SECTION II.

Several learned men have testified their surprise at not finding in the historian, Flavius Josephus, any mention of Jesus Christ; for all men of true learning are now agreed that the short passage relative to him in that history has been interpolated. The father of Flavius Josephus must, however, have been witness to all the miracles of Jesus. Josephus was of the sacerdotal race and akin to Herod's wife, Mariamne. He gives us long details of all that prince's actions, yet says not a word of the life or death of Jesus; nor does this historian, who disguises none of Herod's cruelties, say one word of the general massacre of the infants ordered by him on hearing that there was born a king of the Jews. The Greek calendar estimates the number of children murdered on this occasion at fourteen thousand. This is, of all actions of all tyrants, the most horrible. There is no example of it in the history of the whole world.

Yet the best writer the Jews have ever had, the only one esteemed by the Greeks and Romans, makes no mention of an event so singular and so frightful, he says nothing of the appearance of a new star in the east after the birth of our Saviour--a brilliant phenomenon, which could not escape the knowledge of a historian so enlightened as Josephus. He is also silent respecting the darkness which, on our Saviour's death, covered the whole earth for three hours at midday--the great number of graves that opened at that moment, and the multitude of the just that rose again.

The learned are constantly evincing their surprise that no Roman historian speaks of these prodigies, happening in the empire of Tiberius, under the eyes of a Roman governor and a Roman garrison, who must have sent to the emperor and the senate a detailed account of the most miraculous event that mankind had ever heard of. Rome itself must have been plunged for three hours in impenetrable darkness; such a prodigy would have had a place in the annals of Rome, and in those of every nation. But it was not God's will that these divine things should be written down by their profane hands.

The same persons also find some difficulties in the gospel history. They remark that, in Matthew, Jesus Christ tells the scribes and pharisees that all the innocent blood that has been shed upon earth, from that of Abel the Just down to that of Zachary, son of Barac, whom they slew between the temple and the altar, shall be upon their heads.

There is not (say they) in the Hebrew history any Zachary slain in the temple before the coming of the Messiah, nor in His time, but in the history of the siege of Jerusalem, by Josephus, there is a Zachary, son of Barac, slain by the faction of the Zelotes. This is in the nineteenth chapter of the fourth book. Hence they suspect that the gospel according to St. Matthew was written after the taking of Jerusalem by Titus. But every doubt, every objection of this kind, vanishes when it is considered how great a difference there must be between books divinely inspired and the books of men. It was God's pleasure to envelop alike in awful obscurity His birth, His life, and His death. His ways are in all things different from ours.

The learned have also been much tormented by the difference between the two genealogies of Jesus Christ. St. Matthew makes Joseph the son of Jacob, Jacob of Matthan, Matthan of Eleazar. St. Luke, on the contrary, says that Joseph was the son of Heli, Heli of Matthat, Matthat of Levi, Levi of Melchi, etc. They will not reconcile the fifty-six progenitors up to Abraham, given to Jesus by Luke, with the forty-two other forefathers up to the same Abraham, given him by Matthew; and they are quite staggered by Matthew's giving only forty-one generations, while he speaks of forty-two. They start other difficulties about Jesus being the son, not of Joseph, but of Mary. They moreover raise some doubts respecting our Saviour's miracles, quoting St. Augustine. St. Hilary, and others, who have given to the accounts of these miracles a mystic or allegorical sense; as, for example, to the fig tree cursed and blasted for not having borne figs when it was not the fig season; the devils sent into the bodies of swine in a country where no swine were kept; the water changed into wine at the end of a feast, when the guests were already too much heated. But all these learned critics are confounded by the faith, which is but the purer for their cavils. The sole design of this article is to follow the historical thread and give a precise idea of the facts about which there is no dispute.

First, then, Jesus was born under the Mosaic law; He was circumcised according to that law; He fulfilled all its precepts; He kept all its feasts; He did not reveal the mystery of His incarnation; He never told the Jews He was born of a virgin; He received John's blessing in the waters of the Jordan, a ceremony to which various of the Jews submitted; but He never baptized any one; He never spoke of the seven sacraments; He instituted no ecclesiastical hierarchy during His life. He concealed from His contemporaries that He was the Son of God, begotten from all eternity, consubstantial with His Father; and that the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father and the Son. He did not say that His person was composed of two natures and two wills. He left these mysteries to be announced to men in the course of time by those who were to be enlightened by the Holy Ghost. So long as He lived, He departed in nothing from the law of His fathers. In the eyes of men He was no more than a just man, pleasing to God, persecuted by the envious and condemned to death by prejudiced magistrates. He left His holy church, established by Him, to do all the rest.

Let us consider the state of religion in the Roman Empire at that period. Mysteries and expiations were in credit almost throughout the earth. The emperors, the great, and the philosophers, had, it is true, no faith in these mysteries; but the people, who, in religious matters, give the law to the great, imposed on them the necessity of conforming in appearance to their worship. To succeed in chaining the multitude you must seem to wear the same fetters. Cicero himself was initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries. The knowledge of only one God was the principal tenet inculcated in these mysteries and magnificent festivals. It is undeniable that the prayers and hymns handed down to us as belonging to these mysteries are the most pious and most admirable of the relics of paganism. The Christians, who likewise adored only one God, had thereby greater facility in converting some of the Gentiles. Some of the philosophers of Plato's sect became Christians; hence in the three first centuries the fathers of the church were all Platonists.

The inconsiderate zeal of some of them in no way detracts from the fundamental truths. St. Justin, one of the primitive fathers, has been reproached with having said, in his commentary on Isaiah, that the saints should enjoy, during a reign of a thousand years on earth, every sensual pleasure. He has been charged with criminality in saying, in his "Apology for Christianity," that God, having made the earth, left it in the care of the angels, who, having fallen in love with the women, begot children, which are the devils.

Lactantius, with other fathers, has been condemned for having supposed oracles of the sibyls. He asserted that the sibyl Erythrea made four Greek lines, which rendered literally are:

With five loaves and two fishes He shall feed five thousand men in the desert; And, gathering up the fragments that remain, With them he shall fill twelve baskets.

The primitive Christians have been reproached with inventing some acrostic verses on the name Jesus Christ and attributing them to an ancient sibyl. They have also been reproached with forging letters from Jesus Christ to the king of Edessa, dated at a time when there was no king in Edessa; with having forged letters of Mary, letters of Seneca to Paul, false gospels, false miracles, and a thousand other impostures.

We have, moreover, the history or gospel of the nativity and marriage of the Virgin Mary; wherein we are told that she was brought to the temple at three years old and walked up the stairs by herself. It is related that a dove came down from heaven to give notice that it was Joseph who was to espouse Mary. We have the protogospel of James, brother of Jesus by Joseph's first wife. It is there said that when Joseph complained of Mary's having become pregnant in his absence, the priests made each of them drink the water of jealousy, and both were declared innocent.

We have the gospel of the Infancy, attributed to St. Thomas. According to this gospel, Jesus, at five years of age, amused himself, like other children of the same age, with moulding clay, and making it, among other things, into the form of little birds. He was reproved for this, on which he gave life to the birds, and they flew away. Another time, a little boy having beaten him, was struck dead on the spot. We have also another gospel of the Infancy in Arabic, which is much more serious.

We have a gospel of Nicodemus. This one seems more worthy of attention, for we find in it the names of those who accused Jesus before Pilate. They were the principal men of the synagogue--Ananias, Caiaphas, Sommas, Damat, Gamaliel, Judah, Nephthalim. In this history there are some things that are easy to reconcile with the received gospels, and others which are not elsewhere to be found. We here find that the woman cured of a flux was called Veronica. We also find all that Jesus did in hell when He descended thither. Then we have the two letters supposed to have been written by Pilate to Tiberius concerning the execution of Jesus; but their bad Latin plainly shows that they are spurious. To such a length was this false zeal carried that various letters were circulated attributed to Jesus Christ. The letter is still preserved which he is said to have written to Abgarus, king of Edessa; but, as already remarked, there had at that time ceased to be a king of Edessa.

Fifty gospels were fabricated and were afterwards declared apocryphal. St. Luke himself tells us that many persons had composed gospels. It has been believed that there was one called the Eternal Gospel, concerning which it is said in the Apocalypse, chap, xiv., "And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel.".... In the thirteenth century the Cordeliers, abusing these words, composed an "eternal gospel," by which the reign of the Holy Ghost was to be substituted for that of Jesus Christ. But never in the early ages of the church did any book appear with this title. Letters of the Virgin were likewise invented, written to Ignatius the martyr, to the people of Messina, and others.

Abdias, who immediately succeeded the apostles, wrote their history, with which he mixed up such absurd fables that in time these histories became wholly discredited, although they had at first a great reputation. To Abdias we are indebted for the account of the contest between St. Peter and Simon the magician. There was at Rome, in reality, a very skilful mechanic named Simon, who not only made things fly across the stage, as we still see done, but moreover revived in his own person the prodigy attributed to Dædalus. He made himself wings; he flew; and, like Icarus, he fell. So say Pliny and Suetonius.

Abdias, who was in Asia and wrote in Hebrew, tells us that Peter and Simon met at Rome in the reign of Nero. A young man, nearly related to the emperor, died, and the whole court begged that Simon would raise him to life. St. Peter presented himself to perform the same operation. Simon employed all the powers of his art, and he seemed to have succeeded, for the dead man moved his head. "This is not enough," cries Peter; "the dead man must speak; let Simon leave the bedside and we shall see whether the young man is alive." Simon went aside and the deceased no longer stirred, but Peter brought him to life with a single word.

Simon went and complained to the emperor that a miserable Galilean had taken upon himself to work greater wonders than he. Simon was confronted with Peter and they made a trial of skill. "Tell me," said Simon to Peter, "what I am thinking of?" "If," returned Peter, "the emperor will give me a barley loaf, thou shalt find whether or not I know what thou hast in thy heart." A loaf was given him; Simon immediately caused two large dogs to appear and they wanted to devour it. Peter threw them the loaf, and while they were eating it he said: "Well, did I not know thy thoughts? thou wouldst have had thy dogs devour me."

After this first sitting it was proposed that Simon and Peter should make a flying-match, and try which could raise himself highest in the air. Simon tried first; Peter made the sign of the cross and down came Simon and broke his legs. This story was imitated from that which we find in the "Sepher toldos Jeschut," where it is said that Jesus Himself flew, and that Judas, who would have done the same, fell headlong. Nero, vexed that Peter had broken his favorite, Simon's, legs, had him crucified with his head downwards. Hence the notion of St. Peter's residence at Rome, the manner of his execution and his sepulchre.

The same Abdias established the belief that St. Thomas went and preached Christianity in India to King Gondafer, and that he went thither as an architect. The number of books of this sort, written in the early ages of Christianity, is prodigious.

St. Jerome, and even St. Augustine, tell us that the letters of Seneca and St. Paul are quite authentic. In the first of these letters Seneca hopes his brother Paul is well: "Bene te valere, frater, cupio." Paul does not write quite so good Latin as Seneca: "I received your letters yesterday," says he, "with joy."--"Litteras tuas hilaris accepi".--"And I would have answered them immediately had I had the presence of the young man whom I would have sent with them."--"Si præsentiam juvenis habuissem." Unfortunately these letters, in which one would look for instruction, are nothing more than compliments.

All these falsehoods, forged by ill-informed and mistakenly-zealous Christians, were in no degree prejudicial to the truth of Christianity; they obstructed not its progress; on the contrary, they show us that the Christian society was daily increasing and that each member was desirous of hastening its growth.

The Acts of the Apostles do not tell us that the apostles agreed on a symbol. Indeed, if they had put together the symbol (the creed, as we now call it), St. Luke could not in his history have omitted this essential basis of the Christian religion. The substance of the creed is scattered through the gospels; but the articles were not collected until long after.

In short, our creed is, indisputably, the belief of the apostles; but it was not written by them. Rufinus, a priest of Aquileia, is the first who mentions it; and a homily attributed to St. Augustine is the first record of the supposed way in which this creed was made; Peter saying, when they were assembled, "I believe in God the Father Almighty"--Andrew, "and in Jesus Christ"--James, "who was conceived by the Holy Ghost"; and so of the rest.

This formula was called in Greek symbolos; and in Latin collatio. Only it must be observed that the Greek version has it: "I believe in God the Father, maker of heaven and earth." In the Latin, maker, former, is rendered by "creatorem". But afterwards, in translating the symbol of the First Council of Nice, it was rendered by "factorem".

Constantine assembled at Nice, opposite Constantinople, the first ecumenical council, over which Ozius presided. The great question touching the divinity of Jesus Christ, which so much agitated the church, was there decided. One party held the opinion of Origen, who says in his sixth chapter against Celsus, "We offer our prayers to God through Christ, who holds the middle place between natures created and uncreated; who leads us to the grace of His Father and presents our prayers to the great God in quality of our high priest." These disputants also rest upon many passages of St. Paul, some of which they quote. They depend particularly upon these words of Jesus Christ: "My Father is greater than I"; and they regard Jesus as the first-born of the creation; as a pure emanation of the Supreme Being, but not precisely as God.

The other side, who were orthodox, produced passages more conformable to the eternal divinity of Jesus; as, for example, the following: "My Father and I are one"; words which their opponents interpret as signifying: "My Father and I have the same object, the same intention; I have no other will than that of My Father." Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, and after him Athanasius, were at the head of the orthodox; and Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia, with seventeen other bishops, the priest Arius, and many more priests, led the party opposed to them. The quarrel was at first exceedingly bitter, as St. Alexander treated his opponents as so many anti-christs.

At last, after much disputation, the Holy Ghost decided in the council, by the mouths of two hundred and ninety-nine bishops, against eighteen, as follows: "Jesus is the only Son of God; begotten of the Father; light of light; very God of very God; of one substance with the Father. We believe also in the Holy Ghost," etc. Such was the decision of the council; and we perceive by this fact how the bishops carried it over the simple priests. Two thousand persons of the latter class were of the opinion of Arius, according to the account of two patriarchs of Alexandria, who have written the annals of Alexandria in Arabic. Arius was exiled by Constantine, as was Athanasius soon after, when Arius was recalled to Constantinople. Upon this event St. Macarius prayed so vehemently to God to terminate the life of Arius before he could enter the cathedral, that God heard his prayer--Arius dying on his way to church in 330. The Emperor Constantine ended his life in 337. He placed his will in the hands of an Arian priest and died in the arms of the Arian leader, Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia, not receiving baptism until on his deathbed, and leaving a triumphant, but divided church. The partisans of Athanasius and of Eusebius carried on a cruel war; and what is called Arianism was for a long time established in all the provinces of the empire.

Julian the philosopher, surnamed the apostate, wished to stifle their divisions, but could not succeed. The second general council was held at Constantinople in 1381. It was there laid down that the Council of Nice had not decided quite correctly in regard to the Holy Ghost; and it added to the Nicene creed that "the Holy Ghost was the giver of life and proceeded from the Father, and with the Father and Son is to be worshipped and glorified." It was not until towards the ninth century that the Latin church decreed that the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father and the Son.

In the year 431, the third council-general, held at Ephesus, decided that Jesus had "two natures and one person." Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, who maintained that the Virgin Mary should be entitled Mother of Christ, was called Judas by the council; and the "two natures" were again confirmed by the council of Chalcedon.

I pass lightly over the following centuries, which are sufficiently known. Unhappily, all these disputes led to wars, and the church was uniformly obliged to combat. God, in order to exercise the patience of the faithful, also allowed the Greek and Latin churches to separate in the ninth century. He likewise permitted in the east no less than twenty-nine horrible schisms with the see of Rome.

If there be about six hundred millions of men upon earth, as certain learned persons pretend, the holy Roman Catholic church possesses scarcely sixteen millions of them--about a twenty-sixth part of the inhabitants of the known world.

CHRISTMAS.

Every one knows that this is the feast of the nativity of Jesus. The most ancient feast kept in the church, after those of Easter and Pentecost, was that of the baptism of Jesus. There were only these three feasts, until St. Chrysostom delivered his homily on Pentecost. We here make no account of the feasts of the martyrs, which were of a very inferior order. That of the baptism of Jesus was named the Epiphany, an imitation of the Greeks, who gave that name to the feasts which they held to commemorate the appearance or manifestation of the gods upon earth--since it was not until after his baptism that Jesus began to preach the gospel.

We know not whether, about the end of the fourth century, this feast was solemnized in the Isle of Cyprus on the 6th of November; but St. Epiphanius maintained that Jesus was born on that day. St. Clement of Alexandria tells us that the Basilidians held this feast on the 15th of the month tybi, while others held it on the 15th of the same month; that is, it was kept by some on the 10th of January, and by others on the 6th; the latter opinion is the one now adopted. As for the nativity, as neither the day nor the month nor the year of it was known, it was not celebrated.

According to the remarks which we find appended to the works of the same father, they who have been the most curious in their researches concerning the day on which Jesus was born, some said that it was on the 25th of the Egyptian month pachon, answering to the 20th of May; others that it was the 24th or 25th of pharmuthi, corresponding to the 19th and 20th of April. The learned M. de Beausobre says that these latter were the days of St. Valentine. Be this as it may, Egypt and the East kept the feast of the birth of Jesus on the 6th of January, the same day as that of His baptism; without it being known (at least with certainty) when, or for what reason, this custom commenced.

The opinion and practice of the western nations were quite different from those of the east. The centuriators of Magdeburg repeat a passage in Theophilus of Cæsarea, which makes the churches of Gaul say: "Since the birth of Christ is celebrated on the 25th of December, on whatever day of the week it may fall, so also should the resurrection of Jesus be celebrated on the 25th of March, whatever day of the week it may be, the Lord having risen again on that day."

