces against Catholicity, that, a few years since, under the pontificate of Gregory XVI., the Protestant ministers held their World's Convention in London; that they formed Protestant alliances in England, Germany, France, Switzerland, and this country, devised a plan in concert with the Italian refugees in these sev­eral countries for effecting a civil revolution in every Catholic state, especially in the Papal States, and called upon the Protestant people everywhere to contribute funds for carrying it out, -a plan, even to minute particulars, which the well-known ministers, Bacon, Coxe, Beecher, Kirk, and others, forewarned us of in a meeting of the Protestant Alliance in this city in 1845, and which we have seen to a great extent realized during the last two years, much to the joy of thousands of nominal Catholics, who little suspected themselves to be the dupes of miserable demagogues on the one hand, and of hypocritical Protestant ministers on the other. But while Protestants, in season and out of season, by means fair and by means foul, by means open and by means secret and tortuous, seek to detach Catholics from the Church, they appear quite indifferent as to which of the thousand and one Protestant formulas they are led to embrace, or whether, indeed, they are led to embrace any one of them. Excepting, as we always do, here and there an individual, they are satisfied with the simple fact, that those drawn off from the Church are no longer Catholics. What­ever we lose, they count their gain, and although they are well aware that the majority of those they gain from us turn out rank apostates, infidels, and blasphemers, they nevertheless rejoice over them, and claim them as so many accessions to their ranks. If Protestants had any sincerity in their profes­sions, if they had any sense of religion, how could they regard themselves as triumphing in proportion as they succeed in de­taching miserable wretches from us, and sinking them in relig­ion even below the ancient heathen, - especially since none of them dare pretend that we do not embrace all the essentials of the Christian religion, or that salvation is not attainable in our Church ? They profess to be Christians, but they would rather make us infidels, apostates, atheists, blasphemers, than suffer us to remain Catholics. What more conclusive proof can you ask of their insincerity, - of the fact that their professions aflbrd no clew to the real state of their minds, and ought to count for nothing ?

Doubtless, we are not to be understood to imply that Prot­estants are always distinctly conscious of their own want of strict honesty and sincerity. No man knoweth whether he deserveth love or hatred. Knowledge of one's self is hard to acquire ; self-deception is one of the easiest things in the world, and few there are who are certain that they have a good conscience, or are sure of the motives which govern them. No doubt, Protestants gloss over their conduct, and have some method of justifying it in their own eyes ; no doubt, they per­suade themselves that they are sincere, - at least as sincere as they can afford to be, as honest in their belief as people gener­ally are ; but they know not what manner of spirit they are of, and as that spirit is inherently a lying spirit, as Catholics well know, it must needs lie unto themselves as well as unto others. Probably every hevesiarch dupes himself before he dupes others, and holds the post of leader only because a greater dupe than his followers. That kind of honesty and sincerity compatible with a false spirit and gross delusion, we are not disposed to deny to Protestants ; but we should remember that no really sincere and truthful mind ever is or ever can be de­luded.    No man ever is or ever was strictly honest and sincere in the profession of a false doctrine, - for no false doctrine can ever, in the nature of things, be so evidenced as to exclude doubt; and he who professes to believe what he doubts profess­es what he knows he does not believe, and therefore professes what lie knows is not true. A man may be honestly in doubt as to what is or is not the truth on certain points; but no man can honestly profess faith in a false doctrine, - for in a false doctrine no man can have faith.

A sort of honesty and sincerity we certainly concede to the generality of Protestants; but as to the end for which they pro­fess their doctrines, rather than as to the doctrines themselves. The principle common to them, and the only one we can al­ways be sure they will practically adhere to, is, that the end justifies the means. The end they propose is, neither to save their souls nor to discover and obey the truth, but to destroy or elude Catholicity. The spirit which possesses them maddens them against the Church, and gives them an inward repugnance to everything not opposed to her. To overthrow her, to blot out her existence, or to prevent her from crushing them with the weight of her truth, is to them a praiseworthy end, at least a great and most desirable end ; directly or indirectly, con­sciously or unconsciously, it becomes the ruling passion - after money-getting - of their lives, - a passion in which they are confirmed and strengthened by all the blandishments of the world, and all the seductions of the flesh. Any means which tend to gratify this passion, to realize this end, they hold to be lawful, and they can adopt them, however base, detestable, or shocking in themselves, with a quiet conscience and admirable self-complacency.

