ejected from Paradise, and commanded to wander over a land of malediction, to be obliged to return to the cold, monotonous and uninspiring formalities of naturalism or of rationalism, as in countries which have lost faith, and to join that society in which, as its wise poet complains,— "To-morrow unbelied may say, I come to open out for fresh display, which knows of no morning sacrifice, no holy nights, no calm retreats from the world, no evening meditations in solemn churches, no smiling salutations like those of the Spaniards on entering a house, who used to begin by saying, "Ave Maria purissima," no union of the visible and invisible in customs and views of action, no sanctification of hours, or of enjoyments, of the duties and of the regrets of life? When the sound of the bell which precedes the blessed sacrament was heard within the theatres of Madrid, spectators and actors all without exception, used to fall upon their knees. Bourgoign, who mentions this, adds, "that it is difficult not to laugh." Unhappy the man, unhappy, if it were only because the whole type in his intelligence must be contrary to that which yields pure joy to the human heart, who at such a spectacle has smiles and disdain to hide instead of tears, and the sudden movements of veneration and love. The supernatural character of the Catholic morality was also seen in the motives which prompted it; and here one might remark how little progress has been made in judicial virtue since the days when the duties of the Christian magistrate were taught by a Capuchin friar, Ives of Paris. We find that men of the middle ages were continually referring to religion for the cause even of political actions. When Guillaume de Villardouin was made prisoner by the emperor Michael Paleologus, he was offered his freedom, and money to purchase lands in France, if he would renounce his principality of the Morea. William at first proceeded to show that the feudal system did not leave it in his power to compromise the rights of others, but finally he was induced, after a long imprisonment, to yield three towns to the emperor. The Francs, however, in the Morea, met in general assembly, refused to ratify the cession. The duke of Athens * Wordsworth. in a noble speech, offered to become a prisoner in the place of William, but protested against surrendering the bulwarks of the Morea. "I deplore his captivity," said he, "but such a price for his liberty would endanger the liberty of the whole people." In conclusion he used these impressive words in reference to the example of Christ. The supreme justice does not will that all should be sacrificed for the safety of one, but rather that one for all should perish." The security and perseverance of the Catholic justice was another proof that it was above nature. How many men are thought to be meek merely from their being insensible to the divine honour, and untried in what regards themselves. To the false meek, to those who are only by nature moderate and pacific, St. Bernardine of Sienna applies the prophet's words, "Tange montes, et fumigabunt." Only oppose their own will, and the least contradiction will raise & tempest where you thought had reigned a perpetual serenity. "O, what a precious good is endurance," cries Marsilius Ficinus, in his letter to John Cavalcanti. alone made Socrates the wisest of the Greeks this is obtained by that view and remembrance of divine and eternal things, which renders all the glory of the world vain and vile." But in nothing does the supernaturalism of the Catholic morals appear more eminent than in their opposition to the sensual ideal, which, no doubt, furnishes the true explanation of the cause of that mortal hate otherwise unaccountable, with which the holy Church of God has been always regarded by the profane. 66 "This The opposition of body and soul," as Novalis observes, "is one of the most remarkable and dangerous things. In history it has played a great part."*"All men," he adds, "are engaged in a perpetual duel." "There is a separation," as Frederick Schlegel remarks, "not merely between ourselves and the external world, but there is a division also within ourselves, and in our inmost nature, a separation of conscience from thought. pervades the whole of human life, both states and families, in faith and knowledge, judgment and inclinations, reason and will, reason and fancy." How clearly men illuminated by holiness in the middle ages, had discerned what this philosopher Schriften, II. 314. + Id. II. 284. Philosophie der Sprache, 23. This speaks of, may be witnessed in the dialogue between Reason and Conscience, which Jacoponus inserts among his sublime rhapsodies.* Neither were the ancients blind to this phenomenon. The Pythagoreans used to speak of a double form of human nature inherent from generation, as if there were another animal joined to it, and hence a constant contention within ourselves. "Of all victories," says Clinias in Plato, "the first and best is the conquering one's self; and the most disgraceful and miserable defeat is the being conquered by one's self." "Tu si animum vicisti, potius quam animus te, Est quod gaudeas. Qui animum vincunt, quam quos animus, semper probiores cluent." So speaks Plautus.