If this be true, it must be acknowledged that the bishops of Gaul were very prudent and very reasonable. Being persuaded, as all the ancients were, that Jesus had been crucified on the 23d of March, and had risen again on the 25th, they commemorated His death on the 23d and His resurrection on the 25th, without paying any regard to the observance of the full moon, which was originally a Jewish ceremony, and without confining themselves to the Sunday. Had the church imitated them, she would have avoided the long and scandalous disputes which nearly separated the East from the West, and were not terminated until the First Council of Nice.

Some of the learned conjecture that the Romans chose the winter solstice for holding the birth of Jesus, because the sun then begins again to approach our hemisphere. In Julius Cæsar's time the civil and political solstice was fixed for the 25th of December. This at Rome was a festival in celebration of the returning sun. Pliny tells us that it was called bruma; and, like Servius, places it on the 8th of the calends of January. This association might have some connection with the choice of the day, but it was not the origin of it. A passage in Josephus (evidently forged), three or four errors of the ancients, and a very mystical explanation of a saying of St. John the Baptist, determined this choice, as Joseph Scaliger is about to inform us.

It pleased the ancients (says that learned critic) to suppose--first, that Zacharias was sovereign sacrificer when Jesus was born. But nothing is more untrue; it is no longer believed by any one, at least among those of any information.

Secondly--the ancients supposed that Zacharias was in the holy of holies, offering incense, when the angel appeared to him and announced the birth of a son.

Thirdly--as the sovereign sacrificer entered the temple but once a year, on the day of expiation, which was the 10th of the Jewish month rifri, partly answering to the month of September, the ancients supposed that it was the 27th; and that afterwards, on the 23d or 24th, Zacharias having returned home after the feast, Elizabeth, his wife, conceived John the Baptist; when the feast of the conception of that saint was fixed for those days. As women ordinarily go with child for two hundred and seventy or two hundred and seventy-four days, it followed that the nativity of John was fixed for the 24th of June. Such was the origin of St. John's day, and of Christmas day, which was regulated by it.

Fourthly--it was supposed that there were six entire months between the conception of John the Baptist and that of Jesus; although the angel simply tells Mary that Elizabeth was then in the sixth month of her pregnancy; consequently the conception of Jesus was fixed for the 25th of March; and from these various suppositions it was concluded that Jesus must have been born on the 25th of December, precisely nine months after his conception.

There are many wonderful things in these arrangements. It is not one of the least worthy of admiration, that the four cardinal points of the year--the equinoxes and the solstices, as they were then fixed--were marked by the conceptions and births of John the Baptist and Jesus. But it is yet more marvellous and worthy of remark, that the solstice when Jesus was born is that at which the days begin to increase; while that on which John the Baptist came into the world was the period at which they begin to shorten. The holy forerunner had intimated this in a very mystical manner, when speaking of Jesus, in these words: "He must grow, and I must become less."

Prudentius alludes to this in a hymn on the nativity of our Lord. Yet St. Leo says that in his time there were persons in Rome who said the feast was venerable, not so much on account of the birth of Jesus as of the return, and, as they expressed it, the new birth of the sun. St. Epiphanius assures us it was fully established that Jesus was born on the 6th of January; but St. Clement of Alexandria, much more ancient and more learned than he, fixes the birth on the 18th of November, of the twenty-eighth year of Augustus. This is deduced, according to the Jesuit Petau's remark on St. Epiphanius, from these words of St. Clement: "The whole time from the birth of Jesus Christ to the death of Commodus was a hundred and ninety-four years, one month and thirteen days." Now Commodus died, according to Petau, on the last of December, in the year 192 of our era; therefore, according to St. Clement, Jesus was born one month and thirteen days before the last of December; consequently, on the 18th of November, in the twenty-eighth year of the reign of Augustus. Concerning which it must be observed that St. Clement dates the reign of Augustus only from the death of Antony and the capture of Alexandria, because it was not until then that Augustus was left the sole master of the empire. Thus we are no more assured of the year of this birth than we are of the month or the day. Though St. Luke declares, "that He had perfect understanding of all things from the very first," he clearly shows that he did not know the exact age of Jesus when He says that, when baptized, He "began to be about thirty years old." Indeed, this evangelist makes Jesus born in the year of the numbering which, according to him, was made by Cyrenus or Cyrenius, governor of Syria; while, according to Tertullian, it was made by Sentius Saturninus. But Saturninus had quitted the province in the last year of Herod, and, as Tacitus informs us, was succeeded by Quintilius Varus; and Publius Sulpicius Quirinus or Quirinius, of whom it would seem St. Luke means to speak, did not succeed Quintilius Varus until about ten years after Herod's death, when Archelaus, king of Judæa, was banished by Augustus, as Josephus tells us in his "Jewish Antiquities."

It is true that Tertullian, and St. Justin before him, referred the pagans and the heretics of their time to the public archives containing the registers of this pretended numbering; but Tertullian likewise referred to the public archives for the account of the darkness at noonday at the time of the passion of Jesus, as will be seen in the article on "Eclipse"; where we have remarked the want of exactness in these two fathers, and in similar authorities, in our observations on a statue which St. Justin--who assures us that he saw it at Rome--says was dedicated to Simon the magician, but which was in reality dedicated to a god of the ancient Sabines.

These uncertainties, however, will excite no astonishment when it is recollected that Jesus was unknown to His disciples until He had received baptism from John. It is expressly, "beginning with the baptism of Jesus," that Peter will have the successor of Judas testify concerning Jesus; and, according to the same Acts, Peter thereby understands the whole time that Jesus had lived with them.

CHRONOLOGY.

The world has long disputed about ancient chronology; but has there ever been any? Every considerable people must necessarily possess and preserve authentic, well-attested registers. But how few people were acquainted with the art of writing? and, among the small number of men who cultivated this very rare art, are any to be found who took the trouble to mark two dates with exactness?

We have, indeed, in very recent times the astronomical observations of the Chinese and the Chaldæans. They only go back about two thousand years, more or less, beyond our era. But when the early annals of a nation confine themselves simply to communicating the information that there was an eclipse in the reign of a certain prince, we learn, certainly, that such a prince existed, but not what he performed.

Moreover, the Chinese reckon the year in which an emperor dies as still constituting a part of his reign, until the end of it; even though he should die the first day of the year, his successor dates the year following his death with the name of his predecessor. It is not possible to show more respect for ancestors; nor is it possible to compute time in a manner more injudicious in comparison with modern nations.

We may add that the Chinese do not commence their sexagenary cycle, into which they have introduced arrangement, till the reign of the Emperor Iao, two thousand three hundred and fifty-seven years before our vulgar era. Profound obscurity hangs over the whole period of time which precedes that epoch.

Men are generally contented with an approximation--with the "pretty nearly" in every case. For example, before the invention of watches, people could learn the time of day or night only approximately. In building, the stones were pretty nearly hewn to a certain shape, the timber pretty nearly squared, and the limbs of the statue pretty nearly chipped to a proper finish; a man was only pretty nearly acquainted with his nearest neighbors; and, notwithstanding the perfection we have ourselves attained, such is the state of things at present throughout the greater part of the world.

Let us not then be astonished that there is nowhere to be found a correct ancient chronology.

That which we have of the Chinese is of considerable value, when compared with the chronological labors of other nations. We have none of the Indians, nor of the Persians, and scarcely any of the ancient Egyptians. All our systems formed on the history of these people are as contradictory as our systems of metaphysics.

The Greek Olympiads do not commence till seven hundred and twenty-eight years before our era of reckoning. Until we arrive at them, we perceive only a few torches to lighten the darkness, such as the era of Nabonassar, the war between Lacedæmon and Messene; even those epochs themselves are subjects of dispute.

Livy took care not to state in what year Romulus began his pretended reign. The Romans, who well knew the uncertainty of that epoch, would have ridiculed him had he undertaken to decide it. It is proved that the duration of two hundred and forty years ascribed to the seven first kings of Rome is a very false calculation. The first four centuries of Rome are absolutely destitute of chronology.

If four centuries of the most memorable empire the world ever saw comprise only an undigested mass of events, mixed up with fables, and almost without a date, what must be the case with small nations, shut up in an obscure corner of the earth, that have never made any figure in the world, notwithstanding all their attempts to compensate, by prodigy and imposture, for their deficiency in real power and cultivation?

Of the Vanity of Systems, Particularly in Chronology.

The Abbé Condillac performed a most important service to the human mind when he displayed the false points of all systems. If we may ever hope that we shall one day find the road to truth, it can only be after we have detected all those which lead to error. It is at least a consolation to be at rest, to be no longer seeking, when we perceive that so many philosophers have sought in vain.

Chronology is a collection of bladders of wind. All who thought to pass over it as solid ground have been immersed. We have, at the present time, twenty-four systems, not one of which is true.

The Babylonians said, "We reckon four hundred and seventy-three thousand years of astronomical observations." A Parisian, addressing him, says, "Your account is correct; your years consisted each of a solar day; they amount to twelve hundred and ninety-seven of ours, from the time of Atlas, the great astronomer, king of Africa, till the arrival of Alexander at Babylon."

But, whatever our Parisian may say, no people in the world have ever confounded a day with a year; and the people of Babylon still less than any other. This Parisian stranger should have contented himself with merely observing to the Chaldæans: "You are exaggerators, and our ancestors were ignorant. Nations are exposed to too many revolutions to permit their keeping a series of four thousand seven hundred and thirty-six centuries of astronomical calculations. And, with respect to Atlas, king of the Moors, no one knows at what time he lived. Pythagoras might pretend to have been a cock, just as reasonably as you may boast of such a series of observations."

The great point of ridicule in all fantastic chronologies is the arrangement of all the great events of a man's life in precise order of time, without ascertaining that the man himself ever existed. Lenglet repeats after others, in his chronological compilation of universal history, that precisely in the time of Abraham, and six years after the death of Sarah, who was little known to the Greeks, Jupiter, at the age of sixty-two, began to reign in Thessaly; that his reign lasted sixty years; that he married his sister Juno; that he was obliged to cede the maritime coasts to his brother Neptune; and that the Titans made war against him. But was there ever a Jupiter? It never occurred to him that with this question he should have begun.

CHURCH.

Summary of the History of the Christian Church.

We shall not extend our views into the depths of theology. God preserve us from such presumption. Humble faith alone is enough for us. We never assume any other part than that of mere historians.

In the years that immediately followed Jesus Christ, who was at once God and man, there existed among the Hebrews nine religious schools or societies--Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenians, Judahites, Therapeutæ, Rechabites, Herodians, the disciples of John, and the disciples of Jesus, named the "brethren," the "Galileans," the "believers," who did not assume the name of Christians till about the sixteenth year of our era, at Antioch; being directed to its adoption by God himself, in ways unknown to men. The Pharisees believed in the metempsychosis. The Sadducees denied the immortality of the soul, and the existence of spirits, yet believed in the Pentateuch.

Pliny, the naturalist--relying, evidently, on the authority of Flavius Josephus--calls the Essenians "gens æterna in qua nemo nascitur"--"a perpetual family, in which no one is ever born"--because the Essenians very rarely married. The description has been since applied to our monks.

It is difficult to decide whether the Essenians or the Judahites are spoken of by Josephus in the following passage: "They despise the evils of the world; their constancy enables them to triumph over torments; in an honorable cause, they prefer death to life. They have undergone fire and sword, and submitted to having their very bones crushed, rather than utter a syllable against their legislator, or eat forbidden food."

It would seem, from the words of Josephus, that the foregoing portrait applies to the Judahites, and not to the Essenians. "Judas was the author of a new sect, completely different from the other three;" that is, the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the Essenians. "They are," he goes on, "Jews by nation; they live in harmony with one another, and consider pleasure to be a vice." The natural meaning of this language would induce us to think that he is speaking of the Judahites.

However that may be, these Judahites were known before the disciples of Christ began to possess consideration and consequence in the world. Some weak people have supposed them to be heretics, who adored Judas Iscariot.

The Therapeutæ were a society different from the Essenians and the Judahites. They resembled the Gymnosophists and Brahmins of India. "They possess," says Philo, "a principle of divine love which excites in them an enthusiasm like that of the Bacchantes and the Corybantes, and which forms them to that state of contemplation to which they aspire. This sect originated in Alexandria, which was entirely filled with Jews, and prevailed greatly throughout Egypt." The Rechabites still continued as a sect. They vowed never to drink wine; and it is, possibly, from their example that Mahomet forbade that liquor to his followers.

The Herodians regarded Herod, the first of that name, as a Messiah, a messenger from God, who had rebuilt the temple. It is clear that the Jews at Rome celebrated a festival in honor of him, in the reign of Nero, as appears from the lines of Persius: "Herodis venere dies," etc. (Sat. v. 180.)

"King Herod's feast, when each Judaæan vile, Trims up his lamp with tallow or with oil."

The disciples of John the Baptist had spread themselves a little in Egypt, but principally in Syria, Arabia, and towards the Persian gulf. They are recognized, at the present day, under the name of the Christians of St. John. There were some also in Asia Minor. It is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles (chap, xix.) that Paul met with many of them at Ephesus. "Have you received," he asked them, "the holy spirit?" They answered him. "We have not heard even that there is a holy spirit." "What baptism, then," says he, "have you received?" They answered him, "The baptism of John."

In the meantime the true Christians, as is well known, were laying the foundation of the only true religion.' He who contributed most to strengthen this rising society, was Paul, who had himself persecuted it with the greatest violence. He was born at Tarsus in Cilicia, and was educated under one of the most celebrated professors among the Pharisees--Gamaliel, a disciple of Hillel. The Jews pretend that he quarrelled with Gamaliel, who refused to let him have his daughter in marriage. Some traces of this anecdote are to be found in the sequel to the "Acts of St. Thekla." These acts relate that he had a large forehead, a bald head, united eye-brows, an aquiline nose, a short and clumsy figure, and crooked legs. Lucian, in his dialogue "Philopatres," seems to give a very similar portrait of him. It has been doubted whether he was a Roman citizen, for at that time the title was not given to any Jew; they had been expelled from Rome by Tiberius; and Tarsus did not become a Roman colony till nearly a hundred years afterwards, under Caracalla; as Cellarius remarks in his "Geography" (book iii.), and Grotius in his "Commentary on the Acts," to whom alone we need refer.

God, who came down upon earth to be an example in it of humanity and poverty, gave to his church the most feeble infancy, and conducted it in a state of humiliation similar to that in which he had himself chosen to be born. All the first believers were obscure persons. They labored with their hands. The apostle St. Paul himself acknowledges that he gained his livelihood by making tents. St. Peter raised from the dead Dorcas, a sempstress, who made clothes for the "brethren." The assembly of believers met at Joppa, at the house of a tanner called Simon, as appears from the ninth chapter of the "Acts of the Apostles."

The believers spread themselves secretly in Greece: and some of them went from Greece to Rome, among the Jews, who were permitted by the Romans to have a synagogue. They did not, at first, separate themselves from the Jews. They practised circumcision; and, as we have elsewhere remarked, the first fifteen obscure bishops of Jerusalem were all circumcised, or at least were all of the Jewish nation.

When the apostle Paul took with him Timothy, who was the son of a heathen father, he circumcised him himself, in the small city of Lystra. But Titus, his other disciple, could not be induced to submit to circumcision. The brethren, or the disciples of Jesus, continued united with the Jews until the time when St. Paul experienced a persecution at Jerusalem, on account of his having introduced strangers into the temple. He was accused by the Jews of endeavoring to destroy the law of Moses by that of Jesus Christ. It was with a view to his clearing himself from this accusation that the apostle St. James proposed to the apostle Paul that he should shave his head, and go and purify himself in the temple, with four Jews, who had made a vow of being shaved. "Take them with you," says James to him (Acts of the Apostles xxi.), "purify yourself with them, and let the whole world know that what has been reported concerning you is false, and that you continue to obey the law of Moses." Thus, then, Paul, who had been at first the most summary persecutor of the holy society established by Jesus--Paul, who afterwards endeavored to govern that rising society--Paul the Christian, Judaizes, "that the world may know that he is calumniated when he is charged with no longer following the law of Moses."

St. Paul was equally charged with impiety and heresy, and the persecution against him lasted a long time; but it is perfectly clear, from the nature of the charges, that he had travelled to Jerusalem in order to fulfil the rites of Judaism.

He addressed to Faustus these words: "I have never offended against the Jewish law, nor against the temple." (Acts xxv.) The apostles announced Jesus Christ as a just man wickedly persecuted, a prophet of God, a son of God, sent to the Jews for the reformation of manners.

"Circumcision," says the apostle Paul, "is good, if you observe the law; but if you violate the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision. If any uncircumcised person keep the law, he will be as if circumcised. The true Jew is one that is so inwardly."

When this apostle speaks of Jesus Christ in his epistles, he does not reveal the ineffable mystery of his consubstantiality with God. "We are delivered by him," says he, "from the wrath of God. The gift of God hath been shed upon us by the grace bestowed on one man, who is Jesus Christ.... Death reigned through the sin of one man; the just shall reign in life by one man, who is Jesus Christ." (Romans v.)

And, in the eighth chapter: "We are heirs of God, and joint-heirs of Christ;" and in the sixteenth chapter: "To God, who is the only wise, be honor and glory through Jesus Christ... You are Jesus Christ's, and Jesus Christ is God's." (1 Cor. chap. iii.)

And, in 1 Cor. xv. 27: "Everything is made subject to him, undoubtedly, excepting God, who made all things subject to him."