That the ruling motive or dominant instinct of Protestants, in their character of Protestants, is, under a negative point of view at least, to destroy or elude Catholicity, is evident from the character of the variations which their Protestantism has undergone, and is daily and hourly undergoing. Examine these variations, and you will find that they each and all tend to remove Protestantism farther and farther from the Catholic standard, and to shelter it from the blows of Catholic assail­ants. Each successive reformer eliminates from his sect some Catholic doctrine which it may have retained, or modifies some element of which he sees the Catholic controversialist can take advantage. The tendency of the Protestant world, col­lectively and in each of its divisions and subdivisions, lias been steadily in the direction from the Church against which it protests, and tbe progress, which Protestants so loudly boast, has consisted, and still consists, in getting rid of what they originally retained in common with Cathqlics. The Protestant vanguard, which announces that the main body is at hand, has advanced very far, and retains less of Christian principle than was re­tained by tbe old heathen world in the times of the Apostles. Take your fully developed Transcendentalist, tbe last word of Protestantism, and you will find him divested of every Catho­lic principle, and, under tbe point of view of religion, reduced, not only to nudity, but to nihility. Tbe poor man retains noth­ing, not even so much as a shadow. He is a Peter Scblemil, and has sold his shadow to the man in black. What can have reduced him to such straits, - driven him to such extremes? Love of truth, force of conviction ? Nothing of the sort. Be not so simple as to pretend it. He assigns, and attempts to assign, no authority, no reason, for bis nihilism. He even ac­knowledges that he has no reason to assign, and tells you that be only throws out what he thinks, without pretending to prove it. He is a seer, and utters what be sees, and you must take him at his word, or not at all. Why, then, does he rush into nihilism ? Simply, because he is seer enough to see, that, if he admits that anything exists, he will be driven ultimately to acknowledge the truth of Catholicity. Rather than do that, he will sell bis soul, as well as his shadow, to the man in black, and consent to deny his own existence. Almost every day, we meet intelligent Protestant gentlemen who frankly acknowl­edge that there is no alternative but Catholicity or no-relig­ion, and yet who just as frankly tell us that they will not be Catholics. Not long since, a Protestant minister of respecta­ble standing in this city assured us, in all seriousness, that he "would rather be damned than become a Catholic." We of course informed him that he could have his choice, for Al­mighty God forces no one to accept the gift of eternal life. This worthy minister is, no doubt, very ready to embrace tbe truth that does not convict him of error, if such truth there be ; but if we may take him at his word, be is prepared to resist, at all hazards, tbe truth that would indict him. Is it truth, or his own opinion, that he loves ?

Tbe mistake of our popular controversialists seems to arise from their supposition, that Protestantism can be learned from the symbolical books and tbeological writings of Protestants. Undoubtedly we can thus learn that Protestantism which is put forth to elude Catholicity, or to lure Catholics from their Church, and therefore a Protestantism highly important, for the sake of Catholics, to be studied and refuted ; but not thus can we learn the Protestantism which lies in the Protestant mind and heart, and which it is necessary to refute for the sake of Protestants themselves. This Protestantism is not learned from symbolical books or theological writings, and but com­paratively few Protestants themselves can give us a clear and distinct statement, much less a just account, of it. We can seize it only in the historical developments and manifest ten­dencies of the Protestant movement, and explain it only by means of a thorough knowledge of human nature on the one hand, and of Catholic faith and theology on the other.
It appears to us, that our controversialists are mistaken, also, in regarding the more reputable sects -that is, the sects which, in their symbols and professions, have departed the least from the Catholic standard - as better exponents of the Protestant mind than the less reputable, and as those whose views it is the most important to study and refute. Nearly all the con­troversial works we have, originally written in the English lan­guage, are directed against the Anglican and Protestant Epis­copal sects. We are not aware of a single Catholic work, writ­ten expressly against the so-called Evangelical sects, Presby­terians, Baptists, Methodists, or what we may call Pietism. And, with the exception of the profound and scientific work of Father Kollmann, against Unitarians, - too profound and scientific to be intelligible to those for whom it was written, - we have in English not a single work against Rationalism, which, in reality, has a larger number of adherents, in both England and this country, than either Anglicanism or Evan­gelicalism. This indicates a serious defect in our controversial literature, and seems to us to be owing to a false estimate of the relative importance of the several Protestant sects. There are, no doubt, many individuals included in the more reputable sects, who, if compelled to choose, would sooner return to the Church than follow the Protestant movement to its natural ter­minus ; but they are only a small minority, and would hardly be missed in the sects to which they respectively belong. All the sects are on the move, tending somewhither. Not one of them is stationary. This they make their boast ; and one of the most frequent and most efFective charges they bring against the Church is, that she is not progressive, but remains im­movable, insisting that we shall believe to-day the very doc­trines which she taught and believed in the Dark Ages.    The dominant tendency of nny given sect is the tendency which the great majority of its members obey. Ascertain, then, the dominant tendency of each sect, and yon have ascertained the direction in which the great majority of its members are moving, and will continue to move, if diverted or arrested by no foreign influence. But what, in fact, is the dominant tendency of each and every Protestant sect ? Js there a single one whose suc­cessive developments, modifications, and changes tend to bring it nearer and nearer to the Catholic standard, and to prepare it for communion with the Church ? Nobody can pretend it. Everybody knows that every sect is moving in the opposite direction, and that the dominant tendency of the Protestant world, a few individuals excepted, is towards Rationalism, Transcendentalism, and therefore towards pantheism, athe­ism, nihilism. This is decisive, and proves that those sects which have departed farthest from Catholicity are the truest representatives of the Protestant spirit, and the best exponents of genuine Protestantism, as the fully developed man is a better exponent of humanity than the new-born infant. What it is most important, then, to study and refute, must be the princi­ples of these more advanced sects, not those of the sects who remain behind, or are still rocking in their cradle, - Transcen­dentalism, rather than Anglicanism.

