distinct province and process of science, is not the less peremptory and absolute as to the unity of all truth and the vital relation of all true science to the Divine philosophy of revelation.'

We are as little dazzled by the intellectual development of the Anticatholic science as by the pretensions of modern democracy. We see both going to pieces before our eyes. And ex parte intellectûs et ex parte voluntatis we submit ourselves to the Church of God, the mother and mistress of Christian science and Christian society, as our only guide and only redemption from the aberrations which spring from the reason, and the confusions which spring from the will of man.

CHAPTER III.

THE RELATION OF THE HOLY GHOST TO THE LETTER

OF SCRIPTURE.

THE two divine truths which reign, and will reign for ever over the whole kingdom of faith and of theology, are the infallibility of the Church, and the inspiration of the Scripture; or, in other words, the relation of the Holy Spirit of God to the Word of God written and unwritten.

These two divine truths, when contemplated as doctrines or rather these two divine facts, when contemplated in the supernatural order of grace-have had, like other dogmas, their successive periods of simple affirmation and simple belief—incipient controversy and partial analysis—and will probably have their formal contradiction, their last analysis, and their final scientific definition.

The history of the infallibility of the Church and of the inspiration of Holy Scripture will then be written like as the history of the Immaculate Concep

tion, which has now been closed by the dogmatic Bull of Pius IX.

It is far from my thoughts to pretend to give here the history of so great and delicate a doctrine as Inspiration, but it may not be unseasonable to trace a slight outline of a subject which has now fixed upon itself an anxious attention in our country at this time. The Protestant Reformation staked its existence upon, the Bible; and as Protestants have extensively denied or undermined its inspiration, no other subject can be so vital to their religion, or more opportune for us.

The Church of England has lately been thrown into much excitement, and public opinion has been not a little scandalized, by the appearance of works denying in great part the inspiration of Holy Scripture. And yet there is nothing new in the rise of such errors. Error has its periodic times. What is passing now, has returned in every century, almost in every generation. It is not new to the Catholic Church to have to combat with the depravers of Holy Writ; for there has been a line and succession of gainsayers who have denied the Divine veracity and authenticity, either in whole or in part, of the written Word of God. Even in the lifetime of S. John, the Cerinthians rejected all the New Testament except the Gospel of S. Matthew and the Book of Acts. In the second century, the Carpocratians rejected the whole of the Old Testament; Marcion

and Cerdon denounced it as the fabrication of an evil deity, and acknowledged only the Gospel of S. Luke and the Epistles to Timothy and Titus. In the third century the Archontici rejected the Old Testament; the Apellitæ, the Severiani, and the Eucharitæ rejected most of the Old Testament and of the New. In the fourth, the Alogi, the Gnostics, and the Manichæans rejected the greater part both of the Jewish and of the Christian Scriptures. Faustus the Manichæan, and others, against whom S. Ambrose and S. Augustine wrote in the fourth and fifth centuries, accused the Old Testament of immorality, contradiction, and intrinsic incredibility, as others have done since. The Apocryphi received only the Prophets and Apostles. In the eighth century, the Albanenses, Bajolenses, Concordenses—names known only to students-repeated the errors of Marcion. Herman Rissuich, in the fifteenth century, rejected the whole of Scripture as imperfect and useless: David Georgius revived this impiety in the sixteenth century. Luther and his followers rejected the Epistle of S. James, the Hebrews, the third of S. John, the second of S. Peter, and the Apocalypse. The Libertini held all the Scriptures to be fables. The Ambrosians, claiming for themselves divine reve- ` lations, despised both the Old Testament and the New. This brings us to the seventeenth century, in which modern infidelity began to appear, and the Rational

istic criticism to arise. In the eighteenth and the present century there is no book of the Old or New Testament which has not been rejected by some among the Rationalistic or Neologian critics of Germany. The author to whom the modern errors on the subject of Inspiration may be ascribed is Spinoza. He first reduced to a complete statement all the objections which can be brought against it. He was the father of the sceptical criticism which in the seventeenth century inundated Holland and Germany, and found its way over into England. It is a remarkable fact that Schleiermacher, whose writings have extensively propagated the Rationalistic movement both in Germany and in England, sacrificed a lock of his hair as a token of pious veneration on the grave of Spinoza.' After Spinoza, Le Clerc, in 1685, published his letters entitled 'Sentimens de quelques Théologiens de Hollande,' which excited a great sensation especially in England. They were a mere reflection of Spi

noza.

It is, therefore, no new thing in the history of the Church, nor, indeed, in the history of England since the Reformation. From the Deistical writers down to Thomas Paine, there has never wanted a succession of critics and objectors who have assailed the extrinsic or intrinsic authority of Holy Scrip

ture.

1 Lee on Inspiration, App. C. p. 450.