Some difficulty has been found in explaining the following part of the Epistle of the Philippians: "Do nothing through vain glory. Let each humbly think others better than himself. Be of the same mind with Jesus Christ, who, being in the likeness of God, assumed not to equal himself to God." This passage appears exceedingly well investigated and elucidated in a letter, still extant, of the churches of Vienna and Lyons, written in the year 117, and which is a valuable monument of antiquity. In this letter the modesty of some believers is praised. "They did not wish," says the letter, "to assume the lofty title of martyrs, in consequence of certain tribulations; after the example of Jesus Christ, who, being in the likeness of God, did not assume the quality of being equal to God." Origen, also, in his commentary on John, says: "The greatness of Jesus shines out more splendidly in consequence of his self-humiliation than if he had assumed equality with God." In fact, the opposite interpretation would be a solecism. What sense would there be in this exhortation: "Think others superior to yourselves; imitate Jesus, who did not think it an assumption to be equal to God?" It would be an obvious contradiction; it would be putting an example of full pretension for an example of modesty; it would be an offence against logic.

Thus did the wisdom of the apostles establish the rising church. That wisdom did not change its character in consequence of the dispute which took place between the apostles Peter, James, and John, on one side, and Paul on the other. This contest occurred at Antioch. The apostle Peter--formerly Cephas, or Simon Bar Jona--ate with the converted Gentiles, and among them did not observe the ceremonies of the law and the distinction of meats. He and Barnabas, and the other disciples, ate indifferently of pork, of animals which had been strangled, or which had cloven feet, or which did not chew the cud; but many Jewish Christians having arrived, St. Peter joined with them in abstinence from forbidden meats, and in the ceremonies of the Mosaic law.

This conduct appeared very prudent; he wished to avoid giving offence to the Jewish Christians, his companions; but St. Paul attacked him on the subject with considerable severity. "I withstood him," says he, "to his face, because he was blamable." (Gal. chap. ii.)

This quarrel appears most extraordinary on the part of St. Paul. Having been at first a persecutor, he might have been expected to have acted with moderation; especially as he had gone to Jerusalem to sacrifice in the temple, had circumcised his disciple Timothy, and strictly complied with the Jewish rites, for which very compliance he now reproached Cephas. St. Jerome imagines that this quarrel between Paul and Cephas was a pretended one. He says, in his first homily (vol. iii.) that they acted like two advocates, who had worked themselves up to an appearance of great zeal and exasperation against each other, to gain credit with their respective clients. He says that Peter--Cephas--being appointed to preach to the Jews, and Paul to the Gentiles, they assumed the appearance of quarrelling--Paul to gain the Gentiles, and Peter to gain the Jews. But St. Augustine is by no means of the same opinion. "I grieve," says he, in his epistle to Jerome, "that so great a man should be the patron of a lie."--(patronum mendacii).

This dispute between St. Jerome and St. Augustine ought not to diminish our veneration for them, and still less for St. Paul and St. Peter. As to what remains, if Peter was destined for the Jews, who were, after their conversion, likely to Judaize, and Paul for strangers, it appears probable that Peter never went to Rome. The Acts of the Apostles makes no mention of Peter's journey to Italy.

However that may be, it was about the sixtieth year of our era that Christians began to separate from the Jewish communion; and it was this which drew upon them so many quarrels and persecutions from the various synagogues of Rome, Greece, Egypt, and Asia. They were accused of impiety and atheism by their Jewish brethren, who excommunicated them in their synagogues three times every Sabbath-day. But in the midst of their persecutions God always supported them.

By degrees many churches were formed, and the separation between Jews and Christians was complete before the close of the first century. This separation was unknown to the Roman government. Neither the senate nor the emperors of Rome interested themselves in those quarrels of a small flock of mankind, which God had hitherto guided in obscurity, and which he exalted by insensible gradations.

Christianity became established in Greece and at Alexandria. The Christians had there to contend with a new set of Jews, who, in consequence of intercourse with the Greeks, had become philosophers. This was the sect of gnosis, or gnostics. Among them were some of the new converts to Christianity. All these sects, at that time, enjoyed complete liberty to dogmatize, discourse, and write, whenever the Jewish courtiers, settled at Rome and Alexandria, did not bring any charge against them before the magistrates. But, under Domitian, Christianity began to give some umbrage to the government.

The zeal of some Christians, which was not according to knowledge, did not prevent the Church from making that progress which God destined from the beginning. The Christians, at first, celebrated their mysteries in sequestered houses, and in caves, and during the night. Hence, according to Minucius Felix, the title given them of lucifugaces. Philo calls them Gesséens. The names most frequently applied to them by the heathens, during the first four centuries, were "Galileans" and "Nazarenes"; but that of "Christians" has prevailed above all others. Neither the hierarchy, nor the services of the church, were established all at once; the apostolic times were different from those which followed.

The mass now celebrated at matins was the supper performed in the evening; these usages changed in proportion as the church strengthened. A more numerous society required more regulations, and the prudence of the pastors accommodated itself to times and places. St. Jerome and Eusebius relate that when the churches received a regular form, five different orders might be soon perceived to exist in them--superintendents, episcopoi, whence originate the bishops; elders of the society, presbyteroi, priests, diaconoi, servants or deacons; pistoi, believers, the initiated--that is, the baptized, who participated in the suppers of the agape, or love-feasts; the catechumens, who were awaiting baptism; and the energumens, who awaited their being exorcised of demons. In these five orders, no one had garments different from the others, no one was bound to celibacy; witness Tertullian's book, dedicated to his wife; and witness also the example of the apostles. No paintings or sculptures were to be found in their assemblies during the first two centuries; no altars; and, most certainly, no tapers, incense, and lustral water. The Christians carefully concealed their books from the Gentiles; they intrusted them only to the initiated. Even the catechumens were not permitted to recite the Lord's prayer.

Of the Power of Expelling Devils, Given to the Church.

That which most distinguished the Christians, and which has continued nearly to our own times, was the power of expelling devils with the sign of the cross. Origen, in his treaties against Celsus, declares--at No. 133--that Antinous, who had been defied by the emperor Adrian, performed miracles in Egypt by the power of charms and magic; but he says that the devils came out of the bodies of the possessed on the mere utterance of the name of Jesus.

Tertullian goes farther; and from the recesses of Africa, where he resided, he says, in his "Apology"--chap. xxiii.--"If your gods do not confess themselves to be devils in the presence of a true Christian, we give you full liberty to shed that Christian's blood." Can any demonstration be possibly clearer?

In fact, Jesus Christ sent out his apostles to expel demons. The Jews, likewise, in his time, had the power of expelling them; for, when Jesus had delivered some possessed persons, and sent the devils into the bodies of a very numerous herd of swine, and had performed many other similar cures, the Pharisees said: "He expels devils through the power of Beelzebub." Jesus replied: "By whom do your sons expel them?" It is incontestable that the Jews boasted of this power. They had exorcists and exorcisms. They invoked the name of God, of Jacob, and of Abraham. They put consecrated herbs into the nostrils of the demoniacs. Josephus relates a part of these ceremonies. This power over devils, which the Jews have lost, was transferred to the Christians, who seem likewise to have lost it in their turn.

The power of expelling demons comprehended that of destroying the operations of magic; for magic has been always prevalent in every nation. All the fathers of the Church bear testimony to magic. St. Justin, in his "Apology"--book iii.--acknowledges that the souls of the dead are frequently evoked, and thence draws an argument in favor of the immortality of the soul. Lactantius, in the seventh book of his "Divine Institutions," says that "if any one ventured to deny the existence of souls after death, the magician would convince him of it by making them appear." Irenæus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Cyprian the bishop, all affirm the same. It is true that, at present, all is changed, and that there are now no more magicians than there are demoniacs. But God has the sovereign power of admonishing mankind by prodigies at some particular seasons, and of discontinuing those prodigies at others.

Of the Martyrs of the Church.

When Christians became somewhat numerous, and many arrayed themselves against the worship established in the Roman Empire, the magistrates began to exercise severity against them, and the people more particularly persecuted them. The Jews, who possessed particular privileges, and who confined themselves to their synagogues, were not persecuted. They were permitted the free exercise of their religion, as is the case at Rome at the present day. All the different kinds of worship scattered over the empire were tolerated, although the senate did not adopt them. But the Christians, declaring themselves enemies to every other worship than their own, and more especially so to that of the empire, were often exposed to these cruel trials.

One of the first and most distinguished martyrs was Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, who was condemned by the Emperor Trajan himself, at that time in Asia, and sent to Rome by his orders, to be exposed to wild beasts, at a time when other Christians were not persecuted at Rome. It is not known precisely what charges were alleged against him before that emperor, otherwise so renowned for his clemency. St. Ignatius must, necessarily, have had violent enemies. Whatever were the particulars of the case, the history of his martyrdom relates that the name of Jesus Christ was found engraved on his heart in letters of gold; and from this circumstance it was that Christians, in some places, assumed the name of Theophorus, which Ignatius had given himself.

A letter of his has been preserved in which he entreats the bishops and Christians to make no opposition to his martyrdom, whether at the time they might be strong enough to effect his deliverance, or whether any among them might have influence enough to obtain his pardon. Another remarkable circumstance is that when he was brought to Rome the Christians of that capital went to visit him; which would prove clearly that the individual was punished and not the sect.

The persecutions were not continued. Origen, in his third book against Celsus, says: "The Christians who have suffered death on account of their religion may easily be numbered, for there were only a few of them, and merely at intervals."

God was so mindful of his Church that, notwithstanding its enemies, he so ordered circumstances that it held five councils in the first century, sixteen in the second, and thirty in the third; that is, including both secret and tolerated ones. Those assemblies were sometimes forbidden, when the weak prudence of the magistrates feared that they might become tumultuous. But few genuine documents of the proceedings before the proconsuls and prætors who condemned the Christians to death have been delivered down to us. Such would be the only authorities which would enable us to ascertain the charges brought against them, and the punishments they suffered.

We have a fragment of Dionysius of Alexandria, in which he gives the following extract of a register, or of records, of a proconsul of Egypt, under the Emperor Valerian: "Dionysius, Faustus Maximus, Marcellus, and Chæremon, having been admitted to the audience, the prefect Æmilianus thus addressed them: 'You are sufficiently informed through the conferences which I have had with you, and all that I have written to you, of the good-will which our princes have entertained towards you. I wish thus to repeat it to you once again. They make the continuance of your safety to depend upon yourselves, and place your destiny in your own hands. They require of you only one thing, which reason demands of every reasonable person--namely, that you adore the gods who protect their empire, and abandon that different worship, so contrary to sense and nature.'"

Dionysius replied, "All have not the same gods; and all adore those whom they think to be the true ones." The prefect Æmilianus replied: "I see clearly that you ungratefully abuse the goodness which the emperors have shown you. This being the case, you shall no longer remain in this city; and I now order you to be conveyed to Cephro, in the heart of Libya. Agreeably to the command I have received from your emperor, that shall be the place of your banishment. As to what remains, think not to hold your assemblies there, nor to offer up your prayers in what you call cemeteries. This is positively forbidden. I will permit it to none."

Nothing bears a stronger impress of truth than this document. We see from it that there were times when assemblies were prohibited. Thus the Calvinists were forbidden to assemble in France. Sometimes ministers or preachers, who held assemblies in violation of the laws, have suffered even by the altar and the rack; and since 1745 six have been executed on the gallows. Thus, in England and Ireland, Roman Catholics are forbidden to hold assemblies; and, on certain occasions, the delinquents have suffered death.

Notwithstanding these prohibitions declared by the Roman laws, God inspired many of the emperors with indulgence towards the Christians. Even Diocletian, whom the ignorant consider as a persecutor--Diocletian, the first year of whose reign is still regarded as constituting the commencement of the era of martyrdom, was, for more than eighteen years, the declared protector of Christianity, and many Christians held offices of high consequence about his person. He even married a Christian; and, in Nicomedia, the place of his residence, he permitted a splendid church to be erected opposite his palace.

The Cæsar Galerius having unfortunately taken up a prejudice against the Christians, of whom he thought he had reason to complain, influenced Diocletian to destroy the cathedral of Nicomedia. One of the Christians, with more zeal than prudence, tore the edict of the emperor to pieces; and hence arose that famous persecution, in the course of which more than two hundred persons were executed in the Roman Empire, without reckoning those whom the rage of the common people, always fanatical and always cruel, destroyed without even the form of law.

So great has been the number of actual martyrs that we should be careful how we shake the truth of the history of those genuine confessors of our holy religion by a dangerous mixture of fables and of false martyrs.

The Benedictine Prior (Dom) Ruinart, for example, a man otherwise as well informed as he was respectable and devout, should have selected his genuine records, his "actes sinceres," with more discretion. It is not sufficient that a manuscript, whether taken from the abbey of St. Benoit on the Loire, or from a convent of Celestines at Paris, corresponds with a manuscript of the Feuillans, to show that the record is authentic; the record should possess a suitable antiquity; should have been evidently written by contemporaries; and, moreover, should bear all the characters of truth.

He might have dispensed with relating the adventure of young Romanus, which occurred in 303. This young Romanus had obtained the pardon of Diocletian, at Antioch. However, Ruinart states that the judge Asclepiades condemned him to be burnt. The Jews who were present at the spectacle, derided the young saint and reproached the Christians, that their God, who had delivered Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego out of the furnace, left them to be burned; that immediately, although the weather had been as calm as possible, a tremendous storm arose and extinguished the flames; that the judge then ordered young Romanus's tongue to be cut out; that the principal surgeon of the emperor, being present, eagerly acted the part of executioner, and cut off the tongue at the root; that instantly the young man, who, before had an impediment in his speech, spoke with perfect freedom; that the emperor was astonished that any one could speak so well without a tongue; and that the surgeon, to repeat the experiment, directly cut out the tongue of some bystander, who died on the spot.

Eusebius, from whom the Benedictine Ruinart drew his narrative, should have so far respected the real miracles performed in the Old and New Testament--which no one can ever doubt--as not to have associated with them relations so suspicious, and so calculated to give offence to weak minds. This last persecution did not extend through the empire. There was at that time some Christianity in England, which soon eclipsed, to reappear afterwards under the Saxon kings. The southern districts of Gaul and Spain abounded with Christians. The Cæsar Constantius Chlorus afforded them great protection in all his provinces. He had a concubine who was a Christian, and who was the mother of Constantine, known under the name of St. Helena; for no marriage was ever proved to have taken place between them; he even divorced her in the year 292, when he married the daughter of Maximilian Hercules; but she had preserved great ascendency over his mind, and had inspired him with a great attachment to our holy religion.

Of the Establishment of the Church Under Constantine.

Thus did divine Providence prepare the triumph of its church by ways apparently conformable to human causes and events. Constantius Chlorus died in 306, at York, in England, at a time when the children he had by the daughter of a Cæsar were of tender age, and incapable of making pretensions to the empire. Constantine boldly got himself elected at York, by five or six thousand soldiers, the greater part of whom were French and English. There was no probability that this election, effected without the consent of Rome, of the senate and the armies, could stand; but God gave him the victory over Maxentius, who had been elected at Rome, and delivered him at last from all his colleagues. It is not to be dissembled that he at first rendered himself unworthy of the favors of heaven, by murdering all his relations, and at length even his own wife and son.

We may be permitted to doubt what Zosimus relates on this subject. He states that Constantine, under the tortures of remorse from the perpetration of so many crimes, inquired of the pontiffs of the empire, whether it were possible for him to obtain any expiation, and that they informed him that they knew of none. It is perfectly true that none was found for Nero, and that he did not venture to assist at the sacred mysteries in Greece. However, the Taurobolia were still observed, and it is difficult to believe that an emperor, supremely powerful, could not obtain a priest who would willingly indulge him in expiatory sacrifices. Perhaps, indeed, it is less easy to believe that Constantine, occupied as he was with war, politic enterprises, and ambition, and surrounded by flatterers, had time for remorse at all. Zosimus adds that an Egyptian priest, who had access to his gate, promised him the expiation of all his crimes in the Christian religion. It has been suspected that this priest was Ozius, bishop of Cordova.

However this might be, God reserved Constantine for the purpose of enlightening his mind, and to make him the protector of the Church. This prince built the city of Constantinople, which became the centre of the empire and of the Christian religion. The Church then assumed a form of splendor. And we may hope that, being purified by his baptism, and penitent at his death, he may have found mercy, although he died an Arian. It would be not a little severe, were all the partisans of both the bishops of the name of Eusebius to incur damnation.

In the year 314, before Constantine resided in his new city, those who had persecuted the Christians were punished by them for their cruelties. The Christians threw Maxentius's wife into the Orontes; they cut the throats of all his relations, and they massacred, in Egypt and Palestine, those magistrates who had most strenuously declared against Christianity. The widow and daughter of Diocletian, having concealed themselves at Thessalonica, were recognized, and their bodies thrown into the sea. It would certainly have been desirable that the Christians should have followed less eagerly the cry of vengeance; but it was the will of God, who punishes according to justice, that, as soon as the Christians were able to act without restraint, their hands should be dyed in the blood of their persecutors.

Constantine summoned to meet at Nice, opposite Constantinople, the first ecumenical council, of which Ozius was president. Here was decided the grand question that agitated the Church, relating to the divinity of Jesus Christ. It is well known how the Church, having contended for three hundred years against the rights of the Roman Empire, at length contended against itself, and was always militant and triumphant.

In the course of time almost the whole of the Greek church and the whole African church became slaves under the Arabs, and afterwards under the Turks, who erected the Mahometan religion on the ruins of the Christian. The Roman church subsisted; but always reeking with blood, through more than six centuries of discord between the western empire and the priesthood. Even these quarrels rendered her very powerful. The bishops and abbots in Germany all became princes; and the popes gradually acquired absolute dominion in Rome, and throughout a considerable territory. Thus has God proved his church, by humiliations, by afflictions, by crimes, and by splendor.