Undoubtedly we see, from time to time, a conservative, perhaps a retrograde, movement in the bosom of the several sects. But this movement is the result, in most cases, of alarm for the credit or prosperity of the sect, rather than of any deep or sincere attachment to the principles or doctrines the sect threatens to leave behind. Besides, the movement is ever but a mere eddy in the stream, or a slight ripple on its sur­face. It reaches never to the bottom of the sect, and arrests or diverts never its main current. This is evident from the late Oxford movement, one of the most important movements of the kind which has recently been witnessed. There was a time when timid Protestants feared, and many good Catholics hoped, that it would restore England to Catholic faith and unity ; but no sooner did it become manifest to all the world that its tendency was to communion with Rome, than it was arrested. A few individuals became reconciled to the Church, but the majority of those at first favorably disposed towards it avowedly or tacitly abandoned it, lapsed into the ordinary channel of their sect, and suffered themselves to be borne on­ward with it towards its natural term, - no-religion, or nihilism. So it is in every sect in which a similar movement takes place. As soon as it is clear that its tendency is anti-Protes­tant, that is, towards Rome, it is arrested, and only here and there an individual dares henceforth avow his adherence to it. it may be thought by some, that the more reputable sects are the real bulwarks of Protestantism, and that, if we refute them, the less reputable sects will fall of themselves. Doubt­less this is one reason why our English and American Catho­lic controversialists direct their attacks so exclusively against Anglicanism and Protestant Episcopalianism. But we are disposed to believe that the real supporters of Protestantism, if not in themselves, at least in their views and influence, are the sects which are farthest removed from Catholicity. If there was nothing below Anglicanism to which Anglicans could de­scend, we should have short work with it, and the Anglican and Episcopal sects would soon disappear. The more reputable sects, comparing themselves with the immense Protestant world below them, look upon themselves as substantially orthodox, and are more disposed to dwell on what they retain that others have given up, than on what they themselves lack which we have. They form, too, a sort of aristocracy, a haute noblesse, in the sectarian world, and are pleased with their rank, and unwilling to forego the importance it gives them in their own eyes. Moreover, the sects below them, all Protestant, and of their own race, smooth the descent for them in proportion as they are driven from their more elevated position, and enable them to descend by an easy gradation, by almost imperceptible steps, to the lowest depths of error. If the High-churchman is defeated, he can descend to Low-chnrchism ; if the Low-churchman is defeated, he can descend to Evangelicalism ; if the Evangelical is defeated, he can descend either, on the one hand, to Rationalism, or, on the other, to Transcendentalism, - for, in point of fact, Evangelicalism is nothing but a loose combination of Rationalism and Transcendentalism. It is far easier for a High-churchman to become a Low-churchman than it is for him to become a Catholic, and always is the next step in the descending scale far easier to take than the next step in the ascending scale.

" Fncilis descensus Avorno : Noctes atque'dies patet atri jnnuu Ditis ; Sud rovoenro gradum siipernsque ovadere ad auras, Hoc opus, hie labor est."
As long as there is a lower step that can be taken without abandoning the essential element of Protestantism, the defeat of the more reputable sects, on the ground they profess to oc­cupy, will do little for their conversion ; for they will never acknowledge, even to themselves, that they are defeated, so long as there is any conceivable Protestant ground from which they are not actually driven. It is owing to the fact that Prot­estants now claim as Protestant all the territory between the ground occupied by Dr. Pusey and that occupied by M. Proudhon, and thus have a larger field for advance or retreat, that we find their conversion in our times so much more diffi­cult than it was formerly. St. Francis of Sales, Bishop of Geneva, himself alone regained seventy-two thousand Protes­tants to the Church ; we are aware of no bishop in the present age, however zealous, learned, able, or saintly, who has the consolation of recovering anything approaching a like number. We cannot, therefore, but regard the views and tendencies of the more advanced sects as those which it is now altogether the most important to study and refute.

Not only does Protestantism, as our divines have from the first maintained, logically lead to the denial of all religion, to atheism, and therefore to nihilism,- for to deny that God exists is to deny that anything is,- but it is now clear to all who have examined the subject, that the great body of Protestants are really prepared, as occasion may require, to follow it thus far. The majority of the Protestant world are really, if not avow­edly, Transcendentalists to-day, as every one knows who is acquainted with recent Protestant literature ; and Strauss, Feuerbach, Bauer, Parker, Emerson, Michelet, Cabet, and Proudhon have more sympathizers than Hengstenberg, Pusey, Seabury, Schaf, Alexander, Beecher, and Kirk. Proudhon is nothing but a consistent Red Republican ; and where is the Protestant, in case he is not restrained by his temporal interest, who does not sympathize with Red Republicanism ? Have not Protestants very generally, in England and this country, sympa­thized with Mazzini and his Roman Republic ? Nay, was it not in concert with, and by aid even of, the more reputable Protestant sects, that he expelled the Sovereign Pontiff, and established his Reign of Terror ? Is not Protestant sympathy very generally enlisted in favor of the infidel and Socialistic revolutions in Europe, all of which have been stirred up and helped on by Protestants, under the lead of their ministers, in the name of libecty, but really for the purpose of overthrowing and annihilating the Church ?    Evident is it, then, that they will go, as a body, to all lengths which they find necessary to accomplish their purpose of hostility to Catholicity ; and as they never can even logically overthrow the Church, so long as the existence of anything is admitted, they must deny everything, and rush into nihilism.

