II.

PRIESTS' RELIGION.

HUMAN AUTHORITY AND INVENTION versus CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE.

The Scriptures are the only standard of Christian faith and practice: every one is at liberty to examine them; but no one is at liberty to decline this examination: and though we may receive the help of others, we may not rest on their authority, (which is man-worship;) nor receive as religion, what is not in the Scriptures, (which is willworship.)

ROMAN ORATORY, AND PROTESTANT LOGIC.

THE Rev. Father Newman, late a member of the established clergy, and at present Father of the [Roman] Oratory, in Birmingham, is now delivering a course of Lectures on Catholicism in England, in the Corn Exchange, Birmingham.

It is quite a study to see him, as he comes and seats himself by the side of a swing desk, turns over in silence what appears to be the proof sheets of his Lecture; and then putting his finger first to his forehead, next to his chest, then to his left shoulder, and finally his right, should, by this devout crossing be prepared to address the Brothers of the Oratory.

His voice is somewhat womanly, his manner often very much like an excited and astonished gossip, as he twitches his gown; folds his hands on his knees, turns up the whites of his eyes, doing now the pathetic, and now the satirical, and now and then shuffling his chair about.

He is thin, spare, bloodless, perhaps "fasts twice a week," though no man should who can thank God for a good dinner,-by which both God and man are better served-he by thankfulness, we by his temporal bounty.

The presiding genius of this oratorical scene, is a picture of St. Philip, of Neri, the patron of the Oratorians. He is for all the world like Old Parr, the life-pill-man; that is, the pictures are alike, we cannot say anything as to their persons: nor will we make a comparison of their principles.

Poor Philip looks rather a fine old man, but seems rather crippled about the arms, as if he had lived an inactive life, or at least had been occupied chiefly in wool-gathering.

In his picture, he looks as if he had been used to sit in his arm chair,

and lean forward contemplatively upon his elbows, and had never done anything else: whereas the painter has taken the chair arms away, so the saint's arms hang in uncertainty; he does not like to put them down, and seems unable to hold them up, and we must leave him hanging at the back of the Oratorian, who by the help of four candles on a swing desk, reads as follows, in very gentle tones:

"There is a well-known fable, of which it is to my purpose to remind you, my Brothers of the Oratory, by way of introducing to you the subject of the Lectures which I am proposing to deliver. I am going to inquire why it is, that, in this intelligent nation and in this rational nineteenth century, we Catholics are so despised and hated by our own countrymen, with whom we have lived all our lives, that they are prompt to believe any story, however extravagant, that is told to our disadvantage; as if beyond a doubt, we were, every one of us, either brutishly deluded or preternaturally hypocritical, and they themselves, on the contrary, were in comparison of us absolute specimens of sagacity, wisdom, uprightness, manly virtue, and enlightened Christianity. I am not enquiring why they are not Catholics themselves, but why they are so angry with those who are. Protestants differ amongst themselves, without calling each other fools and knaves. Nor, again, am I proposing to prove you or to myself, that knaves and fools we are not, not idolators, not blasphemers, not men of blood, not profligates, not steeped in sin and seared in conscience; for we know each other and ourselves. No, my Catholic friends, whom I am addressing, I am neither attacking another's belief just now, nor defending myself: I am not engaging in controversy, though controversy is good in its place; I do but propose to investigate how Catholics become to be so trodden under foot, and spurned by a people, which is endowed by nature with many great qualities, moral and intellectual; how it is that we are cried out against by the very stones, and bricks, and tiles, and chimney-pots of a populous busy place, such as this town which we inhabit. The clearer sense we have of our own honesty, of the singleness of our motives, and the purity of our aims,of the truth, the beauty, the power, of our religion, its exhaustless fund of consolation for the weary, and its especial correspondence to the needs of the weak,-so much the greater may well be our perplexity to find that its advocates for the most part do not even gain a hearing in this country; that facts, and logic, and justice, and good sense, and right, and virtue, are all supposed to lie in the opposite scale; and that it is bid be thankful and contented, if it is allowed to exist, if it is barely tolerated, in a free people. Such a state of things is not only a trial to flesh and blood, but a discomfort to the reason and imagination: it is a riddle which frets the mind from the difficulty of solving it.

