clearly from those of the Church of Rome. The former were avowedly exceptional; they were absolutely necessary; they were designed to introduce a new religion, and to establish a supernatural message. The latter were simply means of edification; they were directed to no object that could not otherwise be attained, and they were represented as taking place in a dispensation that was intended to be not of sight but of faith. Besides this, miracles should be regarded as the most awful and impressive manifestations of divine power. To make them habitual and commonplace would be to degrade if not to destroy their character, which would be still further abased if we admitted those which appear trivial and puerile. The miracles of the New Testament were always characterized by dignity and solemnity; they always conveyed some spiritual lesson, and conferred some actual benefit, besides attesting the character of the worker. The medieval miracles, on the contrary, were often trivial, purposeless, and unimpressive; constantly verging on the grotesque, and not unfrequently passing the border.

nance.

Such is, I think, a fair epitome of the common arguments in favour of the cessation of miracles; and they are undoubtedly very plausible and very cogent; but, after all, what do they prove? Not that miracles have ceased, but that, supposing them to have ceased, there is nothing surprising or alarming in the fact. . . . . This is the full extent to which they can legitimately be carried. As an à priori proof, they are far too weak to withstand the smallest amount of positive testimony. Miracles, it is said, are intended exclusively to accredit an inspired messenger. But, after all, what proof is there of this? It is simply an hypothesis, plausible and consistent it may be, but entirely unsupported by positive testimony. Indeed, we may go further, and say that it is distinctly opposed by your own facts. ... You must admit that the Old Testament relates many miracles which will not fall under your canon But the ecclesiastical miracles, it is said, are often grotesque; they appear prima facie absurd, and excite an irresistible repugA sufficiently dangerous test in an age when men find it more and more difficult to believe any miracles whatever. A sufficiently dangerous test for those who know the tone that has been long adopted over an immense part of Europe, towards such narratives as the deluge, or the exploits of Samson, the speaking ass, or the possessed pigs! Besides this, a great proportion of the ecclesiastical miracles are simply reproductions of those which are recorded in the Bible; and if there are mingled with them some that appear manifest impostures, this may be a very good reason for treating these narratives with a more jealous scrutiny, but is certainly no reason for maintaining that they are all below contempt. The Bible neither asserts nor implies the revocation of supernatural gifts; and if the general promise that these gifts should be conferred, may have been intended to apply only to the Apostles, it is at least as susceptible of a different interpretation. If these miracles were actually continued it is surely not difficult to discover the beneficial purpose which they would fulfil. They would stimulate a languid piety; they would prove invaluable auxiliaries to missionaries labouring among barbarous and unreasoning savages, who, from their circumstances and habits of mind, are utterly incapable of forming any just estimate of the evidences of the religion they are called upon to embrace. . . . To say that

these miracles are false because they are Roman Catholic is to assume the very question at issue.-Vol. i., pp. 173-177.

There is nothing, indeed, that is particularly new in this reasoning; our readers must have frequently seen or heard it urged against Protestants; but it is valuable in Mr. Lecky's history, as showing the view taken of the ordinary Protestant arguments by the higher class of anti-Catholic writers. In a similar manner he disposes of the vulgar arguments against magic and sorcery in a passage which, however, is, we regret to say, too long for quotation (Vol. I., pp. 9-16). He there concludes by saying that the evidence on that subject is so vast and so varied, that it is impossible to disbelieve it without what, on any other subject, we should consider the most extraordinary rashness. The subject was examined in tens of thousands of cases, in almost every country in Europe, by tribunals which included the acutest lawyers and ecclesiastics of the age, on the scene and at the time when the alleged acts had taken place, and with the assistance of innumerable sworn witnesses. As condemnation would be followed by a fearful death, and the accused were for the most part miserable beings whose destruction can have been an object to no one, the judges can have had no sinister motives in convicting, and had, on the contrary, the most urgent reasons for exercising their power with the utmost caution and deliberation. The accusations were often of such a character that all must have known the truth or falsehood of

what was alleged. The evidence is essentially cumulative. Some cases, it is added, may be explained by monomania, others by imposture, others by chance coincidences, and others by optical delusions; but, when we consider the multitudes of strange statements that were sworn to and registered in legal documents, he confesses that it is very difficult to frame a general rationalistic explanation which will not involve an extreme improbability.