This Latin church, in the sixteenth century, lost half of Germany, Denmark, Sweden, England, Scotland, Ireland, and the greater part of Switzerland and Holland. She gained more territory in America by the conquests of the Spaniards than she lost in Europe; but, with more territory, she has fewer subjects.

Divine Providence seemed to call upon Japan, Siam, India, and China to place themselves under obedience to the pope, in order to recompense him for Asia Minor, Syria, Greece, Egypt, Africa, Russia, and the other lost states which we mentioned. St. Francis Xavier, who carried the holy gospel to the East Indies and Japan, when the Portuguese went thither upon mercantile adventure, performed a great number of miracles, all attested by the R.R.P.P. Jesuits. Some state that he resuscitated nine dead persons. But R.P. Ribadeneira, in his "Flower of the Saints," limits himself to asserting that he resuscitated only four. That is sufficient. Providence was desirous that, in less than a hundred years, there should have been thousands of Catholics in the islands of Japan. But the devil sowed his tares among the good grain. The Jesuits, according to what is generally believed, entered into a conspiracy, followed by a civil war, in which all the Christians were exterminated in 1638. The nation then closed its ports against all foreigners except the Dutch, who were considered merchants and not Christians, and were first compelled to trample on the cross in order to gain leave to sell their wares in the prison in which they are shut up, when they land at Nagasaki.

The Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion has become proscribed in China in our own time, but with circumstances of less cruelty. The R.R.P.P. Jesuits had not, indeed, resuscitated the dead at the court of Pekin; they were contented with teaching astronomy, casting cannon, and being mandarins. Their unfortunate disputes with the Dominicans and others gave such offence to the great Emperor Yonchin that that prince, who was justice and goodness personified, was blind enough to refuse permission any longer to teach our holy religion, in respect to which our missionaries so little agreed. He expelled them, but with a kindness truly paternal, supplying them with means of subsistence, and conveyance to the confines of his empire.

All Asia, all Africa, the half of Europe, all that belongs to the English and Dutch in America, all the unconquered American tribes, all the southern climes, which constitute a fifth portion of the globe, remain the prey of the demon, in order to fulfil those sacred words, "many are called, but few are chosen."--Matt. xx., 16.

Of the Signification of the Word "Church." Picture of the Primitive Church. Its Degeneracy. Examination into those Societies which have Attempted to Re-establish the Primitive Church, and Particularly into that of the Primitives called Quakers.

The term "church" among the Greeks signified the assembly of the people. When the Hebrew books were translated into Greek, "synagogue" was rendered by "church", and the same term was employed to express the "Jewish society," the "political congregation," the "Jewish assembly," the "Jewish people." Thus it is said in the Book of Numbers, "Why hast thou conducted the church into the wilderness;" and in Deuteronomy, "The eunuch, the Moabite, and the Ammonite, shall not enter the church; the Idumæans and the Egyptians shall not enter the church, even to the third generation."

Jesus Christ says, in St. Matthew, "If thy brother have sinned against thee [have offended thee] rebuke him, between yourselves. Take with you one or two witnesses, that, from the mouth of two or three witnesses, everything may be made clear; and, if he hear not them, complain to the assembly of the people, to the church; and, if he hear not the church, let him be to thee as a heathen or a publican. Verily, I say unto you, so shall it come to pass, whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven"--an illusion to the keys of doors which close and unclose the latch.

The case is here, that of two men, one of whom has offended the other, and persists. He could not be made to appear in the assembly, in the Christian church, as there was none; the person against whom his companion complained could not be judged by a bishop and priests who were not in existence; besides which, it is to be observed, that neither Jewish priests nor Christian priests ever became judges in quarrels between private persons. It was a matter of police. Bishops did not become judges till about the time of Valentinian III.

The commentators have therefore concluded that the sacred writer of this gospel makes our Lord speak in this passage by anticipation--that it is an allegory, a prediction of what would take place when the Christian church should be formed and established.

Selden makes an important remark on this passage, that, among the Jews, publicans or collectors of the royal moneys were not excommunicated. The populace might detest them, but as they were indispensable officers, appointed by the prince, the idea had never occurred to any one of separating them from the assembly. The Jews were at that time under the administration of the proconsul of Syria, whose jurisdiction extended to the confines of Galilee, and to the island of Cyprus, where he had deputies. It would have been highly imprudent in any to show publicly their abomination of the legal officers of the proconsul. Injustice, even, would have been added to imprudence, for the Roman knights--equestrians--who farmed the public domain and collected Cæsar's money, were authorized by the laws.

St. Augustine, in his eighty-first sermon, may perhaps suggest reflections for comprehending this passage. He is speaking of those who retain their hatred, who are slow to pardon.

"Cepisti habere fratrem tuum tanquam publicanum. Ligas ilium in terra; sed ut juste alliges vide; nam injusta vincula dirsumpit justitia. Cum autem correxeris et concordaveris cum fratre tuo solvisti eum in terra." You began to regard your brother as a publican; that is, to bind him on the earth. But be cautious that you bind him justly, for justice breaks unjust bonds. But when you have corrected, and afterwards agreed with your brother, you have loosed him on earth.

From St. Augustine's interpretation, it seems that the person offended shut up the offender in prison; and that it is to be understood that, if the offender is put in bonds on earth, he is also in heavenly bonds; but that if the offended person is inexorable, he becomes bound himself. In St. Augustine's explanation there is nothing whatever relating to the Church. The whole matter relates to pardoning or not pardoning an injury. St. Augustine is not speaking here of the sacerdotal power of remitting sins in the name of God. That is a right recognized in other places; a right derived from the sacrament of confession. St. Augustine, profound as he is in types and allegories, does not consider this famous passage as alluding to the absolution given or refused by the ministers of the Roman Catholic Church, in the sacrament of penance.

Of the "Church" in Christian Societies.

In the greater part of Christian states we perceive no more than four churches--the Greek, the Roman, the Lutheran, and the reformed or Calvinistic. It is thus in Germany. The Primitives or Quakers, the Anabaptists, the Socinians, the Memnonists, the Pietists, the Moravians, the Jews, and others, do not form a church. The Jewish religion has preserved the designation of synagogue. The Christian sects which are tolerated have only private assemblies, "conventicles." It is the same in London. We do not find the Catholic Church in Sweden, nor in Denmark, nor in the north of Germany, nor in Holland, nor in three quarters of Switzerland, nor in the three kingdoms of Great Britain.

Of the Primitive Church, and of Those Who Have Endeavored to Re-establish It.

The Jews, as well as all the different people of Syria, were divided into many different congregations, as we have already seen. All were aimed at a mystical perfection. A ray of purer light shone upon the disciples of St. John, who still subsist near Mosul. At last, the Son of God, announced by St. John, appeared on earth, whose disciples were always on a perfect equality. Jesus had expressly enjoined them, "There shall not be any of you either first or last.... I came to serve, not to be served. He who strives to be master over others shall be their servant."

One proof of equality is that the Christians at first took no other designation than that of "brethren." They assembled in expectation of the spirit. They prophesied when they were inspired. St. Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, says to them, "If, in your assembly, any one of you have the gift of a psalm, a doctrine, a revelation, a language, an interpretation, let all be done for edification. If any speak languages, as two or three may do in succession, let there be an interpreter.

"Let two or three prophets speak, and the others judge; and if anything be revealed to another while one is speaking, let the latter be silent; for you may all prophesy one by one, that all may learn and all exhort; the spirit of prophecy is subject to the prophets; for the Lord is a God of peace.... Thus, then, my brethren, be all of you desirous of prophesying, and hinder not the speaking of languages."

I have translated literally, both out of reverence for the text, and to avoid any disputes about words. St. Paul, in the same epistle, admits that women may prophesy; although, in the fourteenth chapter, he forbids their speaking in the assemblies. "Every woman," says he, "praying or prophesying without having a veil over her head, dishonoreth her head, for it is the same as if she were shaven."

It is clear, from all these passages and from many others, that the first Christians were all equal, not merely as brethren in Jesus Christ, but as having equal gifts. The spirit was communicated to them equally. They equally spoke different languages; they had equally the gift of prophesying, without distinction of rank, age, or sex.

The apostles who instructed the neophytes possessed over them, unquestionably, that natural pre-eminence which the preceptor has over the pupil; but of jurisdiction, of temporal authority, of what the world calls "honors," of distinction in dress, of emblems of superiority, assuredly neither they, nor those who succeeded them, had any. They possessed another, and a very different superiority, that of persuasion.

The brethren put their money into one common stock. Seven persons were chosen by themselves out of their own body, to take charge of the tables, and to provide for the common wants. They chose, in Jerusalem itself, those whom we call Stephen, Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicholas. It is remarkable that, among seven persons chosen by a Jewish community, six were Greeks.

After the time of the apostles we find no example of any Christian who possessed any other power over other Christians than that of instructing, exhorting, expelling demons from the bodies of "energumens," and performing miracles. All is spiritual; nothing savors of worldly pomp. It was only in the third century that the spirit of pride, vanity, and interest, began to be manifested among the believers on every side.

The agapæ had now become splendid festivals, and attracted reproach for the luxury and profusion which attended them. Tertullian acknowledges it.

"Yes," says he, "we make splendid and plentiful entertainments, but was not the same done at the mysteries of Athens and of Egypt? Whatever learning we display, it is useful and pious, as the poor benefit by it." Quantiscumque sumptibus constet, lucrum est pietatis, si quidem inopes refrigerio isto juvamus.

About this very period, certain societies of Christians, who pronounced themselves more perfect than the rest, the Montanists, for example, who boasted of so many prophecies and so austere a morality; who regarded second nuptials as absolute adulteries, and flight from persecution as apostasy; who had exhibited in public holy convulsions and ecstasies, and pretended to speak with God face to face, were convicted, it was said, of mixing the blood of an infant, a year old, with the bread of the eucharist. They brought upon the true Christians this dreadful reproach, which exposed them to persecutions.

Their method of proceeding, according to St. Augustine, was this: they pricked the whole body of the infant with pins and, kneading up flour with the blood, made bread of it. If any one died by eating it, they honored him as a martyr.

Manners were so corrupted that the holy fathers were incessantly complaining of it. Hear what St. Cyprian says, in his book concerning tombs: "Every priest," says he, "seeks for wealth and honor with insatiable avidity. Bishops are without religion; women without modesty; knavery is general; profane swearing and perjury abound; animosities divide Christians asunder; bishops abandon their pupils to attend the exchange, and obtain opulence by merchandise; in short, we please ourselves alone, and excite the disgust of all the rest of the world."

Before the occurrence of these scandals, the priest Novatian had been the cause of a very dreadful one to the people of Rome. He was the first anti-pope. The bishopric of Rome, although secret, and liable to persecution, was an object of ambition and avarice, on account of the liberal contributions of the Christians, and the authority attached to that high situation.

We will not here describe again what is contained in so many authentic documents, and what we every day hear from the mouths of persons correctly informed--the prodigious number of schisms and wars; the six hundred years of fierce hostility between the empire and the priesthood; the wealth of nations, flowing through a thousand channels, sometimes into Rome, sometimes into Avignon, when the popes, for two and seventy years together, fixed their residence in that place; the blood rushing in streams throughout Europe, either for the interest of a tiara utterly unknown to Jesus Christ, or on account of unintelligible questions which He never mentioned. Our religion is not less sacred or less divine for having been so defiled by guilt and steeped in carnage.

When the frenzy of domination, that dreadful passion of the human heart, had reached its greatest excess; when the monk Hildebrand, elected bishop of Rome against the laws, wrested that capital from the emperors, and forbade all the bishops of the west from bearing the name of pope, in order to appropriate it to himself alone; when the bishops of Germany, following his example, made themselves sovereigns, which all those of France and England also attempted; from those dreadful times down even to our own, certain Christian societies have arisen which, under a hundred different names, have endeavored to re-establish the primitive equality in Christendom.

But what had been practicable in a small society, concealed from the world, was no longer so in extensive kingdoms. The church militant and triumphant could no longer be the church humble and unknown. The bishops and the large, rich, and powerful monastic communities, uniting under the standards of the new pontificate of Rome, fought at that time pro aris et focis, for their hearths and altars. Crusades, armies, sieges, battles, rapine, tortures, assassinations by the hand of the executioner, assassinations by the hands of priests of both the contending parties, poisonings, devastations by fire and sword--all were employed to support and to pull down the new ecclesiastical administration; and the cradle of the primitive church was so hidden as to be scarcely discoverable under the blood and bones of the slain.

Of the Primitives called Quakers.

The religious and civil wars of Great Britain having desolated England, Scotland, and Ireland, in the unfortunate reign of Charles I., William Penn, son of a vice-admiral, resolved to go and establish what he called the primitive Church on the shores of North America, in a climate which appeared to him to be mild and congenial to his own manners. His sect went under the denomination of "Quakers," a ludicrous designation, but which they merited, by the trembling of the body which they affected when preaching, and by a nasal pronunciation, such as peculiarly distinguished one species of monks in the Roman Church, the Capuchins. But men may both snuffle and shake, and yet be meek, frugal, modest, just, and charitable. No one denies that this society of Primitives displayed an example of all those virtues.

Penn saw that the English bishops and the Presbyterians had been the cause of a dreadful war on account of a surplice, lawn sleeves, and a liturgy. He would have neither liturgy, lawn, nor surplice. The apostles had none of them. Jesus Christ had baptized none. The associates of Penn declined baptism.

The first believers were equal; these new comers aimed at being so, as far as possible. The first disciples received the spirit, and spoke in the assembly; they had no altars, no temples, no ornaments, no tapers, incense, or ceremonies. Penn and his followers flattered themselves that they received the spirit, and they renounced all pomp and ceremony. Charity was in high esteem with the disciples of the Saviour; those of Penn formed a common purse for assisting the poor. Thus these imitators of the Essenians and first Christians, although in error with respect to doctrines and ceremonies, were an astonishing model of order and morals to every other society of Christians.

At length this singular man went, with five hundred of his followers, to form an establishment in what was at that time the most savage district of America. Queen Christina of Sweden had been desirous of founding a colony there, which, however, had not prospered. The Primitives of Penn were more successful.

It was on the banks of the Delaware, near the fortieth degree of latitude. This country belonged to the king of England only because there were no others who claimed it, and because the people whom we call savages, and who might have cultivated it, had always remained far distant in the recesses of the forests. If England had possessed this country merely by right of conquest, Penn and his Primitives would have held such an asylum in horror. They looked upon the pretended right of conquest only as a violation of the right of nature, and as absolute robbery.

King Charles II. made Penn sovereign of all this wild country by a charter granted March 4, 1681. In the following year Penn promulgated his code of laws. The first was complete civil liberty, in consequence of which every colonist possessing five acres of land became a member of the legislature. The next was an absolute prohibition against advocates and attorneys ever taking fees. The third was the admission of all religions, and even the permission to every inhabitant to worship God in his own house, without ever taking part in public worship.

This is the law last mentioned, in the terms of its enactment: "Liberty of conscience being a right which all men have received from nature with their very being, and which all peaceable persons ought to maintain, it is positively established that no person shall be compelled to join in any public exercise of religion.

"But every one is expressly allowed full power to engage freely in the public or private exercise of his religion, without incurring thereby any trouble or impediment, under any pretext; provided that he acknowledge his belief in one only eternal God Almighty, the creator, preserver, and governor of the universe, and that he fulfil all the duties of civil society which he is bound to perform to his fellow citizens."

This law is even more indulgent, more humane, than that which was given to the people of Carolina by Locke, the Plato of England, so superior to the Plato of Greece. Locke permitted no public religions except such as should be approved by seven fathers of families. This is a different sort of wisdom from Penn's.

But that which reflects immortal honor on both legislators, and which should operate as an eternal example to mankind, is, that this liberty of conscience has not occasioned the least disturbance. It might, on the contrary, be said that God had showered down the most distinguished blessings on the colony of Pennsylvania. It consisted, in 1682, of five hundred persons, and in less than a century its population had increased to nearly three hundred thousand. One half of the colonists are of the primitive religion; twenty different religions comprise the other half. There are twelve fine chapels in Philadelphia, and in other places every house is a chapel. This city has deserved its name: "Brotherly Love." Seven other cities, and innumerable small towns, flourish under this law of concord. Three hundred vessels leave the port in the course of every year.

This state, which seems to deserve perpetual duration, was very nearly destroyed in the fatal war of 1755, when the French, with their savage allies on one side, and the English, with theirs, on the other, began with disputing about some frozen districts of Nova Scotia. The Primitives, faithful to their pacific system of Christianity, declined to take up arms. The savages killed some of their colonists on the frontier; the Primitives made no reprisals. They even refused, for a long time, to pay the troops. They addressed the English general in these words: "Men are like pieces of clay, which are broken to pieces one against another. Why should we aid in breaking one another to pieces?"

At last, in the general assembly of the legislature of Pennsylvania, the other religions prevailed; troops were raised; the Primitives contributed money, but declined being armed. They obtained their object, which was peace with their neighbors. These pretended savages said to them, "Send us a descendant of the great Penn, who never deceived us; with him we will treat." A grandson of that great man was deputed, and peace was concluded. Many of the Primitives had negro slaves to cultivate their estates. But they blushed at having, in this instance, imitated other Christians. They gave liberty to their slaves in 1769.

At present all the other colonists imitate them in liberty of conscience, and although there are among them Presbyterians and persons of the high church party, no one is molested about his creed. It is this which has rendered the English power in America equal to that of Spain, with all its mines of gold and silver. If any method could be devised to enervate the English colonies it would be to establish in them the Inquisition.