It is necessary, then, if we wish to arrest the Protestant movement, and do what in us lies to save the souls of Protes­tants, that we reason with them, not as if it were a sufficient ref­utation of them to prove that they are tending to atheism, but as men wlfo believe nothing, and build up our argument against them from the very foundation. Prove to them that their doc­trines are anti-Christian, and they will only beg you to inform them wherefore that is a reason for not believing them ; prove Christianity to be true, and they will merely beg you to prove your proofs, and thus demand of you an infinite series of proofs. They are, under the point of view of religion and philosophy, wholly rotten, and from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head there is no soundness in them. Nothing will answer for them that does not descend as low as the last denial that it is possible for the human mind to conceive, and chive them from position to position, till there is no position remaining outside of the Church which they can even aftect to take.

Protestantism as we now find it, and even as it was, virtual­ly, in the sixteenth century, is not merely the denial of certain Catholic dogmas, is not merely the denial of the Christian rev­elation itself, but really the denial of all religion and morality, natural and revealed.    It denies reason itself, as far as it is in the power of man to deny it, and is no less unsound as philoso­phy than it is as faith.   It extinguishes the light of nature no less than the light of revelation, and is as false in relation to the nat­ural order as to the supernatural.   Even when Protestants make a profession of believing in revelation, they discredit reason. In regard to reason, they are, even when professing to believe, very  generally Pyrrhonists.     The Evangelical sects,  for in­stance, do not merely deny the sufficiency of reason  as our only guide, but they deny its trustworthiness altogether, and assert that we must take for our guide the Scriptures, not as interpreted by an authority accredited to reason, nor as inter­preted by reason itself, but as interpreted by the private illu­minations of the spirit.     They thus supersede, as it were, an­nihilate, reason, and   reduce themselves to  the  condition  of irrational beings, virtually declare man incapable of receiving a supernatural revelation, and then call upon him to believe the Bible, and to walk by the supernatural light of faith. As long as their enthusiasm lasts, as long as they can keep up a sort of unnatural excitement, they may half persuade themselves that they are supernaturally illuminated ; but as soon as their fever abates, and they sink to their ordinary level, they experience the most painful misgivings, the supposed supernatural light fades away, and, having no reason on which to fall back, they can believe nothing, and either openly avow themselves infidels, or, merely keeping up a show of piety, seek relief by devoting all their energies to worldly distinctions or pleasures. They begin by proposing revelation, not as the complement, but as the substitute, of reason ; and when revelation fails, as fail it must if not supported by motives of credibility addressed to reason, and satisfactory to it, nothing remains for them but universal skepticism.

The formalistic sects, as the Anglican and Episcopalian, reach the same result, though by a different process. Build­ing on sham, taking the shadow for the substance, and deny­ing both the substance and the light the shadow necessarily implies, - or, in other words, refusing to draw from their prem­ises their logical consequences, afraid to make a complete proposition, to say two and two make four, and stopping short with saying two and two, lest they lose the via media, and roll over to Rome, or fall off into dissent, - they destroy reason by mutilating and enslaving it, and find themselves with­out anything by or to which a supernatural revelation can be accredited. The Rationalistic sects, seeing the errors of Evangelicals and formalists, think to save reason by resolving the supernatural into the natural; but in doing this they lose revelation, and therefore reason, - because no man can deny revelation without denying reason, and because reason without revelation is insufficient for herself, inadequate to the solution of the great problems of life which she herself raises. Begin­ning by asking of reason more than she can give, they end by discarding her and falling into universal skepticism, the ultimate term of all Protestantism.