"Now then for my fable, which is not the worse because it is old. The Man once invited the Lion to be his guest, and received him with princely hospitality. The lion had the run of a magnificent palace, in which there were a vast many things to admire. There were large saloons and long corridors, richly furnished and decorated, and filled with a profusion of fine specimens of sculpture and painting, the works of the first masters in either art. The subjects represented were various; but the most prominent of them had an especial interest for the noble animal who

stalked by them. It was that of the lion himself; and as the owner of the mansion led him from one apartment into another, he did not fail to direct his attention to the indirect homage which these various groups and tableaux paid to the importance of the lion tribe.

"There was, however, one remarkable feature in all of them, to which the host, silent as he was from politeness, seemed not at all insensible; e;that, diverse as were these representations, in one point they all agreed, that the man was always victorious, and the lion was always overcome. The man had it all his own way, and the lion was but a fool, and served to make him sport. There were exquisite works in marble, of Samson rending the lion like a kid, and young David taking the lion by the beard and choking him. There was the man who ran his arm down the lion's throat, and held him fast by the tongue; and there was that other who, when carried off in his teeth, contrived to pull a penknife from his pocket and lodge it in the monsters heart. Then there was a lion hunt, or what had been such, for the brute was rolling round in the agonies of death, and his conqueror on his bleeding horse was surveying them from a distance. There was a gladiator from the Roman amphitheatre in mortal struggle with his tawny foe, and it was plain who was getting the mas tery. There was a lion in a net; a lion in a trap; four lions, yoked in harness, were drawing the car of a Roman emperor; and elsewhere stood Hercules, clad in the lion's skin, and with the club which demolished him. "Nor was this all: the lion was not only triumphed over, mocked, spurned, but he was tortured into extravagant forms, as if he were not only the slave and creature, but the very creation of man. He became an artistic decoration, and an heraldic emblazonment. The feet of alabaster tables fell away into lions' paws; lions' faces grinned on each side the shining mantelpiece; and lions' mouths held tight the handles of the doors. There were sphinxes too, half lion, half woman; there were lions rampant holding flags, lions couchant, lions passant, lions regardant; lions and unicorns; there were lions white, black, and red: in short, there was no variety of misconception or excess of indignity which was thought to great for the lord of the forest and the king of brutes. After he had gone over the mansion, his entertainer asked him what he thought of the splendours it contained; and he in reply did full justice to the riches of its owner and the skill of its decorators, but he added, lions would have fared better, had lions been the artists.'

"You see the application, Brothers of the Oratory, before I make it; There are two sides to everything; there is a Catholic side of the argument, and there is a Protestant.

"Now I repeat, in order to obviate misconception, I am neither assuming nor intending to prove that the Catholic Church comes from above (though, of course, I should not have become one of her children, unless I firmly held her to be the direct work of the Almighty;) but here I am only investigating how it is she comes to be so despised and hated among us; since a religion need not incur scorn and animosity simply because it is not recognized as true. And, I say, the reason is this, that reasons of State, political and national, prevent her being heard in her defence. She is considered too absurd to be inquired into, and too corrupt to be defended, and too dangerous to be treated with equity and fair dealing.

She is the victim of a prejudice which perpetuates itself, and gives birth to what it feeds upon.

The Rev. Oratorian undertook to accomplish his task in twelve weekly Lectures, the seventh of which we heard last night (Aug. 18th.) His work is done so effectually that it is now contracted to nine Lectures : meanwhile a counter-course is commenced, respecting which we can say no more than give the title and extracts from the first Lecture, they are published at a cheap rate, two pence each, four are promised, two have been delivered, and the whole four will be printed before this article meets the eye of the reader.