The example of the Primitives, called "Quakers," has given rise in Pennsylvania to a new society, in a district which it calls Euphrates. This is the sect of Dunkers or Dumpers, a sect much more secluded from the world than Penn's; a sort of religious hospitallers, all clothed uniformly. Married persons are not permitted to reside in the city of Euphrates: they reside in the country, which they cultivate. The public treasury supplies all their wants in times of scarcity. This society administers baptism only to adults. It rejects the doctrine of original sin as impious, and that of the eternity of punishment as barbarous. The purity of their lives permits them not to imagine that God will torment His creatures cruelly or eternally. Gone astray in a corner of the new world, far from the great flock of the Catholic Church, they are, up to the present hour, notwithstanding this unfortunate error, the most just and most inimitable of men.

Quarrel between the Greek and Latin Churches in Asia and Europe.

It has been a matter of lamentation to all good men for nearly fourteen centuries that the Greek and Latin Churches have always been rivals, and that the robe of Jesus Christ, which was without a seam, has been continually rent asunder. This opposition is perfectly natural. Rome and Constantinople hate each other. When masters cherish a mutual aversion, their dependents entertain no mutual regard. The two communions have disputed on the superiority of language, the antiquity of sees, on learning, eloquence, and power.

It is certain that, for a long time, the Greeks possessed all the advantage. They boasted that they had been the masters of the Latins, and that they had taught them everything. The Gospels were written in Greek. There was not a doctrine, a rite, a mystery, a usage, which was not Greek; from the word "baptism" to the word "eucharist" all was Greek. No fathers of the Church were known except among the Greeks till St. Jerome, and even he was not a Roman, but a Dalmatian. St. Augustine, who flourished soon after St. Jerome, was an African. The seven great ecumenical councils were held in Greek cities: the bishops of Rome were never present at them, because they were acquainted only with their own Latin language, which was already exceedingly corrupted.

The hostility between Rome and Constantinople broke out in 452, at the Council of Chalcedon, which had been assembled to decide whether Jesus Christ had possessed two natures and one person, or two persons with one nature. It was there decided that the Church of Constantinople was in every respect equal to that of Rome, as to honors, and the patriarch of the one equal in every respect to the patriarch of the other. The pope, St. Leo, admitted the two natures, but neither he nor his successors admitted the equality. It may be observed that, in this dispute about rank and pre-eminence, both parties were in direct opposition to the injunction of Jesus Christ, recorded in the Gospel: "There shall not be among you first or last." Saints are saints, but pride will insinuate itself everywhere. The same disposition which made a mason's son, who had been raised to a bishopric, foam with rage because he was not addressed by the title of "my lord," has set the whole Christian world in flames.

The Romans were always less addicted to disputation, less subtle, than the Greeks, but they were much more politic. The bishops of the east, while they argued, yet remained subjects: the bishop of Rome, without arguments, contrived eventually to establish his power on the ruins of the western empire. And what Virgil said of the Scipios and Cæsars might be said of the popes:

"Romanos rerum dominos gentemque togatam"--Æneid, i. 286.

This mutual hatred led, at length, to actual division, in the time of Photius, papa or overseer of the Byzantine Church, and Nicholas I., papa or overseer of the Roman Church. As, unfortunately, an ecclesiastical quarrel scarcely ever occurs without something ludicrous being attached to it, it happened, in this instance, that the contest began between two patriarchs, both of whom were eunuchs: Ignatius and Photius, who disputed the chair of Constantinople, were both emasculated. This mutilation depriving them of the power of becoming natural fathers, they could become fathers only of the Church. It is observed that persons of this unfortunate description are meddling, malignant, and plotting. Ignatius and Photius kept the whole Greek court in a state of turbulence.

The Latin, Nicholas I., having taken the part of Ignatius, Photius declared him a heretic, on account of his admitting the doctrine that the breath of God, or the Holy Spirit, proceeded from the Father and the Son, contrary to the unanimous decision of the whole Church, which had decided that it proceeded from the Father only.

Besides this heretical doctrine respecting the procession, Nicholas ate, and permitted to be eaten, eggs and cheese in Lent. In fine, as the very climax of unbelief, the Roman papa had his beard shaved, which, to the Greek papas, was nothing less than downright apostasy; as Moses, the patriarchs, and Jesus Christ were always, by the Greek and Latin painters, pictured with beards.

When, in 879, the patriarch Photius was restored to his seat by the eighth ecumenical council--consisting of four hundred bishops, three hundred of whom had condemned him in the preceding council--he was acknowledged by Pope John as his brother. Two legates, despatched by him to this council, joined the Greek Church, and declared that whoever asserted the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son was a Judas. But the practice of shaving the chin and eating eggs in Lent being persisted in, the two churches always remained divided.

The schism was completed in 1053 and 1054, when Michael Cerularius, patriarch of Constantinople, publicly condemned the bishop of Rome, Leo IX., and all the Latins, adding to all the reproaches against them by Photius that, contrary to the practice of the apostles, they dared to make use of unleavened bread in the eucharist; that they wickedly ate blood puddings, and twisted the necks, instead of cutting off the heads, of pigeons intended for the table. All the Latin churches in the Greek empire were shut up, and all intercourse with those who ate blood puddings was forbidden.

Pope Leo IX. entered into serious negotiation on this matter with the Emperor Constantine Monomachus, and obtained some mitigations. It was precisely at this period that those celebrated Norman gentlemen, the sons of Tancred de Hauteville, despising at once the pope and the Greek emperor, plundered everything they could in Apulia and Calabria, and ate blood puddings with the utmost hardihood. The Greek emperor favored the pope as much as he was able; but nothing could reconcile the Greeks with the Latins. The Greeks regarded their adversaries as barbarians, who did not know a single word of Greek. The irruption of the Crusaders, under pretence of delivering the Holy Land, but in reality to gain possession of Constantinople, completed the hatred entertained against the Romans.

But the power of the Latin Church increased every day, and the Greeks were at length gradually vanquished by the Turks. The popes, long since, became powerful and wealthy sovereigns; the whole Greek Church became slaves from the time of Mahomet II., except Russia, which was then a barbarous country, and in which the Church was of no account.

Whoever is but slightly informed of the state of affair in the Levant knows that the sultan confers the patriarchate of the Greeks by a cross and a ring, without any apprehension of being excommunicated, as some of the German emperors were by the popes, for this same ceremony.

It is certainly true that the church of Stamboul has preserved, in appearance, the liberty of choosing its archbishop; but never, in fact, chooses any other than the person pointed out by the Ottoman court. This preferment costs, at present, about eighty thousand francs, which the person chosen contrives to get refunded from the Greeks. If any canon of influence and wealth comes forward, and offers the grand vizier a large sum, the titular possessor is deprived, and the place given to the last bidder; precisely as the see of Rome was disposed of, in the tenth century, by Marozia and Theodora. If the titular patriarch resists, he receives fifty blows on the soles of his feet, and is banished. Sometimes he is beheaded, as was the case with Lucas Cyrille, in 1638.

The Grand Turk disposes of all the other bishoprics, in the same manner, for money; and the price charged for every bishopric under Mahomet II. is always stated in the patent; but the additional sum paid is not mentioned in it. It is not exactly known what a Greek priest gives for his bishopric.

These patents are rather diverting documents: "I grant to N----, a Christian priest, this order, for the perfection of his felicity. I command him to reside in the city herein named, as bishop of the infidel Christians, according to their ancient usage, and their vain and extravagant ceremonies, willing and ordaining that all Christians of that district shall acknowledge him, and that no monk or priest shall marry without his permission." That is to say, without paying for the same.

The slavery of this Church is equal to its ignorance. But the Greeks have only what they deserve. They were wholly absorbed in disputes about the light on Mount Tabor, and the umbilical cord, at the very time of the taking of Constantinople.

While recording these melancholy truths we entertain the hope that the Empress Catherine II. will give the Greeks their liberty. Would she could restore to them that courage and that intellect which they possessed in the days of Miltiades and Themistocles; and that Mount Athos supplied good soldiers and fewer monks.

Of the Present Greek Church.

The Greek Church has scarcely deserved the toleration which the Mussulmans granted it. The following observations are from Mr. Porter, the English ambassador in Turkey:

"I am inclined to draw a veil over, those scandalous disputes between the Greeks and Romans, on the subject of Bethlehem and the holy land, as they denominate it. The unjust and odious proceedings which these have occasioned between them are a disgrace to the Christian name. In the midst of these debates the ambassador appointed to protect the Romish communion becomes, with all high dignity, an object of sincere compassion.

"In every country where the Roman Catholic prevails, immense sums are levied in order to support against the Greek's equivocal pretensions to the precarious possession of a corner of the world reputed holy; and to preserve in the hands of the monks of the Latin communion the remains of an old stable at Bethlehem, where a chapel has been erected, and where on the doubtful authority of oral tradition, it is pretended that Christ was born; as also a tomb, which may be, and most probably may not be, what is called his sepulchre; for the precise situation of these two places is as little ascertained as that which contains the ashes of Cæsar."

What renders the Greeks yet more contemptible in the eyes of the Turks is the miracle which they perform every year at Easter. The poor bishop of Jerusalem is inclosed in a small cave, which is passed off for the tomb of our Lord Jesus Christ, with packets of small wax tapers; he strikes fire, lights one of these little tapers, and comes out of his cave exclaiming: "The fire is come down from heaven, and the holy taper is lighted." All the Greeks immediately buy up these tapers, and the money is divided between the Turkish commander and the bishop. The deplorable state of this Church, under the dominion of the Turk, may be judged from this single trait.

The Greek Church in Russia has of late assumed a much more respectable consistency, since the Empress Catherine II. has delivered it from its secular cares; she has taken from it four hundred thousand slaves, which it possessed. It is now paid out of the imperial treasury, entirely dependent on the government, and restricted by wise laws; it can effect nothing but good, and is every day becoming more learned and useful. It possesses a preacher of the name of Plato, who has composed sermons which the Plato of antiquity would not have disdained.

CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

England is the country of sects; "multæ sunt mansiones in domo patris mei:" an Englishman, like a free man, goes to heaven which way he pleases. However, although every one can serve God in his own way, the national religion--that in which fortunes are made--is the Episcopal, called the Church of England, or emphatically, "The Church." No one can have employment of any consequence, either in England or Ireland, without being members of the establishment. This reasoning, which is highly demonstrative, has converted so many nonconformists that at present there is not a twentieth part of the nation out of the bosom of the dominant church.

The English clergy have retained many Catholic ceremonies, and above all that of receiving tithes, with a very scrupulous attention. They also possess the pious ambition of ruling the people, for what village rector would not be a pope if he could?

With regard to manners, the English clergy are more decorous than those of France, chiefly because the ecclesiastics are brought up in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, far from the corruption of the metropolis. They are not called to the dignities of the Church until very late, and at an age when men, having no other passion than avarice, their ambition is less aspiring. Employments are, in England, the recompense of long service in the church, as well as in the army. You do not there see young men become bishops or colonels on leaving college; and, moreover, almost all the priests are married. The pedantry and awkwardness of manners, acquired in the universities, and the little commerce they have with women, generally oblige a bishop to be contented with the one which belongs to him. The clergy go sometimes to the tavern, because custom permits it, and if they get "Bacchi plenum" it is in the college style, gravely and with due decorum.

That indefinable character which is neither ecclesiastical nor secular, which we call abbé, is unknown in England. The ecclesiastics there are generally respected, and for the greater part pedants. When the latter learn that in France young men distinguished by their debaucheries, and raised to the prelacy by the intrigues of women, publicly make love; vie with each other in the composition of love songs; give luxurious suppers every day, from which they arise to implore the light of the Holy Spirit, and boldly call themselves the apostles' successors--they thank God they are Protestants. But what then? They arc vile heretics, and fit only for burning, as master Francis Rabelais says, "with all the devils." Hence I drop the subject.

CHURCH PROPERTY.

The Gospel forbids those who would attain perfection to amass treasures, and to preserve their temporal goods: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal." "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor." "And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundred-fold, and shall inherit everlasting life."

The apostles and their first successors would not receive estates; they only accepted the value, and, after having provided what was necessary for their subsistence, they distributed the rest among the poor. Sapphira and Ananias did not give their goods to St. Peter, but they sold them and brought him the price: "Vende quæ habes et da pauperibus."

The Church already possessed considerable property at the close of the third century, since Diocletian and Maximian had pronounced the confiscation of it, in 302.

As soon as Constantine was upon the throne he permitted the churches to be endowed like the temples of the ancient religion, and from that time the Church acquired rich estates. St. Jerome complains of it in one of his letters to Eustochium: "When you see them," says he, "accost the rich widows whom they meet with a soft and sanctified air, you would think that their hands were only extended to give them their blessing; but it is, on the contrary, to receive the price of their hypocrisy."

The holy priests received without claiming. Valentinian I. thought it right to forbid the ecclesiastics from receiving anything from widows and women, by will or otherwise. This law, which is found in the Theodosian code, was revoked by Marcian and Justinian.

Justinian, to favor the ecclesiastics, forbade the judges, by his new code xviii. chap. ii., to annul the wills made in favor of the Church, even when executed without the formalities prescribed by the laws.

Anastasius had enacted, in 471, that church property should be held by a prescription, or title, of forty years' duration. Justinian inserted this law in his code; but this prince, who was continually changing his jurisprudence, subsequently extended this proscription to a century. Immediately several ecclesiastics, unworthy of their profession, forged false titles, and drew out of the dust old testaments, void by the ancient laws, but valid according to the new. Citizens were deprived of their patrimonies by fraud; and possessions, which until then were considered inviolable, were usurped by the Church. In short, the abuse was so crying that Justinian himself was obliged to re-establish the dispositions of the law of Anastasius, by his novel cxxxi. chap. vi.

The possessions of the Church during the first five centuries of our era were regulated by deacons, who distributed them to the clergy and to the poor. This community ceased at the end of the fifth century, and Church property was divided into four parts--one being given to the bishops, another to the clergy, a third to the place of worship, and the fourth to the poor. Soon after this division the bishops alone took charge of the whole four portions, and this is the reason why the inferior clergy are generally very poor.

Monks possessing Slaves.

What is still more melancholy, the Benedictines, Bernardines, and even the Chartreux are permitted to have mortmains and slaves. Under their domination in several provinces of France and Germany are still recognized: personal slavery, slavery of property, and slavery of person and property. Slavery of the person consists in the incapacity of a man's disposing of his property in favor of his children, if they have not always lived with their father in the same house, and at the same table, in which case all belongs to the monks. The fortune of an inhabitant of Mount Jura, put into the hands of a notary, becomes, even in Paris, the prey of those who have originally embraced evangelical poverty at Mount Jura. The son asks alms at the door of the house which his father has built; and the monks, far from giving them, even arrogate to themselves the right of not paying his father's creditors, and of regarding as void all the mortgages on the house of which they take possession. In vain the widow throws herself at their feet to obtain a part of her dowry. This dowry, these debts, this paternal property, all belong, by divine right, to the monks. The creditors, the widow, and the children are all left to die in beggary.

Real slavery is that which is effected by residence. Whoever occupies a house within the domain of these monks, and lives in it a year and a day, becomes their serf for life. It has sometimes happened that a French merchant, and father of a family, led by his business into this barbarous country, has taken a house for a year. Dying afterwards in his own country, in another province of France, his widow and children have been quite astonished to see officers, armed with writs, come and take away their furniture, sell it in the name of St. Claude, and drive away a whole family from the house of their father.

Mixed slavery is that which, being composed of the two, is, of all that rapacity has ever invented, the most execrable, and beyond the conception even of freebooters. There are, then, Christian people groaning in a triple slavery under monks who have taken the vow of humility and poverty. You will ask how governments suffer these fatal contradictions? It is because the monks are rich and the vassals are poor. It is because the monks, to preserve their Hunnish rights, make presents to their commissaries and to the mistresses of those who might interpose their authority to put down their oppression. The strong always crush the weak; but why must monks be the stronger?

CICERO.

It is at a time when, in France, the fine arts are in a state of decline; in an age of paradox, and amidst the degradation and persecution of literature and philosophy, that an attempt is made to tarnish the name of Cicero. And who is the man who thus endeavors to throw disgrace upon his memory? It is one who lends his services in defence of persons accused like himself; it is an advocate, who has studied eloquence under that great master; it is a citizen who appears to be, like Cicero, animated by devotion to the public good.

In a book entitled "Navigable Canals," a book abounding in grand and patriotic rather than practical views, we feel no small astonishment at finding the following philippic against Cicero, who was never concerned in digging canals:

"The most glorious trait in the history of Cicero is the destruction of Catiline's conspiracy, which, regarded in its true light, produced little sensation at Rome, except in consequence of his affecting to give it importance. The danger existed much more in his discourses than in the affair itself. It was an enterprise of debauchees which it was easy to disconcert. Neither the principal nor the accomplices had taken the slightest measure to insure the success of their guilty attempt. There was nothing astonishing in this singular matter but the blustering which attended all the proceedings of the consul, and the facility with which he was permitted to sacrifice to his self-love so many scions of illustrious families.

"Besides, the life of Cicero abounds in traits of meanness. His eloquence was as venal as his soul was pusillanimous. If his tongue was not guided by interest it was guided by fear or hope. The desire of obtaining partisans led him to the tribune, to defend, without a blush, men more dishonorable, and incalculably more dangerous, than Catiline. His clients were nearly all miscreants, and, by a singular exercise of divine justice, he at last met death from the hands of one of those wretches whom his skill had extricated from the fangs of human justice."

We answer that, "regarded in its true light," the conspiracy of Catiline excited at Rome somewhat more than a "slight sensation." It plunged her into the greatest disturbance and danger. It was terminated only by a battle so bloody that there is no example of equal carnage, and scarcely any of equal valor. All the soldiers of Catiline, after having killed half of the army of Petrius, were killed, to the last man. Catiline perished, covered with wounds, upon a heap of the slain; and all were found with their countenances sternly glaring upon the enemy. This was not an enterprise so wonderfully easy as to be disconcerted. Cæsar encouraged it; Cæsar learned from it to conspire on a future day more successfully against his country.