Protestants, it is well known, are able to keep up the self-delusion that they are believers only by obstinately refusing to push their principles to their legitimate consequences, and by shutting their eyes to the objections which may be suggested or urged against them. The condition of a Protestant wish­ing to retain his Protestantism, and yet keep up the appearance of being a believer, is most pitiable. The poor man lias no mental freedom, no intellectual courage, but is a cowardly slave, with all the weakness and meanness characteristic of slaves in general. He never dares trust himself to his princi­ples, and follow them out to their remotest logical conse­quences, and is doomed, turn which way he will, to be in­consequent, and to submit to a most tyrannical and capricious master ; for otherwise he would find himself, on the one hand, approaching too near Catholicity to remain a Protestant, or, on the other, too near to nihilism to even pretend to be a be­liever. Alas for the poor man ! He hugs his chains, and, by the strangest infatuation imaginable, fancies his slavery is freedom. All who have studied the subject know well that Protestants are Protestants, not by virtue of reason, but in spite of reason, -not because they reason, but solely because they do not, will not, and dare not reason. The rejection of reason is their fundamental vice. Reason is our natural light, and, though of no value out of its sphere, in its sphere is iner­rable. It does not suffice of itself for all the wants of the human soul, but its annihilation reduces us below the condi­tion of men, and renders us incapable of receiving even a su­pernatural revelation. Revelation does not abrogate or super­sede reason ; it restores it and supplies its deficiencies. Grace supposes nature. Christianity is a system of pure grace, - is, in fact, a supernatural creation, but a supernatural creation for the natural, designed to repair the damage nature has incurred by guilt, and to enable man to attain the end to which his Creator originally appointed him. Man is not for the Sacra­ments, but the Sacraments are for man. The first office of grace is to restore nature, or to heal its wounds ; having re­stored it to health, it elevates it, indeed, but always retains it, and uses it. Here is the grand fact that Protestant theolo­gians always overlook. They, in reality, always present na­ture and grace as two antagonistic powers, and suppose .the presence of the one must be the physical destruction of the other. Luther and Calvin, weary of the good works, and shrinking from the efforts to acquire the personal virtues en­joined by Catholicity, began their so-called reform by assert­ing the total depravity of human nature, and maintaining that original sin involved the loss of reason and free-will, reduc­ing man physically to the condition of irrational animals, and superadding the penalty of guilt. Here, in the very outset, they denied natural reason, all natural religion, and all natural morality, and consequently asserted for man in the natural or­der, left to his natural powers and faculties, universal skepti­cism and moral indifference ; for without reason there can be no belief, and without free-will no moral obligation, no moral difference of actions.

The Arminians, indeed, saw this, and sought to remedy it by reasserting the natural law ; but as they still held to total depravity, the reassertion amounted to nothing ; or, if they sometimes abandoned total depravity, they rushed to the oppo­site extreme, and reasserted Pelagianism or semi-Pelagianism, and restricted the office of grace to enabling us to do more easily what, nevertheless, we are able to do without it. if they succeeded in escaping the peculiar error of Luther and Cal­vin, they fell into Rationalism. As Luther and Calvin anni­hilated reason and free-will, the whole spiritual nature of man, and made man purely passive in the work of regeneration and Christian perfection, the Arminians, become Rationalists, dis­regarding the necessity of grace, made the natural law suffi­cient, and asserted only a natural morality. But experience proving the inadequacy of the natural law, when taken without its revealed complement and sanction, - of natural morality, when not elevated by supernatural Christian virtue, - they, like the others, lapsed, of necessity, into the same skepticism.
The error of each class is avoidable only by understanding that grace always supposes nature, and that grace without na­ture would be as a telescope to a man without eyes. Reve­lation supposes reason, and we as effectually deny Christianity when we deny reason as when we deny revelation ; both must be asserted with equal firmness and emphasis, each in its own sphere, in relation to its appropriate office, or nothing is asserted. To deny reason is, o fortiori, to deny revelation, and to deny revelation is virtually to deny reason ; because the evidences of the fact of revelation are amply sufficient to sat­isfy reason, and because reason, without revelation, being unde­niably insufficient to solve the problems which torture the mind without faith, and to satisfy the craving of our nature for some­thing above itself, cannot maintain itself practically in credit, and necessarily loses its authority. Philosophy, undoubtedly, rests for its basis on natural reason, otherwise we should be unable to distinguish it from Catholic theology, or to draw any intelligible distinction between the natural and supernatu­ral ; but without the aid of revelation as an instrument in its construction, we shall never be able, in our fallen condition, to construct a sound and adequate philosophy. So, on the other hand, without a sound and adequate philosophy, we can never possess a true and adequate theology ; for as revelation is ne­cessary as an instrument in the construction of philosophy, so is philosophy necessary as an instrument in the construction of theology,-•that is, theology as a science, and as distinguish­able from faith. Hence, in all courses of Catholic instruction, the student makes his philosophy before he proceeds to his theology.

It is clear enough, from what we have said, that the most pressing want of Protestants, under the intellectual point of view, is a sound philosophy, which, so to speak, shall rehabili­tate reason, and restore them to natural religion and morality. They have lost reason, and have fallen below the religion or morality which lies in the natural order, and which all revealed religion and morality presuppose. The philosophy needed is nowhere to be found in the Protestant world, and cannot pos­sibly be created by Protestants, for the reason that the revela­tion which must serve as its instrument they have not, or at best only some detached fragments of it. The only respecta­ble school of philosophy to be found amongst Protestants is the Scottish School of Reid and Stewart; but this school dog­matizes rather than philosophizes. It very justly assumes that all pliilosopliy must proceed from certain indemonstrable prin­ciples, and it does not err essentially in its inventory of these principles ; but it fails to establish them, or to show us 1 hat they have scientific validity. It calls them the constituent principles of human belief, and says, very truly, that they must be admitted, or all science, all philosophy, is out of the question. But this is no more than Hume, whom it aims to refute, himself said. Is science or philosophy possible ? is the precise question to be answered. Without the conditions you assert, we grant it is not possible ; but what then ? There­fore your alleged principles are sound ? Why not ? There­fore all science, all philosophy, is impossible ? No doubt, the Scottish School has protested vehemently against the skepti­cism of Hume, but its refutation of that skepticism is a mere paralogism, a simple begging of the question, and therefore, scientifically considered, worthless.