They are entitled "Orations to the Oratorians; being a supplement to the Rev. Dr. Newman's Lectures on Catholicism in England,' by the Rev. Brewin Grant, B.A. By Lawful Authority. London: Ward & Co. "We cannot more appropriately commence this course of Lectures, than in the words of the Apostle Paul: 'I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.'-(Rom. i. 16.) The gospel is a divine provision, of itself accompanied with such power; not by the retinue of priests; not receiving its authority or validity from Rome; but emanating as to its locality from the old Jerusalem, to rule by its declarations the New Jerusalem-the Church of the living God; without regard to geographical boundaries or any place where Satan's seat is, and is changed into Peter's: for neither in this mountain of Rome, Jerusalem, nor Samaria, shall men exclusively reverence the Father, since the hour now is' when men shall worship him in spirit and in truth,' not in priestcraft and pontificalibus. It is in order to renounce and disprove the pretences of Rome to any headship over the Church, or to the respect and obedience of Christendom, and to expose those pretences as put forth by the Oratorian, the Rev. Father Newman, that we enter the lists of controversy on this occasion. That we can thus debate without fear, we have to thank God, and not the Pope; not those priests who so thoroughly indoctrinated the world with persecuting principles as to make it difficult even for the Reformers themselves (whilst abandoning many other errors of Rome) to become free from a principle which had been branded into their flesh, and deeply impressed on their souls, by the practices and teachings of Rome.

"In undertaking this cause (which we do with a sincere desire of enlightening Roman Catholics as well as of strengthening Protestants against all unfair artifices and cloistered sophistry,) we have no other rule than the truth of God as mercifully revealed in the gospel of his Son,-those words which will judge both Catholic and Protestant at the last day. And surely that which will be our law then, should be our law now.

"If in this controversy we utter expressions and refer to questions that in other circumstances should be avoided, let this be set down to the occasion which has called us forth-to repudiate once again the bold and shameless pretences of an unscriptural fraternity of priests, falsely calling themselves God's Church; and as falsely putting that Church in the position of a Lord, or rather Lady over men instead of a servant of God. "There are two points worthy of notice in entering upon this refutation of Dr. Newman:

"First, that he professedly avoids the question whether Romanism or Protestantism be true; yet assumes the truth of Romanism, and declares Protestantism to be based on falsehood, as if this were really the question he had discussed, instead of the one he had in words abandoned. There is in this an artifice worthy of his cause.

"And secondly, the Rev. Father professedly lectures to the Brothers of the Oratory,' addresses them throughout, whilst he has brought them from home where he might have told them his whole mind, and talks to them before a Birmingham public, who are by placards invited to the scene, but shut out from a formal answer, since he is speaking only to the household of Philip, his patron saint.

"Nevertheless, these Lectures are printed. and are to be published as an appeal to the world, under the cloak of a word to the Oratorians. There is no reason for this sideling method, except from the fact that priests, being so accustomed to indirect means, are scarcely able to do anything straightforwardly even when they might do it without any one complaining of the course they adopt.

"If Dr. Newman intended to address the public, why not do so like a man, and as one who has no more reason to be afraid than he has to be ashamed? If he meant only the Brothers of the Oratory, why not give them a course of private lectures in their own snuggery, amidst certain rows of empty blacking bottles, legs of mutton, and pats of butter,' which are still safe from Protestant violence?

"The Rev. Father professes to discuss one point, he concludes about another he pretends to talk to one class of men, and all the while means somebody else: 'Brothers of the Oratory"-this is oratorical.

"Personally we have nothing to say respecting the worthy Father, premising only, that he is learned and eloquent; but was equally learned and quite as eloquent whilst for years a clergyman in the Church of England; and therefore it may be a mystery how this new light got into his mind; and whether, as he gets more advanced, he may not be visited with some further revelations, is still a matter of doubt, so that his only claim to speak the infallible truth is—that he is a fallible man.

"That the Rev. Oratorian, professedly avoids the question of the truth of Romanism is plain, from many declarations, as, my Catholic friends, whom I am addressing, I am neither attacking another's belief just now, nor defending myself; I am not engaging in controversy.'-(Lect. I. p. 2.) And again, however without going on to the question where the truth lies, which is a further question, and not to my present purpose, &c.'(Page 5.) And again, (page 11) 'now I repeat, in order to obviate misconception, that I am neither assuming nor intending to prove that the Roman Catholic Church comes from above, &c.'

"Yet what is the Doctor's conclusion, after refuting some Maria Monk, whom he describes as a crazy moll? It is this vast leap,-that 'to Protestantism, false witness is the principle of propagation.'-(Page 122.) And again, that 'truth is not equal to the exigences of the Protestant cause; falsehood is its best friend.'-(Lect. IV. p. 166.)

"Yet he was not enquiring where truth lay; he repudiated at the start, all investigation as to the truth of either side, so that his arguments might not be attacked on the merits of the question, and then having argued for one thing, he concludes for what he refused to enter upon.