§ Cicero says, "reliquum est ut tute tibi imperes: quamquam hoc nescio quo modo dicatur, quasi duo simus ut alter imperet, alter pareat, non inscite tamen dicitur."|| Frederick Schlegel illustrates his position by referring to the dramatic development and representation of thought in the works of Plato, which has so completely assumed the conversational form, that if the superscription and name of the persons, all address and reply, and in general, the colloquial form, were suppressed, the whole would nevertheless remain a dialogue, in which every answer suggests a new quesition flowing on in an alternate living stream of discourse and reply, or rather of thought and counter thought. This internal conversational form is essential to all living thought and to its delivery, so that the connected, uninterrupted discourse of one individual may be assumed as a conversation. If we follow this dialogue with attention, we shall discover that as far as the sphere of morals is implicated, the two contending parties which agitate the external world are duly represented within ourselves. In fact they are found playing the same part, taking and retaking castles, professing war or treache rous neutrality, overthrowing or restoring thrones within the little world of each man's soul. In this spiritual contest they of the holy discipline are all like the Greeks of Homer. 66 there are so many different nations on the earth, living according to different rites and manners, and distinguished by variety of languages, arms, and habits; yet there are not more than two races of human society existing, which we may call two cities; the one consisting of men who live after the flesh, and the other of those who live after the spirit." The passions, indeed, given to us with life, as long as they remain pure and unabused, are under the protection of angels; but no light unearthly is required to show that when corrupted or misdirected, they are subjected to the empire of dæmons, and made the ready instruments of every error and vanity that oppose themselves to justice. Thus reason suffices to teach that there is a virtuous love and a guilty love, a pernicious anger, and a holy anger, a criminal pride and a noble sense of dignity. But those whom Christ had repaired by the new light of his immortality could see farther. The flight of Christian souls was higher still; for that belief in millions of spiritual creatures walking the earth unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep, those images, those chaunts, those crowns and reliquaries guarding the soul from the poisoned shafts of the impure dæmon, as if with a buckler of diamonds, that cleanness of heart which suggests that revolted spirits must seem to resemble even in shape and outward signs their sin and place of doom obscure and foul, that affirmation of the prophet, "ye are gods, and all sons of the Most High," that maxim of the bright school, "Christianus alter Christus," without doubt produced an ideal of humanity corresponding to what was in the mind of God rather than to what was in the mind of man. Men of genius like Sir Philip Sidney, who set themselves, as in his letter to Queen Elizabeth, " against papists," indulged their imagination in the absence of the beauties of the angelic life, by forming the ideal of sensual excellence, as may be witnessed in his essay, entitled, Valour Anatomized." This has always been and must ever continue the policy of those who attack the Catholic religion. Material is thus opposed to spiritual beauty, though the first is indebted to the latter for the attraction which it uses as a snare. As Novalis remarks, "the ideal of morality has no more dangerous rival than the ideal of the highest strength of the most powerful life, which is also termed the ideal of greatness. It is the maximum of barbarism" so foreign to the spirit of the middle ages, that a great guide of the thirteenth century declared it more detestable to be intemperate than timid:* "but in these times of irregular cultivation, it has many adherents even amidst the utmost weakness. Through this ideal man would acquire a brute spirit and a brute intelligence." Through this every thing belonging to the holy discipline of faith is seen in a distorted shape; "O mortal lust thou canst not lift thy head above the waves which whelm and sink thee down." At present the ideal of humanity in the whole development of human genius is animal, in the ages of faith it was angelical, and this of itself is quite sufficient to explain the difference between the manners and creations of the middle ages, and those of the modern civilization; for the great heresy of latter times has been a gross application to manners of the principle of Jordano Bruno, who inculcated the identification of God with nature, that is, with nature in its present state. Many of the faithful seem not to be aware that if they consider their own ideal by the light of unim • Egid. Rom. de Regim. II. 1. 