But, after all, we cannot place our chief reliance on philos­ophy as an instrument in the conversion of Protestants. Phi­losophy is too indirect and too slow in its operations to meet their wants.    They are too far gone, too restless, too impatient, too averse to calm reflection and continuous thought, to listen to us while we set the true philosophy before them, or to submit to the labor absolutely requisite to comprehend and appreciate profound  philosophical  science.     An age of bal­loons, steam-cars, and lightning telegraphs is not exactly the age for philosophers.    Moreover, Protestant perversity would find  in  the  necessity of the long   and  patient  thought, and close and subtile reasoning, demanded by philosophy, an objec­tion to our religion itself.    Your religion, they would say, if true, is intended for all mankind, and therefore should be with­in  the  reach of every capacity.    The thought and reasoning necessary to create or understand  the philosophy you insist upon transcend the capacity  of all but the  gifted few,  and therefore, if necessary to establish your religion, prove that your religion is not true.    We might, indeed, reply, that the thought and reasoning objected to are necessary to refute the errors of Protestants, not simply to establish our religion ; but that would amount to nothing in practice.     The nature of the Protestant  is  to devise the most subtile errors in his power, and to find an objection to our religion in the very labor he makes necessary for their refutation.    When he objects, he may be as subtile and as abstruse as he pleases ; but when we reply, he insists that we shall be popular, and never go be­yond the depth of the most ordinary capacity, •- that we shall answer the objection not only to the mind that raises it, but to the  minds of all  men.    Only the candid among Protestants would acknowledge the justness of our reply, and these would fail to comprehend it ; for if you find a candid Protestant, you may safely conclude that he lacks  intelligence, as when you find an intelligent Protestant you may be sure that he lacks candor.     There must, then, be some briefer and more expe­ditious way of dealing with Protestants than that of philoso­phy, if we wish to affect them favorably.

We have defined Protestantism to be hostility to the Church, and virtually nihilism, because Protestants in gen­eral, sooner than return to the Church, will push their hostility to its last consequence, which is the denial of God, therefore of all existence and existences. But this is not all that we have to say of the matter. No man loves error for its own sake, or wills what does not appear to him to be good. The natural heart of every man recoils instinctively from atheism ; and it is seldom, if ever, that one without a fearful and even a protracted struggle abandons all faith and piety, resigns all hope of an hereafter, and consents to place himself in the category of the beasts that perish. Hatred, no doubt, will carry a man to great lengths ; but even hatred must have its cause, real or imaginary. Hatred is love reversed, and in­tense hatred of one thing is the reverse action of intense love of something else. Protestants hate the Church. Where­fore ? Because they love truth ? Nonsense. Because they believe her false, and destructive to the souls of men ? Non­sense again. We hope there is no Catholic so stupid as to balieve it. Hatred of the Church has nothing to do with con­cern for truth or for salvation. A large portion of Protes­tants believe in no truth, in no salvation ; a larger portion still are of opinion that all men will be saved, and that truth is whatever seems to a man to be true ; and the remainder hold that the Church is substantially orthodox, and that salvation is attainable in her communion, as well as in their own. What­ever, then, the cause of their hatred of the Church, it is a cause unconnected with considerations of another world, or with truth as such.

We need not look far for this something which Protestants love and the Church condemns, and for condemning which they are full of wrath against her. It is nothing very recondite, or very difficult to seize. We make quite too much of Prot­estantism, which is, in reality, a very vulgar thing, and lies alto­gether on the surface of life. Protestantism is nothing more or less than that spirit of lawlessness which leads every one to wish to have his own way,--very common in women and children, and perhaps not less common in men, only they have, generally, a better faculty of concealing it. Objectively defined, it is ex­pressed in (lie common saying, " Forbidden fruit is sweetest "; and subjectively, it is a craving for what is prohibited, because prohibited. It imagines that the sovereign good is in what the law forbids, and opposes the Church because she upholds the law, - hates the law because the law restrains it, duty because duty obliges it ; and since, as long as it admits the existence of God, it must admit duty, it denies God ; and since, as long as it admits the existence of anything, it must admit the existence of God, it denies everything, and lapses into nihilism. Here is the whole mystery of the matter, - Protestantism in a nut­shell.

The source of this impatience of restraint, and this desire to have one's own way, is the pride natural to the human heart, the root of every vice and of every sin.    " Your  eyes  shall he opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil," said the serpent  to  Eve ; and  she reached forth her hand, plucked the forbidden fruit, ate, and sin and death were in the world.    Pride is, on the one hand, a denial of our depend­ence, and,  on the other, the assertion of our own sufficiency. Here you may see the origin and tlie essential characteristic of Protestantism, which is as old as the first motion of pride or of resistance to the will of  God.
   