"Cicero defended, without a blush, men more dishonorable, and incalculably more dangerous than Catiline!" Was this when he defended in the tribune Sicily against Verres, and the Roman republic against Antony? Was it when he exhorted the clemency of Cæsar in favor of Ligarius and King Deiotarus? or when he obtained the right of citizenship for the poet Archias? or when, in his exquisite oration for the Manilian law, he obtained every Roman suffrage on behalf of the great Pompey?

He pleaded for Milo, the murderer of Clodius; but Clodius had deserved the tragical end he met with by his outrages. Clodius had been involved in the conspiracy of Catiline; Clodius was his mortal enemy. He had irritated Rome against him, and had punished him for having saved Rome. Milo was his friend.

What! is it in our time that any one ventures to assert that God punished Cicero for having defended a military tribune called Popilius Lena, and that divine vengeance made this same Popilius Lena the instrument of his assassination? No one knows whether Popilius Lena was guilty of the crime of which he was acquitted, after Cicero's defence of him upon his trial; but all know that the monster was guilty of the most horrible ingratitude, the most infamous avarice, and the most detestable cruelty to obtain the money of three wretches like himself. It was reserved for our times to hold up the assassination of Cicero as an act of divine justice. The triumvirs would not have dared to do it. Every age, before the present, has detested and deplored the manner of his death.

Cicero is reproached with too frequently boasting that he had saved Rome, and with being too fond of glory. But his enemies endeavored to stain his glory. A tyrannical faction condemned him to exile, and razed his house, because he had preserved every house in Rome from the flames which Catiline had prepared for them. Men are permitted and even bound to boast of their services, when they meet with forgetfulness or ingratitude, and more particularly when they are converted into crimes.

Scipio is still admired for having answered his accusers in these words: "This is the anniversary of the day on which I vanquished Hannibal; let us go and return thanks to the gods." The whole assembly followed him to the Capitol, and our hearts follow him thither also, as we read the passage in history; though, after all, it would have been better to have delivered in his accounts than to extricate himself from the attack by a bon mot.

Cicero, in the same manner, excited the admiration of the Roman people when, on the day in which his consulship expired, being obliged to take the customary oaths, and preparing to address the people as was usual, he was hindered by the tribune Matellus, who was desirous of insulting him. Cicero had begun with these words: "I swear,"--the tribune interrupted him, and declared that he would not suffer him to make a speech. A great murmuring was heard. Cicero paused a moment, and elevating his full and melodious voice, he exclaimed, as a short substitute for his intended speech, "I swear that I have saved the country." The assembly cried out with delight and enthusiasm, "We swear that he has spoken the truth." That moment was the most brilliant of his life. This is the true way of loving glory. I do not know where I have read these unknown verses:

Romains, j'aime la gloire, et ne veux point m'en taire Des travaux des humains c'est le digne salaire, Ce n'est qu'en vous qu'il la faut acheter; Qui n'ose la vouloir, n'ose la mériter.

Romans, I own that glory I regard Of human toil the only just reward; Placed in your hands the immortal guerdon lies, And he will ne'er deserve who slights the prize.

Can we despise Cicero if we consider his conduct in his government of Cilicia, which was then one of the most important provinces of the Roman Empire, in consequence of its contiguity to Syria and the Parthian Empire. Laodicea, one of the most beautiful cities of the East, was the capital of it. This province was then as flourishing as it is at the present day degraded under the government of the Turks, who never had a Cicero.

He begins by protecting Ariobarzanes, king of Cappadocia, and he refuses the presents which that king desires to make him. The Parthians come and attack Antioch in a state of perfect peace. Cicero hastily marches towards it, comes up with the Parthians by forced marches at Mount Taurus, routs them, pursues them in their retreat, and Arsaces, their general, is slain, with a part of his army.

Thence he rushes on Pendenissum, the capital of a country in alliance with the Parthians, and takes it, and the province is reduced to submission. He instantly directs his forces against the tribes of people called Tiburanians, and defeats them, and his troops confer on him the title of Imperator, which he preserved all his life. He would have obtained the honors of a triumph at Rome if he had not been opposed by Cato, who induced the senate merely to decree public rejoicings and thanks to the gods, when, in fact, they were due to Cicero.

If we picture to ourselves the equity and disinterestedness of Cicero in his government; his activity, his affability--two virtues so rarely compatible; the benefits which he accumulated upon the people over whom he was an absolute sovereign; it will be extremely difficult to withhold from such a man our esteem.

If we reflect that this is the same man who first introduced philosophy into Rome; that his "Tusculan Questions," and his book "On the Nature of the Gods," are the two noblest works that ever were written by mere human wisdom, and that his treatise, "De Officiis," is the most useful one that we possess in morals; we shall find it still more difficult to despise Cicero. We pity those who do not read him; we pity still more those who refuse to do him justice.

To the French detractor we may well oppose the lines of the Spanish Martial, in his epigram against Antony (book v., epig. 69, v. 7):

Quid prosunt sacræ pretiosa silentia linguae? Incipient omnes pro Cicerone loqui.

Why still his tongue with vengeance weak, For Cicero all the world will speak!

See, likewise, what is said by Juvenal (sat. iv., v. 244):

Roma patrem patriae Ciceronem libera dixit. Freed Rome, him father of his country called.

CIRCUMCISION.

When Herodotus narrates what he was told by the barbarians among whom he travelled, he narrates fooleries, after the manner of the greater part of travellers. Thus, it is not to be supposed that he expects to be believed in his recital of the adventure of Gyges and Candaules; of Arion, carried on the back of a dolphin; of the oracle which was consulted on what Crœsus was at the time doing, that he was then going to dress a tortoise in a stew-pan; of Darius' horse, which, being the first out of a certain number to neigh, in fact proclaimed his master a king; and of a hundred other fables, fit to amuse children, and to be compiled by rhetoricians. But when he speaks of what he has seen, of the customs of people he has examined, of their antiquities which he has consulted, he then addresses himself to men.

"It appears," says he, in his book "Euterpe," "that the inhabitants of Colchis sprang from Egypt. I judge so from my own observations rather than from hearsay; for I found that, at Colchis, the ancient Egyptians were more frequently recalled to my mind than the ancient customs of Colchis were when I was in Egypt.

"These inhabitants of the shores of the Euxine Sea stated themselves to be a colony founded by Sesostris. As for myself, I should think this probable, not merely because they are dark and woolly-haired, but because the inhabitants of Colchis, Egypt, and Ethiopia are the only people in the world who, from time immemorial, have practised circumcision; for the Phœnicians, and the people of Palestine, confess that they adopted the practice from the Egyptians. The Syrians, who at present inhabit the banks of Thermodon, acknowledge that it is, comparatively, but recently that they have conformed to it. It is principally from this usage that they are considered of Egyptian origin.

"With respect to Ethiopia and Egypt, as this ceremony is of great antiquity in both nations, I cannot by any means ascertain which has derived it from the other. It is, however, probable that the Ethiopians received it from the Egyptians; while, on the contrary, the Phœnicians have abolished the practice of circumcising new-born children since the enlargement of their commerce with the Greeks."

From this passage of Herodotus it is evident that many people had adopted circumcision from Egypt, but no nation ever pretended to have received it from the Jews. To whom, then, can we attribute the origin of this custom; to a nation from whom five or six others acknowledge they took it, or to another nation, much less powerful, less commercial, less warlike, hid away in a corner of Arabia Petræa, and which never communicated any one of its usages to any other people?

The Jews admit that they were, many ages since, received in Egypt out of charity. Is it not probable that the lesser people imitated a usage of the superior one, and that the Jews adopted some customs from their masters?

Clement of Alexandria relates that Pythagoras, when travelling among the Egyptians, was obliged to be circumcised in order to be admitted to their mysteries. It was, therefore, absolutely necessary to be circumcised to be a priest in Egypt. Those priests existed when Joseph arrived in Egypt. The government was of great antiquity, and the ancient ceremonies of the country were observed with the most scrupulous exactness.

The Jews acknowledge that they remained in Egypt two hundred and five years. They say that, during that period, they did not become circumcised. It is clear, then, that for two hundred and five years the Egyptians did not receive circumcision from the Jews. Would they have adopted it from them after the Jews had stolen the vessels which they had lent them, and, according to their own account, fled with their plunder into the wilderness? Will a master adopt the principal symbol of the religion of a robbing and runaway slave? It is not in human nature.

It is stated in the Book of Joshua that the Jews were circumcised in the wilderness. "I have delivered you from what constituted your reproach among the Egyptians." But what could this reproach be, to a people living between Phœnicians, Arabians, and Egyptians, but something which rendered them contemptible to these three nations? How effectually is that reproach removed by abstracting a small portion of the prepuce? Must not this be considered the natural meaning of the passage?

The Book of Genesis relates that Abraham had been circumcised before. But Abraham travelled in Egypt, which had been long a flourishing kingdom, governed by a powerful king. There is nothing to prevent the supposition that circumcision was, in this very ancient kingdom, an established usage. Moreover, the circumcision of Abraham led to no continuation; his posterity was not circumcised till the time of Joshua.

But, before the time of Joshua, the Jews, by their own acknowledgment, adopted many of the customs of the Egyptians. They imitated them in many sacrifices, in many ceremonies; as, for example, in the fasts observed on the eves of the feasts of Isis; in ablutions; in the custom of shaving the heads of the priests; in the incense, the branched candle-stick, the sacrifice of the red-haired cow, the purification with hyssop, the abstinence from swine's flesh, the dread of using the kitchen utensils of foreigners; everything testifies that the little people of Hebrews, notwithstanding its aversion to the great Egyptian nation, had retained a vast number of the usages of its former masters. The goat Azazel, which was despatched into the wilderness laden with the sins of the people, was a visible imitation of an Egyptian practice. The rabbis are agreed, even, that the word Azazel is not Hebrew. Nothing, therefore, could exist to have prevented the Hebrews from imitating the Egyptians in circumcision, as the Arabs, their neighbors, did.

It is by no means extraordinary that God, who sanctified baptism, a practice so ancient among the Asiatics, should also have sanctified circumcision, not less ancient among the Africans. We have already remarked that he has a sovereign right to attach his favors to any symbol that he chooses.

As to what remains since the time when, under Joshua, the Jewish people became circumcised, it has retained that usage down to the present day. The Arabs, also, have faithfully adhered to it; but the Egyptians, who, in the earlier ages, circumcised both their males and females, in the course of time abandoned the practice entirely as to the latter, and at last applied it solely to priests, astrologers, and prophets. This we learn from Clement of Alexandria, and Origen. In fact, it is not clear that the Ptolemies ever received circumcision.

The Latin authors who treat the Jews with such profound contempt as to apply to them in derision the expressions, "curtus Apella", "credat Judæus Apella," "curti Judæi" never apply such epithets to the Egyptians. The whole population of Egypt is at present circumcised, but for another reason than that which operated formerly; namely, because Mahometanism adopted the ancient circumcision of Arabia. It is this Arabian circumcision which has extended to the Ethiopians, among whom males and females are both still circumcised.

We must acknowledge that this ceremony appears at first a very strange one; but we should remember that, from the earliest times, the oriental priests consecrated themselves to their deities by peculiar marks. An ivy leaf was indented with a graver on the priests of Bacchus. Lucian tells us that those devoted to the goddess Isis impressed characters upon their wrist and neck. The priests of Cybele made themselves eunuchs.

It is highly probable that the Egyptians, who revered the instrument of human production, and bore its image in pomp in their processions, conceived the idea of offering to Isis and Osiris through whom everything on earth was produced, a small portion of that organ with which these deities had connected the perpetuation of the human species. Ancient oriental manners are so prodigiously different from our own that scarcely anything will appear extraordinary to a man of even but little reading. A Parisian is excessively surprised when he is told that the Hottentots deprive their male children of one of the evidences of virility. The Hottentots are perhaps surprised that the Parisians preserve both.

CLERK--CLERGY.

There may be something perhaps still remaining for remark under this head, even after Du Cange's "Dictionary" and the "Encyclopædia." We may observe, for instance, that so wonderful was the respect paid to learning, about the eleventh and twelfth centuries, that a custom was introduced and followed in France, in Germany, and in England, of remitting the punishment of the halter to every condemned criminal who was able to read. So necessary to the state was every man who possessed such an extent of knowledge. William the Bastard, the conqueror of England, carried thither this custom. It was called benefit of clergy--"beneficum clericorum aut clergicorum."

We have remarked, in more places than one, that old usages, lost in other countries, are found again in England, as in the island of Samothrace were discovered the ancient mysteries of Orpheus. To this day the benefit of clergy subsists among the English, in all its vigor, for manslaughter, and for any theft not exceeding a certain amount of value, and being the first offence. The prisoner who is able to read demands his "benefit of clergy," which cannot be refused him. The judge refers to the chaplain of the prison, who presents a book to the prisoner, upon which the judge puts the question to the chaplain, "Legit?" "Does he read?" The chaplain replies: "Legit ut clericus." "He reads like a clergyman." After this the punishment of the prisoner is restricted to the application of a hot branding iron to the palm of his hand.

Of the Celibacy of the Clergy.

It is asked whether, in the first ages of the Church, marriage was permitted to the clergy, and when it was forbidden? It is unquestionable that the clergy of the Jewish religion, far from being bound to celibacy, were, on the contrary, urged to marriage, not merely by the example of their patriarchs, but by the disgrace attached to not leaving posterity.

In the times, however, that preceded the first calamities which befell the Jews, certain sects of rigorists arose--Essenians, Judaites, Therapeutæ, Herodians; in some of which--the Essenians and Therapeutæ, for examples--the most devout of the sect abstained from marriage. This continence was an imitation of the chastity of the vestals, instituted by Numa Pompilius; of the daughter of Pythagoras, who founded a convent; of the priests of Diana; of the Pythia of Delphos; and, in more remote antiquity, of the priestesses of Apollo, and even of the priestesses of Bacchus. The priests of Cybele not only bound themselves by vows of chastity, but, to preclude the violation of their vows, became eunuchs. Plutarch, in the eighth question of his "Table-talk," informs us that, in Egypt, there are colleges of priests which renounce marriage.

The first Christians, although professing to lead a life as pure as that of the Essenians and Therapeutæ, did not consider celibacy as a virtue. We have seen that nearly all the apostles and disciples were married. St. Paul writes to Titus: "Choose for a priest him who is the husband of one wife, having believing children, and not under accusation of dissoluteness." He says the same to Timothy: "Let the superintendent be the husband of one wife." He seems to think so highly of marriage that, in the same epistle to Timothy, he says: "The wife, notwithstanding her prevarication, shall be saved in child-bearing."

The proceedings of the Council of Nice, on the subject of married priests, deserve great attention. Some bishops, according to the relations of Sozomen and Socrates, proposed a law commanding bishops and priests thenceforward to abstain from their wives; but St. Paphnucius the Martyr, bishop of Thebes, in Egypt, strenuously opposed it; observing, "that marriage was chastity"; and the council adopted his opinion. Suidas, Gelasius, Cesicenus, Cassiodorus, and Nicephorus Callistus, record precisely the same thing. The council merely forbade the clergy from living with agapetæ, or female associates besides their own wives, except their mothers, sisters, aunts, and others whose age would preclude suspicion.

After that time, the celibacy of the clergy was recommended, without being commanded. St. Jerome, a devout recluse, was, of all the fathers, highest in his eulogiums of the celibacy of priests; yet he resolutely, supports the cause of Carterius, a Spanish bishop, who had been married twice. "Were I," says he, "to enumerate all the bishops who have entered into second nuptials, I should name as many as were present at the Council of Rimini"--"Tantus numerus congregabitur ut Riminensis synodus superetur."

The examples of clergymen married, and living with their wives, are innumerable. Sydonius, bishop of Clermont, in Auvergne, in the fifth century, married Papianilla, daughter of the Emperor Avitus, and the house of Polignac claims descent from this marriage. Simplicius, bishop of Bourges, had two children by his wife Palladia. St. Gregory of Nazianzen was the son of another Gregory, bishop of Nazianzen, and of Nonna, by whom that bishop had three children--Cesarius, Gorgonia, and the saint.

In the Roman decretals, under the canon Osius, we find a very long list of bishops who were the sons of priests. Pope Osius himself was the son of a sub-deacon Stephen; and Pope Boniface I., son of the priest Jocondo. Pope Felix III. was the son of Felix, a priest, and was himself one of the grandfathers of Gregory the Great. The priest Projectus was the father of John II.; and Gordian, the father of Agapet. Pope Sylvester was the son of Pope Hormisdas. Theodore I. was born of a marriage of Theodore, patriarch of Jerusalem; a circumstance which should produce the reconciliation of the two Churches.

At length, after several councils had been held without effect on the subject of the celibacy, which ought always to accompany the priesthood, Pope Gregory excommunicated all married priests; either to add respectability to the Church, by the greater rigor of its discipline, or to attach more closely to the court of Rome the bishops and priests of other countries, who would thus have no other family than the Church. This law was not established without great opposition.

It is a very remarkable circumstance that the Council of Basel, having deposed, at least nominally, Pope Eugenius IV., and elected Amadeus of Savoy, many bishops having objected against that prince that he had been married, Æneas Sylvius, who was afterwards pope, under the name of Pius II., supported the election of Amadeus in these words: "Non solum qui uxorem habuit, sed uxorem habens, potest assumere"--"Not only may he be made a pope who has been married, but also he who is so."

This Pius II. was consistent. Peruse his letters to his mistress, in the collection of his works. He was convinced, that to defraud nature of her rights was absolute insanity, and that it was the duty of man not to destroy, but to control her.