And now, passing to another subject, even Catholics may find in the following passage something worthy of being dwelt

on:

The world is governed by its ideals, and seldom or never has there been one which has exercised a more profound and on the whole a more salutary influence than the medieval conception of the Virgin. For the first time woman was elevated to her rightful position, and the sanctity of weakness was recognized as well as the sanctity of sorrow. No longer the slave or toy of man, no longer associated only with ideas of degradation, and of sensuality, woman rose, in the person of the Virgin Mother, into a new sphere, and became the object of a reverential homage of which antiquity had had no

conception. Love was idealized. The moral charm and beauty of female excellence was for the first time felt. A new type of character was called into being; a new kind of admiration was fostered. Into a harsh and ignorant and benighted age this ideal type infused a type of gentleness and of purity unknown to the proudest civilisations of the past. In the pages of living tenderness which many a monkish writer has left in honour of his celestial patron; in the millions who, in many lands and in many ages, have sought with no barren desire to mould their character into her image; in those holy maidens, who, for the love of Mary, have separated themselves from all the glories and pleasures of the world, to seek in fastings and vigils and humble charity to render themselves worthy of her benediction; in the new sense of honour, in the chivalrous respect, in the softening of manners, in the refinement of tastes displayed in all the walks of society; in these and in many other ways we detect its influence. All that was best in Europe clustered around it, and it is the origin of many of the purest elements of our civilization.— Vol. i. pp. 234-235.

"But," he is pleased to add, "the price, and perhaps the necessary price, of this was the exaltation of the Virgin as an omnipresent deity of infinite power as well as of infinite condescension." Here we have an example of the extraordinary mistakes which are occasionally made by Mr. Lecky. We by no means accuse him of intentional misrepresentation; and in a work of nearly a thousand pages, of which there is scarcely a page without a note, and scarcely a note without six or seven references or quotations, it was impossible but that some inaccuracies should creep in. But he unfortunately often uses a looseness and generality of reference which makes his notes almost useless to any one desirous of verifying them, and his inaccuracies, some of which bear with them an appearance of great carelessness, are incredibly frequent; while we desiderate in him that fulness of theological knowledge which a writer ought to possess who criticizes dogmatic systems so dogmatically as he does. In the present case he actually seems to think that the Blessed Virgin was regarded as an omnipresent deity because it was believed that she could hear prayers anywhere addressed to her.* But the

In a note at the foot of p. 235 he tells us that "Even at the present day the Psalter of St. Bonaventure—an edition of the Psalms adapted to the worship of the Virgin, chiefly by the substitution of the word domina for the word dominus-is a popular book of devotion at Rome." It is, of course, difficult to say what exactly is required to constitute a popular book of devotion, and it is quite possible that the Psalter in question may be used by some persons in Rome; but it is not mentioned (as from its character it might be expected to be mentioned) among the "forty little books" sent thence for Dr. Newman's examination, nor did the present writer, when in Rome, ever either see or hear of it. As to its being composed by S. Bonaventure, Catholic controversialists have again and again urged that it is

teaching of Catholic theologians makes a very great difference between the omnipresence of God and the manner in which the Blessed Virgin and the saints are cognizant of the prayers poured out to them on earth. The Scotists ordinarily teach. that God reveals to the saints in glory whatever it is expedient that they should know; the Thomists that they see in the vision of God the prayers and the necessities of men; some have urged the elevation and expansion of even their natural faculties consequent on their entrance into the state of glory, but none have ever supposed them to be present, as God is, to the whole created universe. Mr. Lecky proceeds to state that before the belief that a finite spirit could hear prayer wherever offered was firmly established, it was believed that at least they hovered round the places where their relics had been deposited, and there, at least, attended to the prayers of their suppliants. In support of this assertion he quotes the following words as from S. Jerome: "ergo cineres suos amant animæ martyrum, et circumvolant eos, semperque præsentes sunt; ne forte si aliquis precator advenerit absentes audire non possint," to which he gives the extraordinary reference "Epistolæ, l. iii., c. 13." These words indeed occur in S. Jerome; but they occur as the sarcasm of