Protestantism, after all,  is more ancient than we commonly concede.     Dr. Johnson, in his Dictionary, would have been no less correct in saying the Devil was the first Protestant, than he was in saying that he was " the first Whig."    It offends pride to be compelled to acknowledge our own insufficiency, to admit that  we  cannot be trusted to follow our own inclinations, that we must be sub­jected to metes and bounds, and placed under tutors and mas­ters, who say, Do this, Do that ; and we are galled, and we resolve we will not endure it ;   we will break the withes that bind us ; we will stand up on our own two feet, and assert our freedom in face of heaven, earth, and hell.    Hence we see Protestants, in every age, mounting the tallest pair of stilts they can find or construct, and with more or less vehemence, with more or less eclat, according to the circumstances of time and place, magniloquently asserting the " inborn " rights of man, proudly swearing to be free, to stand up in their native dignity, in the full and resplendent majesty of their own manhood, and making such appeals and forming such alliances as they fancy will best secure their independence, relieve them from all re­straints, and give them the opportunity to live as they list.

Such is the general and essential characteristic of Protes­tantism ; its particular character or form is determined by, and varies with, the circumstances of time and place. Jn itself, as Balmes well shows, it is a phenomenon peculiar to no period of history, but whatever it has that is peculiar it borrows from the character of the epoch in which it appears. It is always essentially 'the spirit that works in the children of dis­obedience, but the form under which the disobedience mani­fests itself depends on exterior and accidental causes. What it resists is what it finds offensive to human pride, to pure, un­mitigated egotism, and what it asserts is always asserted as the means of securing free scope to its independent action. In the sixteenth century, pride found itself galled by submission to the Church, for theChurch could not tolerate its wild speculations and its theological errors.    It then denied the authority of the Church ; and in order to make a show of justifying its denial, it asserted the supremacy of the Scriptures, interpreted by private reason, or by the private Spirit. Soon it found that the asser­tion of the supremacy of the Scriptures, so interpreted, limited its sovereignty, and that it was as galling to its sense of inde­pendence to submit to a dead book as to a living Church, and then it denied the Scriptures, and, to justify its denial, asserted the supremacy of reason. But reason, again, galled it, re­minded it of its dependence, and would not suffer it to live as it listed. Then it cried out, Down with reason, and up with sen­timent ! - a Transcendental element paramount to reason,-and thus reached the jumping-oft'place. In order to resist effectu­ally the Pope, it atone time, as in England, proclaims the divine right of kings ; and then, in order to get rid of the divine right of kings, it proclaims the divine right of the people, or, to speak more accurately, of the mob ; and finally, in order to get rid of the authority of the mob, it proclaims the divine right of each and every individual, and declares that each and every individual is God, the only God, - thus resolving God into men, and all men into one man, which implies the right of every man to take the entire universe to himself, and possess it as his own property. You laugh at its absurdity ? Upon our conscience, we invent nothing, we exaggerate nothing, and say nothing more than is asserted, in sober earnest, by men whom the Protestant world delights to honor.
Turn Protestantism over as you will, analyze it to your heart's content, you can make nothing more or less of it than mere vulgar pride, and the various efforts pride makes from time to time and place to place to secure its own gratification, to re­alize the assertion of the serpent, " Ye shall be as gods, know­ing good and evil,"- that is, ye shall know good and evil of yourselves, as God knows them of himself, and shall be inde­pendent, and act as seemeth to you good, even as God is inde­pendent and doth according to his will, not as subject to a power above himself, and in obedience to another'will than his own. Just see the proof of this, in the sympathy now universally given to every revolt against established authority. All your modern literature is Satanic, and approves, and teaches us to approve, every rebel, whether against parental, popular, royal, or Divine authority.. The Protestant readers of Paradise Lost sympathize with Lucifer, in his war against the Almighty, and if they had been in heaven, as one of our friends suggests, would have sided with him.    Our friend, J. D. Nourse, defending himself against the strictures, in this Review for last April, on his book, boldly asserts that God is a despot, and his govern­ment a despotism, - nay, that all authority is despotic.

Finding the essence of Protestantism to be mere vulgar pride, that it is a moral disease rather than an intellectual aber­ration, it is evident that we are to treat it as a vice rather than as an error, and Protestants as sinners rather than as sim­ply unbelievers or misbelievers. This may not be very flatter­ing to their pride ; nevertheless, it is the only way they deserve to be treated, and the only way in which they can be treated for their good. We honor them quite too much when we treat them as men whose heads are wrong, but whose hearts are sound. The wrongness of the head is the consequence of the rottenness of the heart. The remedy must be applied to the seat of the disease, or it will be wholly ineffectual ; and as the disease is in the will rather than in the intellect, we must, as we do with sinners in general, avail ourselves of motives that tend to persuade the will, rather than of those which tend primarily to convince the understanding. Get the heart right, and the intellect will soon rectify itself.