However this may be, since the Council of Trent there has no longer been any dispute about the celibacy of the Roman Catholic clergy; there have been only desires. All Protestant communions are, on this point, in opposition to Rome.

In the Greek Church, which at present extends from the frontiers of China to Cape Matapan, the priests may marry once. Customs everywhere vary; discipline changes conformably to time and place. We here only record facts; we enter into no controversy.

Of Clerks of the Closet, Since Denominated Secretaries of State and Ministers.

Clerks of the closet, clerks of the king, more recently denominated secretaries of state, in France and England, were originally the "king's notaries." They were afterwards called "secretaries of orders" --secrétaires des commandemens. This we are informed of by the learned and laborious Pasquier. His authority is unquestionable, as he had under his inspection the registers of the chamber of accounts, which, in our own times, have been destroyed by fire.

At the unfortunate peace of Cateau-Cambrésis, a clerk of Philip II., having taken the title of secretary of state, de l'Aubespine, who was secretary of orders to the king of France, and his notary, took that title likewise, that the honors of both might be equal, whatever might be the case with their emoluments.

In England, before the reign of Henry VIII., there was only one secretary of the king, who stood while he presented memorials and petitions to the council. Henry VIII. appointed two, and conferred on them the same titles and prerogatives as in Spain. The great nobles did not, at that period, accept these situations; but, in time, they have become of so much consequence that peers of the realm and commanders of armies are now invested with them. Thus everything changes. There is at present no relic in France of the government of Hugh Capet, nor in England of the administration of William the Bastard.

CLIMATE.

It is certain that the sun and atmosphere mark their empire on all the productions of nature, from man to mushrooms. In the grand age of Louis XIV., the ingenious Fontenelle remarked:

"One might imagine that the torrid and two frigid zones are not well suited to the sciences. Down to the present day they have not travelled beyond Egypt and Mauritania, on the one side, nor on the other beyond Sweden. Perhaps it is not owing to mere chance that they are retained within Mount Atlas and the Baltic Sea. We know not whether these may not be the limits appointed to them by nature, or whether we may ever hope to see great authors among Laplanders or negroes."

Chardin, one of those travellers who reason and investigate, goes still further than Fontenelle, when speaking of Persia. "The temperature of warm climates," says he, "enervates the mind as well as the body, and dissipates that fire which the imagination requires for invention. In such climates men are incapable of the long studies and intense application which are necessary to the production of first-rate works in the liberal and mechanic arts," etc.

Chardin did not consider that Sadi and Lokman were Persians. He did not recollect that Archimedes belonged to Sicily, where the heat is greater than in three-fourths of Persia. He forgot that Pythagoras formerly taught geometry to the Brahmins. The Abbé Dubos supported and developed, as well as he was able, the opinion of Chardin.

One hundred and fifty years before them, Bodin made it the foundation of his system in his "Republic," and in his "Method of History"; he asserts that the influence of climate is the principle both of the government and the religion of nations. Diodorus of Sicily was of the same opinion long before Bodin.

The author of the "Spirit of Laws," without quoting any authority, carried this idea farther than Chardin and Bodin. A certain part of the nation believed him to have first suggested it, and imputed it to him as a crime. This was quite in character with that part of the nation alluded to. There are everywhere men who possess more zeal than understanding.

We might ask those who maintain that climate does everything, why the Emperor Julian, in his "Misopogon" says that what pleased him in the Parisians was the gravity of their characters and the severity of their manners; and why these Parisians, without the slightest change of climate, are now like playful children, at whom the government punishes and smiles at the same moment, and who themselves, the moment after, also smile and sing lampoons upon their masters.

Why are the Egyptians, who are described as having been still more grave than the Parisians, at present the most lazy, frivolous, and cowardly of people, after having, as we are told, conquered the whole world for their pleasure, under a king called Sesostris? Why are there no longer Anacreons, Aristotles, or Zeuxises at Athens? Whence comes it that Rome, instead of its Ciceros, Catos, and Livys, has merely citizens who dare not speak their minds, and a brutalized populace, whose supreme happiness consists in having oil cheap, and in gazing at processions?

Cicero, in his letters, is occasionally very jocular on the English. He desires his brother Quintus, Cæsar's lieutenant, to inform him whether he has found any great philosophers among them, in his expedition to Britain. He little suspected that that country would one day produce mathematicians whom he could not understand. Yet the climate has not at all changed, and the sky of London is as cloudy now as it was then.

Everything changes, both in bodies and minds, by time. Perhaps the Americans will in some future period cross the sea to instruct Europeans in the arts. Climate has some influence, government a hundred times more; religion and government combined more still.

Influence of Climate.

Climate influences religion in respect to ceremonies and usages. A legislator could have experienced no difficulty in inducing the Indians to bathe in the Ganges at certain appearances of the moon; it is a high gratification to them. Had any one proposed a like bath to the people who inhabit the banks of the Dwina, near Archangel, he would have been stoned. Forbid pork to an Arab, who after eating this species of animal food (the most miserable and disgusting in his own country) would be affected by leprosy, he will obey you with joy; prohibit it to a Westphalian, and he will be tempted to knock you down. Abstinence from wine is a good precept of religion in Arabia, where orange, citron, and lemon waters are necessary to health. Mahomet would not have forbidden wine in Switzerland, especially before going to battle.

There are usages merely fanciful. Why did the priests of Egypt devise circumcision? It was not for the sake of health. Cambyses, who treated as they deserved both them and their bull Apis, the courtiers of Cambyses, and his soldiers, enjoyed perfectly good health without such mutilation. Climate has no peculiar influence over this particular portion of the person of a priest. The offering in question was made to Isis, probably on the same principle as the firstlings of the fruits of the earth were everywhere offered. It was typical of an offering of the first fruits of life.

Religions have always turned on two pivots--forms of ceremonies, and faith. Forms and ceremonies depend much on climate; faith not at all. A doctrine will be received with equal facility under the equator or near the pole. It will be afterwards equally rejected at Batavia and the Orcades, while it will be maintained, unguibus et rostro--with tooth and nail--at Salamanca. This depends not on sun and atmosphere, but solely upon opinion, that fickle empress of the world.

Certain libations of wine will be naturally enjoined in a country abounding in vineyards; and it would never occur to the mind of any legislator to institute sacred mysteries, which could not be celebrated without wine, in such a country as Norway.

It will be expressly commanded to burn incense in the court of a temple where beasts are killed in honor of the Divinity, and for the priests' supper. This slaughter-house, called a temple, would be a place of abominable infection, if it were not continually purified; and without the use of aromatics, the religion of the ancients would have introduced the plague. The interior of the temple was even festooned with flowers to sweeten the air.

The cow will not be sacrificed in the burning territory of the Indian peninsula, because it supplies the necessary article of milk, and is very rare in arid and barren districts, and because its flesh, being dry and tough, and yielding but little nourishment, would afford the Brahmins but miserable cheer. On the contrary, the cow will be considered sacred, in consequence of its rareness and utility.

The temple of Jupiter Ammon, where the heat is excessive, will be entered only with bare feet. To perform his devotions at Copenhagen, a man requires his feet to be warm and well covered.

It is not thus with doctrine. Polytheism has been believed in all climates; and it is equally easy for a Crim Tartar and an inhabitant of Mecca to acknowledge one only incommunicable God, neither begotten nor begetting. It is by doctrine, more than by rites, that a religion extends from one climate to another. The doctrine of the unity of God passed rapidly from Medina to Mount Caucasus. Climate, then, yields to opinion.

The Arabs said to the Turks: "We practiced the ceremony of circumcision in Arabia without very well knowing why. It was an ancient usage of the priests of Egypt to offer to Oshiret, or Osiris, a small portion of what they considered most valuable. We had adopted this custom three thousand years before we became Mahometans. You will become circumcised like us; you will bind yourself to sleep with one of your wives every Friday, and to give two and a half per cent. of your income annually to the poor. We drink nothing but water and sherbet; all intoxicating liquors are forbidden us. In Arabia they are pernicious. You will embrace the same regimen, although you should be passionately fond of wine; and even although, on the banks of the Phasis and Araxes, it should often be necessary for you. In short, if you wish to go to heaven, and to obtain good places there, you will take the road through Mecca."

The inhabitants north of the Caucasus subject themselves to these laws, and adopt, in the fullest extent, a religion which was never framed for them.

In Egypt the emblematical worship of animals succeeded to the doctrines of Thaut. The gods of the Romans afterwards shared Egypt with the dogs, the cats, and the crocodiles. To the Roman religion succeeded Christianity; that was completely banished by Mahometanism, which will perhaps be superseded by some new religion.

In all these changes climate has effected nothing; government has done everything. We are here considering only second causes, without raising our unhallowed eyes to that Providence which directs them. The Christian religion, which received its birth in Syria, and grew up towards its fulness of stature in Alexandria, inhabits now those countries where Teutat and Irminsul, Freya and Odin, were formerly adored.

There are some nations whose religion is not the result either of climate or of government. What cause detached the north of Germany, Denmark, three parts of Switzerland, Holland, England, Scotland, and Ireland, from the Romish communion? Poverty. Indulgences, and deliverance from purgatory for the souls of those whose bodies were at that time in possession of very little money, were sold too dear. The prelates and monks absorbed the whole revenue of a province. People adopted a cheaper religion. In short, after numerous civil wars, it was concluded that the pope's religion was a good one for nobles, and the reformed one for citizens. Time will show whether the religion of the Greeks or of the Turks will prevail on the coasts of the Euxine and Ægean seas.

COHERENCE--COHESION--ADHESION.

The power by which the parts of bodies are kept together. It is a phenomenon the most common, but the least understood. Newton derides the hooked atoms, by means of which it has been attempted to explain coherence; for it still remained to be known why they are hooked, and why they cohere. He treats with no greater respect those who have explained cohesion by rest. "It is," says he, "an occult quality."

He has recourse to an attraction. But is not this attraction, which may indeed exist, but is by no means capable of demonstration, itself an occult quality? The grand attraction of the heavenly bodies is demonstrated and calculated. That of adhering bodies is incalculable. But how can we admit a force that is immeasurable to be of the same nature as one that can be measured?

Nevertheless, it is demonstrated that the force of attraction acts upon all the planets and all heavy bodies in proportion to their solidity; but it acts on all the particles of matter; it is, therefore, very probable that, while it exists in every part in reference to the whole, it exists also in every part in reference to cohesion; coherence, therefore, may be the effect of attraction.

This opinion appears admissible till a better one can be found, and that better is not easily to be met with.

COMMERCE.

Since the fall of Carthage, no people had been powerful in commerce and arms at the same time, until Venice set the example. The Portuguese having passed the Cape of Good Hope, were, for some time, great lords on the coast of India, and even formidable in Europe. The United Provinces have only been warriors in spite of themselves, and it was not as united between themselves, but as united with England that they assisted to hold the balance of Europe at the commencement of the eighteenth century.

Carthage, Venice, and Amsterdam have been powerful; but they have acted like those people among us, who, having amassed money by trade, buy lordly estates. Neither Carthage, Venice, Holland, nor any people, have commenced by being warriors, and even conquerors, to finish by being merchants. The English only answer this description; they had fought a long time before they knew how to reckon. They did not know, when they gained the battles of Agincourt, Crécy, and Poitiers, that they were able to deal largely in corn, and make broadcloth, which would be of much more value to them than such victories. The knowledge of these arts alone has augmented, enriched, and strengthened the nation. It is only because the English have become merchants that London exceeds Paris in extent and number of citizens; that they can spread two hundred ships of war over the seas, and keep royal allies in pay.

When Louis XIV. made Italy tremble, and his armies, already masters of Savoy and Piedmont, were ready to take Turin, Prince Eugene was obliged to march to the skirts of Germany, to the succor of the duke of Savoy. Having no money, without which he could neither take nor defend towns, he had recourse to the English merchants. In half an hour they advanced him the sum of five millions of livres, with which he delivered Turin, beat the French, and wrote this little billet to those who had lent it him: "Gentlemen, I have received your money, and I flatter myself that I have employed it to your satisfaction." All this excites just pride in an English merchant, and makes him venture to compare himself, and not without reason, to a Roman citizen. Thus the younger sons of a peer of the realm disdain not to be merchants. Lord Townsend, minister of state, had a brother who was contented with being a merchant in the city. At the time that Lord Orford governed England, his younger brother was a factor at Aleppo, whence he would not return, and where he died. This custom--which, however, begins to decline--appeared monstrous to the petty German princes. They could not conceive how the son of a peer of England was only a rich and powerful trader, while in Germany they are all princes. We have seen nearly thirty highnesses of the same name, having nothing for their fortunes but old armories and aristocratical hauteur. In France, anybody may be a marquis that likes; and whoever arrives at Paris from a remote province, with money to spend, and a name ending in ac or ille, may say: "A man like me!" "A man of my quality!" and sovereignly despise a merchant; while the merchant so often hears his profession spoken of with disdain that he is weak enough to blush at it. Which is the more useful to a state--a well-powdered lord, who knows precisely at what hour the king rises and retires, and who gives himself airs of greatness, while playing the part of a slave in the antechamber of a minister; or a merchant who enriches his country, sends orders from his office to Surat and Aleppo, and contributes to the happiness of the world?

COMMON SENSE.

There is sometimes in vulgar expressions an image of what passes in the heart of all men. "Sensus communis" signified among the Romans not only common sense, but also humanity and sensibility. As we are not equal to the Romans, this word with us conveys not half what it did with them. It signifies only good sense--plain, straightforward reasoning--the first notion of ordinary things--a medium between dulness and intellect. To say, "that man has not common sense," is a gross insult; while the expression, "that man has common sense," is an affront also; it would imply that he was not quite stupid, but that he wanted intellect. But what is the meaning of common sense, if it be not sense? Men, when they invented this term, supposed that nothing entered the mind except by the senses; otherwise would they have used the word "sense" to signify the result of the common faculty of reason?

It is said, sometimes, that common sense is very rare. What does this expression mean? That, in many men, dawning reason is arrested in its progress by some prejudices; that a man who judges reasonably on one affair will deceive himself grossly in another. The Arab, who, besides being a good calculator, was a learned chemist and an exact astronomer, nevertheless believed that Mahomet put half of the moon into his sleeve.

How is it that he was so much above common sense in the three sciences above mentioned, and beneath it when he proceeded to the subject of half the moon? It is because, in the first case, he had seen with his own eyes, and perfected his own intelligence; and, in the second, he had used the eyes of others, by shutting his own, and perverting the common sense within him.

How could this strange perversion of mind operate? How could the ideas which had so regular and firm a footing in his brain, on many subjects, halt on another a thousand times more palpable and easy to comprehend? This man had always the same principles of intelligence in him; he must have therefore possessed a vitiated organ, as it sometimes happens that the most delicate epicure has a depraved taste in regard to a particular kind of nourishment.

How did the organ of this Arab, who saw half of the moon in Mahomet's sleeve, become disordered--By fear. It had been told him that if he did not believe in this sleeve his soul, immediately after his death, in passing over the narrow bridge, would fall forever into the abyss. He was told much worse--if ever you doubt this sleeve, one dervish will treat you with ignominy; another will prove you mad, because, having all possible motives for credibility, you will not submit your superb reason to evidence; a third will refer you to the little divan of a small province, and you will be legally impaled.

All this produces a panic in the good Arab, his wife, sister, and all his little family. They possess good sense in all the rest, but on this article their imagination is diseased like that of Pascal, who continually saw a precipice near his couch. But did our Arab really believe in the sleeve of Mahomet? No; he endeavored to believe it; he said, "It is impossible, but true--I believe that which I do not credit." He formed a chaos of ideas in his head in regard to this sleeve, which he feared to disentangle, and he gave up his common sense.

CONFESSION.

Repentance for one's faults is the only thing that can repair the loss of innocence; and to appear to repent of them, we must begin by acknowledging them. Confession, therefore, is almost as ancient as civil society. Confession was practised in all the mysteries of Egypt, Greece, and Samothrace. We are told, in the life of Marcus Aurelius, that when he deigned to participate in the Eleusinian mysteries, he confessed himself to the hierophant, though no man had less need of confession than himself.

This might be a very salutary ceremony; it might also become very detrimental; for such is the case with all human institutions. We know the answer of the Spartan whom a hierophant would have persuaded to confess himself: "To whom should I acknowledge my faults? to God, or to thee?" "To God," said the priest. "Retire, then, O man."

It is hard to determine at what time this practice was established among the Jews, who borrowed a great many of their rites from their neighbors. The Mishna, which is the collection of the Jewish laws, says that often, in confessing, they placed their hand upon a calf belonging to the priest; and this was called "the confession of calves."

It is said, in the same Mishna, that every culprit under sentence of death, went and confessed himself before witnesses, in some retired spot, a short time before his execution. If he felt himself guilty he said, "May my death atone for all my sins!" If innocent, he said, "May my death atone for all my sins, excepting that of which I am now accused."

On the day of the feast which was called by the Jews the solemn atonement, the devout among them confessed to one another, specifying their sins. The confessor repeated three times thirteen words of the seventy-seventh Psalm, at the same time giving the confessed thirty-nine stripes, which the latter returned, and they went away quits. It is said that this ceremony is still in use.

St. John's reputation for sanctity brought crowds to confess to him, as they came to be baptized by him with the baptism of justice; but we are not informed that St. John gave his penitents thirty-nine stripes. Confession was not then a sacrament; for this there are several reasons. The first is, that the word "sacrament" was at that time unknown, which reason is of itself sufficient. The Christians took their confession from the Jewish rites, and not from the mysteries of Isis and Ceres. The Jews confessed to their associates, and the Christians did also. It afterwards appeared more convenient that this should be the privilege of the priests. No rite, no ceremony, can be established but in process of time. It was hardly possible that some trace should not remain of the ancient usage of the laity of confessing to one another.