16. + Schriften, II. 285. Dante, Hell, XXVII. passioned reason, and even by that of the ancient philosophy, they would find it amply justified. Novalis, whose remarkable writings may be said to represent the testimony of the human intelligence, says, "We must keep the body as well as the soul in our power. The body is the instrument to form and modify the world we must seek to form our body to all capacities. Modification of this is the modification of the world.”* The Pythagoreans were exhorted to beware of pleasure as of a thing requiring the utmost caution, the source and instigator of all deceit and sin. Aristotle said, that “it is brutish to indulge and delight in sensual pleasures, and that the most generous natures voluntarily refrain from them." He shows that the grand object of virtue is to resist pleasure, since it is still more difficult to fight against pleasure than against anger, according to Heraclitus epi δὲ τὸ χαλεπώτερον αἰεὶ καὶ τέχνη γίνεται καὶ åpern. § From the works of Plato a sublime defence might be derived for those features of Catholic morals which seem most repugnant to the feelings of flesh and blood. Socrates, in that magnificent passage at the end of the Gorgias, where he describes the punishment of the wicked after death, says, "that the souls which have been defiled with lust and avarice, will then appear horribly disfigured, as if with great scars and wounds which these vile passions had left imprinted on them."] Dionysius praises the manners of the first Romans on account of their abstemious life, being hardened against all enjoyment of pleasure; and for their having estimated happiness by virtue not by fortune. expressing his admiration for Romulus, observing how austere he was, and how he hated all crime, he concludes with this remarkable expression, καὶ πολλὴν ἔχουσα pòs Tovs пpwïkovs Bíovs óμolórηra.** In fact, according to Pindar it was the boast of Achilles, the type of heroism, that he had been imbued with the learning of Chiron, and that he had passed the first twenty years of his life in a cave, where he was educated by the chaste daughters of the centaur, to whom he never even uttered an unseemly word.†† In Plato, Georgias. Antiquit. Roman. Lib. II. c. 11. . II. c. 24. ++ Id. Pyth. Od. IV. Without doubt the heathen moralist in general knew little of that trial to which Hugo of St. Victor alludes, when he says that youth has to bear the burden and heat of the day, materially the weight of labour and heat of the sun, and morally the weight of the carnal fragility and heat of concupiscence. Yet Euripides, in drawing the character of Hippolytus, furnished proof that the Greeks were capable of conceiving the beauty of such a character as that of a young man wholly innocent, unwilling to pollute his ears or eyes with any thing against modesty, παρθένον xxv. Nay, how well theyunderstood the importance of guarding the senses with a view to the preservation of such virtue, may be collected from the double signification of the word kópŋ with the Greeks, and the alliance between pupillæ and pupula with the Latins. We, indeed, have abundant testimonies from ancient authors, to the excellence of many of the supernatural features of Catholic manners during the ages of faith. Cicero, after alluding to the internal division which involves the necessity of self government, adds, "Est in animis omnium fere natura molle quiddam, demissum, humile, enervatum, quodammodo et languidum, senile. Si nihil aliud, nihil esset homine deformius." And yet this is what the modern sophists would teach youth to follow! "Arrianus Maturius est princeps," says Pliny, "quum dico Princeps, non de facultatibus loquor, sed de castitate, justitia, gravitate, prudentia."§ The ancient philosophers even admit expressly the necessity of placing morals upon a supernatural basis, and of imparting motives to action higher than the mere principles of humanity. Varro thought it useful that brave men should fancy themselves sprung from the gods. "The human mind," he said, "in consequence of that persuasion, would undertake greater things, pursue them with more ardour, and perfect them with greater felicity." We no where meet • De Claustro Animæ, Lib. II. 14. + 1006. Tuscul. II. § Epist. Lib. III. 2. with an idea of morality independent of sacrifice and the fear of the Deity. Hermippus says that Chiron the Centaur first led the race of mortals to justice, teaching them oaths and propitiatory sacrifices, and καὶ σχήματ ̓ Ολύμπου. * It is a singular fact, that even for the institution of confession, apparently so beyond mortal ken, there might be testimonies produced from some of the ancient philosophers. Plato enforces the duty of disclosing one's sin and injustice to others; and Plutarch speaks as follows, in his treatise entitled, "How to perceive one's Progress in Virtue." "As for those who voluntarily give themselves up to the men that will reprove them, who confess their errors, and who disclose their own