spurious to which we may add the testimony of Oudin (De Script. Ecclesiast. Art. Bonaventure, ch. xi. n. 26):-"Indignum porro mihi videtur, quod Sancto Bonaventuræ Doctori tribuatur." Nor is it even chiefly adapted to the worship of the Blessed Virgin in the manner stated by Mr. Lecky. In the words of the preface of the Roman edition of S. Bonaventure's works, "initia cohærent cum Psalmis Davidis, quæ vero subsequuntur Beatæ Virgini pulchre aptantur ;" and even in the very "initia" very suggestive alterations are made, v.g. Ps. 23, “Domini est terra et plenitudo ejus: tu autem sanctissima mater cum Eo regnas in æternum."-Ps. 24, " Ad te domina levavi animam meam; in judicio Dei, tuis precibus non erubescam."--Ps. 19, “Deus, Deus meus, respiciat in me meritis tuis Virgo semper Maria," &c. We have found, moreover, the changes made in the body of the Psalms are such as to bear out the distinction adverted to by Dr. Newman, that the tone of the devotion paid to our Lady is distinct from that offered up to God in this, that the worship paid to the Almighty is supreme, profound, and awful; the language employed toward the Blessed Virgin is affectionate and ardent, as toward a mere child of Adam; though subdued, as coming from her sinful kindred. (Development, p. 436.)

We may also observe that Mr. Lecky uses the term "Mariolatry": a piece of very needless offensiveness at the least, but the less wonderful when we consider that he renews the effete charge of idolatry (Vol. I., p. 236, &c.). This kind of thing, however, is infinitely less dangerous than the habitual irreverence of tone, and flippancy of style in speaking of sacred things, which pervades the whole work, which indicates, both a great want of good feeling in himself, and also a great defect of consideration for others; and which has permitted him to insert passages absolutely blasphemous in character. (See vol. I, p. 226, note.)

an opponent which S. Jerome gives only in order to refute it. The passage is quoted from Vigilantius in S. Jerome's book against that heretic; but the saint himself calls it a "portent worthy of hell," and argues in reply to the idea expressed in it, that we cannot set laws to God; that the martyrs follow the lamb wheresoever he goeth; that the demons wander over the whole world; and are the martyrs to be shut up in a box? As to the Blessed Virgin being regarded as a deity of infinite power and infinite condescension, those Catholic writers who in their devotional writings have spoken the most strongly of her power, have merely said that God will never refuse her anything she asks, and that she will never ask anything inconsistent with His Providence. Mr. Lecky shows in many other places the grossest ignorance of Catholic theology. He quotes, in evidence of the present belief of the Roman Church in demoniacal possession, a ritual which, he says, "is used in the diocese of Tarbes." He need not have gone to an obscure provincial ritual for proof of his assertion; he will hardly find any Catholic theologian who denies it; and the most used and best known of our modern theological writers has devoted a special chapter to the subject (Perrone, De Deo Creatore, Part I., c. v.) The doctrine of punishment by a material fire "still lingers," he tells us, " in the Roman Catholic manuals for the poor." If by this be meant that it does not remain also among theologians, this is not true; Perrone, one of the most moderate, calls it, "sententia communiter recepta." (De Deo Creatore, Part III., c. vi. a. 3.)

It

In the latter part of his chapter "On the Developments of Rationalism," Mr. Lecky has put forward an opinion that the doctrine of the material character of the penal fire is closely connected with the ancient opinion, that the soul is in some sense material. The doctrine of a material fire became, he says, the foundation of an opinion that the soul is of a material nature; and he refers to Tertullian, citing De Animâ, c. viii. This assertion is, however, utterly without foundation. nowhere appears that this was the chief foundation on which this error was rested. Far from making this material conception of punishment the chief ground of his argument, Tertullian, in the passage quoted by Mr. Lecky, does not argue from the materiality of the fire at all. What he does argue from is the corporeal manner in which Abraham, Dives, and Lazarus, are represented in the Gospel; from Abraham's bosom, the tongue of Dives, and the finger of Lazarus; and he mentions the "ignis" merely in an incidental manner, and not to argue from its material nature, but to found his reasoning on the general proposition that whatever is susceptible of" fovela" or of