In Constantine's reign, it was at first the practice publicly to confess public offences. In the fifth century, after the schism of Novatus and Novatian, penitentiaries were instituted for the absolution of such as had fallen into idolatry. This confession to penitentiary priests was abolished under the Emperor Theodosius. A woman having accused herself aloud, to the penitentiary of Constantinople, of lying with the deacon, caused so much scandal and disturbance throughout the city that Nectarius permitted all the faithful to approach the holy table without confession, and to communicate in obedience to their consciences alone. Hence these words of St. John Chrysostom, who succeeded Nectarius: "Confess yourselves continually to God; I do not bring you forward on a stage to discover your faults to your fellow-servants; show your wounds to God, and ask of Him their cure; acknowledge your sins to Him who will not reproach you before men; it were vain to strive to hide them from Him who knows all things," etc.

It is said that the practice of auricular confession did not begin in the west until about the seventh century, when it was instituted by the abbots, who required their monks to come and acknowledge their offences to them twice a year. These abbots it was who invented the formula: "I absolve thee to the utmost of my power and thy need." It would surely have been more respectful towards the Supreme Being, as well as more just, to say: "May He forgive both thy faults and mine!"

The good which confession has done is that it has sometimes procured restitution from petty thieves. The ill is, that, in the internal troubles of states, it has sometimes forced the penitents to be conscientiously rebellious and blood-thirsty. The Guelph priests refused absolution to the Ghibellines, and the Ghibellines to the Guelphs.

The counsellor of state, Lénet, relates, in his "Memoirs," that all he could do in Burgundy to make the people rise in favor of the Prince Condé, detained at Vincennes by Cardinal Mazarin, was "to let loose the priests in the confessionals"--speaking of them as bloodhounds, who were to fan the flame of civil war in the privacy of the confessional.

At the siege of Barcelona, the monks refused absolution to all who remained faithful to Philip V. In the last revolution of Genoa, it was intimated to all consciences that there was no salvation for whosoever should not take up arms against the Austrians. This salutary remedy has, in every age, been converted into a poison. Whether a Sforza, a Medici, a Prince of Orange, or a King of France was to be assassinated, the parricide always prepared himself by the sacrament of confession. Louis XI., and the Marchioness de Brinvilliers always confessed as soon as they had committed any great crime; and they confessed often, as gluttons take medicines to increase their appetite.

The Disclosure of Confessions.

Jaurigini and Balthazar Gérard, the assassins of William I., Prince of Orange, the dominican Jacques Clément, Jean Châtel, the Feuillant Ravaillac, and all the other parricides of that day, confessed themselves before committing their crimes. Fanaticism, in those deplorable ages, had arrived at such a pitch that confession was but an additional pledge for the consummation of villainy. It became sacred for this reason--that confession is a sacrament.

Strada himself says: "Jaurigni non ante facinus aggredi sustinuit, quam expiatam noxis animam apud Dominicanum sacerdotem cœlesti pane firmaverit". "Jaurigini did not venture upon this act until he had purged his soul by confession at the feet of a Dominican, and fortified it by the celestial bread."

We find, in the interrogatory of Ravaillac, that the wretched man, quitting the Feuillans, and wishing to be received among the Jesuits, applied to the Jesuit d'Aubigny and, after speaking of several apparitions that he had seen, showed him a knife, on the blade of which was engraved a heart and a cross, and said, "This heart indicates that the king's heart must be brought to make war on the Huguenots."

Perhaps, if this d'Aubigny had been zealous and prudent enough to have informed the king of these words, and given him a faithful picture of the man who had uttered them, the best of kings would not have been assassinated.

On August 20, 1610, three months after the death of Henry IV., whose wounds yet bleed in the heart of every Frenchman, the Advocate-General Sirvin, still of illustrious memory, required that the Jesuits should be made to sign the four following rules:

1. That the council is above the pope. 2. That the pope cannot deprive the king of any of his rights by excommunication. 3. That ecclesiastics, like other persons, are entirely subject to the king. 4. That a priest who is made acquainted, by confession, with a conspiracy against the king and the state, must disclose it to the magistrates.

On the 22nd, the parliament passed a decree, by which it forbade the Jesuits to instruct youth before they had signed these four articles; but the court of Rome was then so powerful, and that of France so feeble, that this decree was of no effect. A fact worthy of attention is, that this same court of Rome, which did not choose that confession should be disclosed when the lives of sovereigns were endangered, obliged its confessors to denounce to the inquisitors those whom their female penitents accused in confession of having seduced and abused them. Paul IV., Pius IV., Clement VIII., and Gregory XV., ordered these disclosures to be made.

This was a very embarrassing snare for confessors and female penitents; it was making the sacrament a register of informations, and even of sacrileges. For, by the ancient canons, and especially by the Lateran Council under Innocent III., every priest that disclosed a confession, of whatever nature, was to be interdicted and condemned to perpetual imprisonment.

But this is not the worst; here are four popes, of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, ordering the disclosure of a sin of impurity, but not permitting that of a parricide. A woman, in the sacrament, declares, or pretends, before a carmelite, that a cordelier has seduced her; and the carmelite must denounce the cordelier. A fanatical assassin, thinking that he serves God by killing his prince, comes and consults a confessor on this case of conscience; and the confessor commits a sacrilege if he saves his sovereign's life.

This absurd and horrible contradiction is one unfortunate consequence of the constant opposition existing for so many centuries between the civil and ecclesiastical laws. The citizen finds himself, on fifty occasions, placed without alternative between sacrilege and high treason; the rules of good and evil being not yet drawn from beneath the chaos under which they have so long been buried. The Jesuit Coton's reply to Henry IV. will endure longer than his order. "Would you reveal the confession of a man who had resolved to assassinate me?" "No; but I would throw myself between him and you."

Father Coton's maxim has not always been followed. In some countries there are state mysteries unknown to the public, of which revealed confessions form no inconsiderable part. By means of suborned confessors the secrets of prisoners are learned. Some confessors, to reconcile their conscience with their interest, make use of a singular artifice. They give an account, not precisely of what the prisoner has told them, but of what he has not told them. If, for example, they are employed to find out whether an accused person has for his accomplice a Frenchman or an Italian, they say to the man who employs them, "the prisoner has sworn to me that no Italian was informed of his designs;" whence it is concluded that the suspected Frenchman is guilty.

Bodin thus expresses himself, in his book, "De la République": "Nor must it be concealed, if the culprit is discovered to have conspired against the life of the sovereign, or even to have willed it only; as in the case of a gentleman of Normandy, who confessed to a monk that he had a mind to kill Francis I. The monk apprised the king, who sent the gentleman to the court of parliament, where he was condemned to death, as I learned from M. Canage, an advocate in parliament."

The writer of this article was himself almost witness to a disclosure still more important and singular. It is known how the Jesuit Daubenton betrayed Philip V., king of Spain, to whom he was confessor. He thought, from a very mistaken policy, that he should report the secrets of his penitent to the duke of Orleans, regent of the kingdom, and had the imprudence to write to him what he should not, even verbally, communicate to any one. The duke of Orleans sent his letter to the king of Spain. The Jesuit was discarded, and died a short time after. This is an authenticated fact.

It is still a grave and perplexing question, in what cases confessions should be disclosed. For, if we decide that it should be in cases of human high treason, this treason may be made to include any direct offence against majesty, even the smuggling of salt or muslins. Much more should high treasons against the Divine Majesty be disclosed; and these may be extended to the smallest faults, as having missed evening service.

It would, then, be very important to come to a perfect understanding about what confessions should be disclosed, and what should be kept secret. Yet would such a decision be very dangerous; for how many things are there which must not be investigated!

Pontas, who, in three folio volumes, decides on all the possible cases of conscience in France, and is unknown to the rest of the world, says that on no occasion should confession be disclosed. The parliaments have decided the contrary. Which are we to believe? Pontas, or the guardians of the laws of the realm, who watch over the lives of princes and the safety of the state?

Whether Laymen and Women Have Been Confessors?

As, in the old law, the laity confessed to one another; so, in the new law, they long had the same privilege by custom. In proof of this, let it suffice to cite the celebrated Joinville, who expressly says that "the constable of Cyprus confessed himself to him, and he gave him absolution, according to the right which he had so to do." St. Thomas, in his dream, expresses himself thus: "Confessio ex defectu sacerdotis laico facta, sacramentalis est quodam modo." "Confession made to a layman, in default of a priest, is in some sort sacramental."

We find in the life of St. Burgundosarius, and in the rule of an unknown saint, that the nuns confessed their very grossest sins to their abbess. The rule of St. Donatus ordains that the nuns shall discover their faults to their superior three times a day. The capitulars of our kings say that abbesses must be forbidden the exercise of the right which they have arrogated against the custom of the holy church, of giving benediction and imposing hands, which seems to signify the pronouncing of absolution, and supposes the confession of sins. Marcus, patriarch of Alexandria, asks Balzamon, a celebrated canonist of his time, whether permission should be granted to abbesses to hear confessions, to which Balzamon answers in the negative. We have, in the canon law, a decree of Pope Innocent III., enjoining the bishops of Valencia and Burgos, in Spain, to prevent certain abbesses from blessing their nuns, from confessing, and from public preaching: "Although," says he, "the blessed Virgin Mary was superior to all the apostles in dignity and in merit, yet it is not to her, but to the apostles, that the Lord has confided the keys of the kingdom of heaven."

So ancient was this right, that we find it established in the rules of St. Basil. He permits abbesses to confess their nuns, conjointly with a priest. Father Martène, in his "Rights of the Church," says that, for a long time, abbesses confessed their nuns; but, adds he, they were so curious, that it was found necessary to deprive them of this privilege.

The ex-Jesuit Nonnotte should confess himself and do penance; not for having been one of the most ignorant of daubers on paper, for that is no crime; not for having given the name of errors to truths which he did not understand; but for having, with the most insolent stupidity, calumniated the author of this article, and called his brother raca (a fool), while he denied these facts and many others, about which he knew not one word. He has put himself in danger of hell fire; let us hope that he will ask pardon of God for his enormous folly. We desire not the death of a sinner, but that he turn from his wickedness and live.

It has long been debated why men, very famous in this part of the world where confession is in use, have died without this sacrament. Such are Leo X., Pélisson, and Cardinal Dubois. The cardinal had his perineum opened by La Peyronie's bistoury; but he might have confessed and communicated before the operation. Pélisson, who was a Protestant until he was forty years old, became a convert that he might be made master of requests and have benefices. As for Pope Leo X., when surprised by death, he was so much occupied with temporal concerns, that he had no time to think of spiritual ones.

Confession Tickets.

In Protestant countries confession is made to God; in Catholic ones, to man. The Protestants say you can hide nothing from God, whereas man knows only what you choose to tell him. As we shall never meddle with controversy, we shall not enter here into this old dispute. Our literary society is composed of Catholics and Protestants, united by the love of letters; we must not suffer ecclesiastical quarrels to sow dissension among us. We will content ourselves with once more repeating the fine answer of the Greek already mentioned, to the priest who would have had him confess in the mysteries of Ceres: "Is it to God, or to thee, that I am to address myself?" "To God." "Depart then, O man."

In Italy, and in all the countries of obedience, every one, without distinction, must confess and communicate. If you have a stock of enormous sins on hand, you have also grand penitentiaries to absolve you. If your confession is worth nothing, so much the worse for you. At a very reasonable rate, you get a printed receipt, which admits you to communion; and all the receipts are thrown into a pix; such is the rule.

These bearers' tickets were unknown at Paris until about the year 1750, when an archbishop of Paris bethought himself of introducing a sort of spiritual bank, to extirpate Jansenism and insure the triumph of the bull Unigenitus. It was his pleasure that extreme unction and the viaticum should be refused to every sick person who did not produce a ticket of confession, signed by a constitutionary priest.

This was refusing the sacrament to nine-tenths of Paris. In vain was he told: "Think what you are doing; either these sacraments are necessary, to escape damnation, or salvation may be obtained without them by faith, hope, charity, good works, and the merits of our Saviour. If salvation be attainable without this viaticum, your tickets are useless; if the sacraments be absolutely necessary, you damn all whom you deprive of them; you consign to eternal fire seven hundred thousand souls, supposing you live long enough to bury them; this is violent; calm yourself, and let each one die as well as he can."

In this dilemma he gave no answer, but persisted. It is horrible to convert religion, which should be man's consolation, into his torment. The parliament, in whose hands is the high police, finding that society was disturbed, opposed--according to custom--decrees to mandaments. But ecclesiastical discipline would not yield to legal authority. The magistracy was under the necessity of using force, and to send archers to obtain for the Parisians confession, communion, and interment.

By this excess of absurdity, men's minds were soured and cabals were formed at court, as if there had been a farmer-general to be appointed, or a minister to be disgraced. In the discussion of a question there are always incidents mixed up that have no radical connection with it; and in this case so much so, that all the members of the parliament were exiled, as was also the archbishop in his turn.

These confession tickets would, in the times preceding, have caused a civil war, but happily, in our days, they produced only civil cavils. The spirit of philosophy, which is no other than reason, has become, with all honest men, the only antidote against these epidemic disorders.

CONFISCATION.

It is well observed, in the "Dictionnaire Encyclopédique," in the article "Confiscation," that the fisc, whether public, or royal, or seignorial, or imperial, or disloyal, was a small basket of reeds or osiers, in which was put the little money that was received or could be extorted. We now use bags; the royal fisc is the royal bag.

In several countries of Europe it is a received maxim, that whosoever confiscates the body, confiscates the goods also. This usage is established in those countries in particular where custom holds the place of law; and in all cases, an entire family is punished for the fault of one man only.

To confiscate the body, is not to put a man's body into his sovereign lord's basket. This phrase, in the barbarous language of the bar, means to get possession of the body of a citizen, in order either to take away his life, or to condemn him to banishment for life. If he is put to death, or escapes death by flight, his goods are seized. Thus it is not enough to put a man to death for his offences; his children, too, must be deprived of the means of living.

In more countries than one, the rigor of custom confiscates the property of a man who has voluntarily released himself from the miseries of this life, and his children are reduced to beggary because their father is dead. In some Roman Catholic provinces, the head of a family is condemned to the galleys for life, by an arbitrary sentence, for having harbored a preacher in his house, or for having heard one of his sermons in some cavern or desert place, and his wife and family are forced to beg their bread.

This jurisprudence, which consists in depriving orphans of their food, was unknown to the Roman commonwealth. Sulla introduced it in his proscriptions, and it must be acknowledged that a rapine invented by Sulla was not an example to be followed. Nor was this law, which seems to have been dictated by inhumanity and avarice alone, followed either by Cæsar, or by the good Emperor Trajan, or by the Antonines, whose names are still pronounced in every nation with love and reverence. Even under Justinian, confiscations took place only in cases of high treason. Those who were accused having been, for the most part, men of great possessions, it seems that Justinian made this ordinance through avarice alone. It also appears that, in the times of feudal anarchy, the princes and lords of lands, being not very rich, sought to increase their treasure by the condemnation of their subjects. They were allowed to draw a revenue from crime. Their laws being arbitrary, and the Roman jurisprudence unknown among them, their customs, whether whimsical or cruel, prevailed. But now that the power of sovereigns is founded on immense and assured wealth, their treasure needs no longer to be swollen by the slender wreck of the fortunes of some unhappy family. It is true that the goods so appropriated are abandoned to the first who asks for them. But is it for one citizen to fatten on the remains of the blood of another citizen?

Confiscation is not admitted in countries where the Roman law is established, except within the jurisdiction of the parliament of Toulouse. It was formerly established at Calais, where it was abolished by the English when they were masters of that place. It appears very strange that the inhabitants of the capital live under a more rigorous law than those of the smaller towns; so true is it, that jurisprudence has often been established by chance, without regularity, without uniformity, as the huts are built in a village.

The following was spoken by Advocate-General Omer Talon, in full parliament, at the most glorious period in the annals of France, in 1673, concerning the property of one Mademoiselle de Canillac, which had been confiscated. Reader, attend to this speech; it is not in the style of Cicero's oratory, but it is curious:

"In the thirteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, God says, 'If thou shalt find a city where idolatry prevails, thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein. And thou shalt gather all the spoil of it into the midst of the street thereof, and shalt burn with fire the city and all the spoil thereof, every whit, for the Lord thy God.'

"So, in the crime of high treason, the king seized the property, and the children were deprived of it. Naboth having been proceeded against, 'quia maledixerat regi,' King Ahab took possession of his inheritance. David, being apprised that Mephibosheth had taken part in the rebellion, gave all his goods to Sheba, who brought him the news--'Tibi sunt omnia quæ fuerunt Mephibosheth.'"

The question here was, who should inherit the property of Mademoiselle de Canillac--property formerly confiscated from her father, abandoned by the king to a keeper of the royal treasure, and afterwards given by this keeper of the royal treasure to the testatrix. And in this case of a woman of Auvergne a lawyer refers us to that of Ahab, one of the petty kings of a part of Palestine, who confiscated Naboth's vineyard, after assassinating its proprietor with the poniard of Jewish justice--an abominable act, which has become a proverb to inspire men with a horror for usurpation. Assuredly, Naboth's vineyard has no connection with Mademoiselle de Canillac's inheritance. Nor do the murder and confiscation of the goods of Mephibosheth, grandson of King Saul, and son of David's friend Jonathan, bear a much greater affinity to this lady's will.

With this pedantry, this rage for citations foreign to the subject; with this ignorance of the first principles of human nature; with these ill-conceived and ill-adapted prejudices, has jurisprudence been treated on by men who, in their sphere, have had some reputation.

CONSCIENCE.