poverty, not being at ease until it be known, not wishing to be secret, but confessing and praying those who reprove and admonish them to prescribe a remedy, such a conduct is certainly not one of the worst signs of amendment and of progress in virtue." To this divine principle, which produced such an influence on Catholic manners, our attention must now be directed, which is an inquiry that will not lead us aside from the path of an historian; for the learned Scotti, in his Theory of Christian Politicks, remarks justly, that it is often necessary for a writer on civil government to enter upon doctrinal discussions, as in the very instance which calls for that observation, where he shows the utility which the state derives from the doctrines of purgatory and indulgence. There is no historian of Charles the Fifth, who has not been obliged to notice the curious petition of his Lutheran subjects, that by his imperial authority men might be compelled to return to the ancient discipline of confession, when experience had taught them that its abolition produced a visible deterioration in morals, and opened a prospect of interminable evils to society. To this point now, reader, let us therefore turn, and mark how just God decrees our debts be cancelled. • Clemens Alexand. Stromat. Lib. I. c. 15. CHAPTER VIII. N the symbol of our faith, immediately after the commemoration of the holy church, we find mention made of the remission of sins, because, as St. Augustin says, "it is only in fact by means of the remission of sins, that the church on earth can subsist."* Christ instituted the sacrament of penitential confession, and gave to men a power which belonged not to the angels, and which equalled his own, saying, "As my Father sendeth me, so send I you; whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins you retain, they are retained;" words, which though never interpreted but in one sense by the Catholic church, have visibly embarrassed the great writers of other schools, from whose commentaries no one can ascertain what they thought respecting them, and who probably, indeed, had not a clear idea themselves of what they would maintain. The Catholic church, as the Master of the Sentences says, has always claimed and exercised the power of binding and loosing, which power is permitted to priests alone. 'Rightly," saith he, "does the church which has true priests claim this authority, but heresy cannot claim it, which has not true priests."+ Some have questioned the nature and method of confession in the primitive church, but it is clear from St. Cyprian, that men then confessed their thoughts. Minucius Felix, addressing the idolaters, says, "apud nos et cogitare peccare est; vos, conscios timetis, nos etiam conscientiam solam, sine qua esse non possumus." It appears also that converts from heresy, like the old hermit Isidore, in the early church, used to confess the horrible secret sacrileges which they had committed against the blessed sacrament. § "Grave vulnus est," says St. Augustin, "lethale, mortiferum; sed omnipotens medicus." 66 Enchirid. cap. XVII. + Lib. IV. Sentent. distinct. 18, 19. Tract. de Lapsis. § Sophronii Pratum Spirit. cap. XXX. || Serm. CCCLII. "No one," says Origen, "must blush to indicate his sin to the priest of the Lord, and to seek the medicine."* "What doth it signify," says St. Ambrose, "whether by penitence or by the washing of baptism, the priests vindicate this right granted to them? it is one and the same mystery in both, for the name, of God worketh in penitence, as the grace of mysteries in baptism."f St. Cyprian speaks of every one confessing his sins to the priests; but after the fourth Council of Lateran, confession became more frequent among the faithful, and chiefly by means of the exhortation of the regular clergy. When Dante was at Ravenna, the laity were admonished by the decrees of Rainaldo the archbishop, to have recourse to the sacraments at least on eight festivals in the year, but this was merely fixing a minimum, to ascertain who were worthy of the name of Christians. When the number of confessors was increased, it became expedient to compile books for their guidance, such as the Confessional of St. Bonaventura, and the sum of St. Raymond of Pennafert; though these were not altogether a novelty, for penitentials of the highest antiquity may be found in various collections. By means of these works the priest, without being obliged to recur to the canons, had everywhere a sure rule for his conduct in the important action of imposing the penance appropriate to each sin. The moderns, in condemning books of this kind, had against them even their own most esteemed authority. "I commend much," says Lord Bacon, "the deducing of the law of God to cases of conscience."|| St. Raymond the Dominican, in the thirteenth century, may upon the whole be considered as author of the first sum of moral theology. His work was excellent, but in subsequent times, many writers who undertook to form similar collections, treated the subject in such a manner as to provoke |