Now it is certain, that, so far as the great body of Protestants are concerned, it is of no use to appeal to any love of truth or regard for salvation they may be supposed to have. They are very generally prepared, with Macbeth, "to jump the world to come," and think only how they shall manage matters for this world. They are worldly, and their wisdom is earthly, sensual, devilish ; even their virtues, their honesty, their upright­ness of conduct, have reference, not to God, but to their justi­fication, either in the eyes of the world, or in the eyes of their own pride. They are too proud or too vain to do this or that act which is contrary to good manners. We must therefore approach them as men who are wedded to this world, who are Protestants for the sake of living for this world alone, and re­fuse to be Catholics because Catholicity enjoins humility, de­tachment from the world, and a life of self-denial and mortifi­cation, lived for God alone. As long as it is conceded, or as long as they believe it true, that their Protestantism is more favorable to man, regarded solely as an inhabitant of this world, than Catholicity, we cannot get them to listen to what we have to say for our religion. If they hear, it will be as if they heard not.

But it is a fact, as clearly demonstrable, in its way, as any mathematical problem, that Catholicity enjoins the only normal life for man, even in this world, letting alone what it secures us in another. Human pride just now takes the iorm of Social­ism, and Socialism is the Protestantism of our times. It is hu­man pride under this form that we must address, and show to the Socialists, not-as some silly and misguided creatures calling themselves Catholics, and sometimes occupying editorial chairs, are accustomed to do - that Catholicity favors them by accept­ing their Socialism, but that it favors the object they profess to have at heart, - that it is the true and only genuine Socialism, the basis of all veritable society, and the only known instrument of well-being, either for the individual or for the race. We must show, that, under the social point of view, under the various relations of civilization, Protestantism is an egregious blunder, and precipitates its adherents into the precise evils they really wish to avoid. That it does so is evident enough to all who have eyes to sec, and is proved by the very com­plaints Protestants make of their own movements. Their own complaints of themselves show, to use a vulgar proverb, that they always "jump from the frying-pan into the fire," in at­tempting to better their condition. They could not endure the authority of the Church ; they resisted it, and fell under the tyranny of the sect, even in their own view of the case a thou­sand times less tolerable. They rebelled, in the name of liber­ty, against the Pope, and fell under the iron rule of the civil des­pot ; in England, they could not endure the Lord's bishops, and they fell under the Lord's presbyters, and from Lord's pres­byters under the Lord's brethren, and from Lord's brethren under the capricious tyranny of their own fancies and pas­sions. In political and social reforms it has fared no better with them. In France, the Constituante were more oppres­sive than the old monarchy, the Gironde than the Con-stituanlc, the Mountain than the Gironde ; and the present French government, in order to save society from complete destruction, is obliged to adopt measures more stringent than ever Charles the Tenth or Louis Philippe dared venture upon. The overthrow of one tyranny leads to another of necessity more heartless and oppressive, because weaker and possessing a less firm hold on the affections of the people. A strong gov­ernment can afford to be lenient. A weak government must be stringent. Yet the wise men of the age rush on in their wild-goose chase after worldly felicity, while it flies ever the faster before them. Like the gambler, who has played away his patrimony, his wife's jewels, and pawned his hat and coat, but keeps playing on, they insist on another throw,- though losing all, fancy they are just agoing to recover all, and make a for­tune equal to their boundless wishes. If they could but see themselves as the unexcited bystanders see them, they would throw away the dice, and rush with self-loathing from the hell in which they find only their own ruin.

The principle on which Protestants seek even worldly felici­ty is false, and we can say nothing better of them, than that they prove themselves fools, - yes, pure, unmitigated fools,- in following it. When was it ever known that pride, following itself, did not meet mortification, or that any worldly distinc­tion or good, sought for its own sake, did not either baffle pur­suit, or prove a canker to the heart ? Did you ever see a man running after fame that ever overtook it, or a man always nursing his health that was ever other than sickly ? Have you no eyes, no cars, no understanding ? Fame comes, if at all, unsought, greatness follows in the train of humility, and happi­ness, coy to the importunate wooer, throws herself into the arms of him who treats her with indifference. All experience proves the truth of the principle, " Seek first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be superadded unto you." Take it as inspiration, as the word of God, or as a maxim of human prudence, it is equally true, and he who runs against it only proves his own folly. " Live while you live," says the Protestant Epicurean. Be it so ; live while you live, but live you cannot, unless you live to God, according to the principles of the Catholic religion. Live now you do not, and you know you do not ; you are only just agoing, and not a few of you fear that you are never even agoing to live, as all your poetry, with its deep pathos and melodious wail, too amply proves.

Here comes in to our aid the excellent work before us. It exactly meets the present state of the Protestant world, and makes the only kind of appeal to which, in their present mood, they will listen. Its author makes no apology for Catho­licity, he offers no direct argument for its truth ; he simply comes forward and compares the respective influences of Prot­estantism and Catholicity on European civilization, and shows, that, while Catholicity tends unceasingly to advance civilization, Protestantism as unceasingly tends to savagism, and that it is to its hostile influences we owe the slow progress of European civilization during the last three centuries. He shows that Protestantism is hostile to liberty, to philosophy, to the higher mental culture, to art, to equality, to political and social well-being. He shows it, we say ; not merely asserts, but proves it, by unanswerable arguments and undeniable facts. Jf any one doubts our judgment, we refer him to the work itself, and beg him to gainsay its facts, or answer its reasoning, if he can. The Protestant who reads it will hardly boast of his Protes­tantism again.