cluded in the social order. In other words, it is assumed that a man's religion, and therefore the religion of "society," is democratic, in the sense of being individual; a man owing obedience to his own conscience alone, in the sense of his interpretation of the Divine will. Here we have the meeting of the revolutions. Liberalism in religion, which began with the " Reformation," and social liberalism, which began in '89, have joined hands, as they were bound to do, in declaring religion to be opinionative, and in divorcing all politics from all religion.

This is the broad statement of the new position, though it does not touch the question of real Christian freedom, be it religious, or social, or political. The men who are called, in England, advanced Liberals, are often the most devoted and loyal Catholics; while some of the most rigorous of the Tories are men without any religion at all. The only fact to be insisted on is, that with the majority of English Protestants liberalism means "indifferentism" as to Divine truth quite as much as it means self-rule in politics. The two revolutions have culminated in the production of a popu lation which insists on these two postulates: "Every man ought to have equal voice in framing the laws of his country;" and, No man ought to be interfered with as to his religion."

Such general remarks were almost necessary in the consideration of the present attitude of England towards the Holy See. The England of to-day and the England of thirty years ago are not the same England at all. Take three broad distinctions: Thirty years ago there was but little Radicalism and no disloyalty; to-day there are fifty newspapers that preach both. Thirty years ago there was a downright horror of the Papal power; today there is a mild eulogy of its beneficence. Thirty years ago there was a national insistance on positive truth; to-day there is a pervading skepticism or indifferentism. Add to these distinctions. the new birth of the Rationalist school, which now affects to ally the natural sciences with religious search, and we have a new element in the "religious mind" which almost banishes the old contests, or makes it unreasonable to contest earnestly about anything. Once more: The complete decay of the old Evangelical school (to whom be all honor for its warm attachment to the sentiment, if not to many of the doctrines, of Christianity) has removed that traditional fortress of at least earnest Christian feeling which kept all the assaults of skepticism at bay. And, finally, the new begetting of that strange anomaly called Ritualism, the combination of the very extremest of opposites-the claim with the repudiation of divine authority-has made Englishmen rub their eyes with astonishment at the spectacle of a fictitious, little, English, Catholic Church, which, while being the heir of the

wildest Protestantism that ever was known, affects to be Catholic -minus obedience. These growths of the last thirty years have so altered the English attitudes in regard to what used to be "Gospel Truth," that we cannot wonder that the English attitude towards the authority of the Holy See has become correspondingly modified.

We must distinguish between the attached and the unattached. members of what is still called the National Church of England. The attached members are those who practise the Anglican religion; the unattached are those who only advocate it. Among the unattached we find a warmer approval of the Norfolk Mission than we do among the good old-fashioned Anglicans. The unattached take the line which is expressed by the Manchester Courier: "To the great majority of people, to all who have succeeded in ridding themselves of an excess of sectarian spirit, these interchanges of civilities will appear fitting." But the attached Anglicans have "not succeeded in ridding themselves of an excess of sectarian spirit"; which is, after all, a mere euphemism for ceasing to be in earnest about what is true or is not in the Church of England. The London papers, as a rule,-Times, Standard, Daily News, Daily Telegraph,-advocate the happy renewal of friendly relations; but this is always on the ground that "so many of the Queen's subjects are Roman Catholics," and that "it is a good thing to help forward the pacific settlement of the Irish question by constitutional means." No allusion is made to the desirableness of drawing the Anglican Church one inch nearer to communion with the "Roman Catholic Church." The ordinary journalists must be classed among the indifferentists, so far as all religion is concerned. When, however, we read the columns of the "Church papers" we find a very different tone or spirit. Strangely, the Ritualists are the most bitter against the Holy See, while affecting to be the most careful of Catholic truth. Thus the Church Review, a strong advocate of Ritualism, prefers to warn its Anglican readers against trusting to Roman Pontiffs, some of whom were of such stupenduous ill-repute that "the mention of their names takes one's breath away." This same organ, however, is even more hard on its own sect than it is on the Popes or on the Catholic Church. And it cannot fail to be instructive— in strict reference to our inquiry as to the attitude of England towards the Holy See-to notice how the Ritualists view their own Church, their own so-called authorities, their own priesthood. If they have a contempt for what they have, yet remain happily and complacently in such barrenness, we cannot wonder that they do not look to the Holy See to give them what they neither admire nor desire. In the same issue in which the Church Review warned VOL. XIII.-16

its readers against placing any confidence in the Popes, it thus spoke of the life of its own sect from 1600 to 1845:

She [the Church of England] became hidebound in pompous 'respectability'; her ministrations became rare, slovenly, and perfunctory; her expositions of doctrine watery and undogmatic; her prevalent demeanor secular and self-seeking; her conduct frequently frivolous and irreligious, not seldom riotous and debauched. And what were some of the results? Churches full of emptiness, while closed against all comers during five-sixths of the solar year; scarcely less full of emptiness at the hebdomadal recitation of Matins and Evensong, with sleep-compelling prelections on the Lord's Day, as by law prescribed; churches be-pewed with wooden compartments, festooned with cobwebs, begrimed with dirt, besmeared with whitewash, bedraped with baize; churches wherein God's altar was the most rickety and meanly. vested table in the parish; wherein for the desecrated font was substituted a paltry hand-basin. . . . . It is not surprising that a Church governed with so little wisdom, with such cynical disregard of the best interests of the souls committed to her maternal care; with such mean conceptions of the real dignity of the priestly office, and such exalted notions of the grandeur attaching to worldly pomp and pageantry; that a Church, in short, which was the obsequious vassal of the rich, and the strong, and the despiser and oppressor of the poor and feeble, should have confounded in men's minds and obliterated the distinction between spiritual ranks and offices and between earthly and spiritual things."

After this sweeping condemnation of its own sect-of its whole life and character for about two hundred years-we are informed, and in the same issue, by an Anglican D.D., that "the Church of England, since the Reformation, is simply the old Church of England with its face washed and dried with a very rough towel." Very rough, indeed, if the description we have quoted is to be accepted on Ritualistic authority. But we may reasonably enquire: If the Church of England has been a failure, and the Holy See has been a failure,-two postulates with which the Ritualists head their creed,-to what communion are poor Christians to attach themselves, with any sort of self-respect or Church-respect? The answer is supplied to us by the same journal, and perhaps this passage will give us a sufficient notion of the prevailing spirit of the Ritualists at the present day, of their " attitude" towards the authority of the Holy See:

"The two nations of which the Vatican and its Jesuit ring stand in greatest terror, are Russia and Italy, because in both the Heavenly King of nations, by His liberating and unifying spirit, has stirred up and keeps alive a pure nationality. Russia is, so to speak, the foremost secular representative-the Advocatus Ecclesiæ in the ancient ecclesiastical conception, of an antiquity, orthodoxy, and catholicity to which the Tridentine and Vaticanist pseudo-Catholicism cannot pretend."

Thus "the hereditary lie, Czarodoxy," as Gregory XVI. called it, is the real heir, the real ideal of Catholicity; and though there is no chance of English Ritualists ever enjoying that ideal, in the sense of Anglican communion with Czarodoxy, still, it must be a comfort that there is an "advocatus ecclesia" somewhere between Siberia and the Danube.

Such quotations, from a recent number of a Ritualist paper-and in the same month in which it criticised the new relations which have sprung up between England and the Holy See,-may suffice to prove two terrible truths: the one, that English Ritualists despise the Church of England; the other, that they almost hate the Holy See. If we may refer for a moment to the comic side of such an attitude,”—and it will be a relief to get a smile out of the painful subject, the "Clerical Advertisements" in Ritualist papers let in a flood of mocking light on the extraordinary frame of mind of "priests" and "deacons." Our enquiry in this article is, what is the present attitude of Englishmen towards the authority with whom they have opened new relations? And we may indirectly hazard what that attitude may be inferred to be from their conception of their own clerical order. If the clergy are of different minds as to their own priesthood, they cannot very well be agreed as to the Catholic priesthood; still less can they be agreed as to the Divine authority of the Holy See, from which all authority flows as from a fountain. Now let us take half-a-dozen clerical advertisements at random from two or three of the Ritualist church organs, and see what such advertisements would intimate in regard to clerical "views" on the Holy See.

"Wanted, a curate in priest's orders; married, moderate, and with means." Well, the three characteristics might go together. 'Wanted, curate for mission church, musical, mod., or mod. high." "Mod." standing for moderate, and "high" meaning ritualistic, “mod. high" would mean a diluted or watered ritualist, or a sort of elastic gentlemanly confessor of what you please. “Would accept a small living in nice neighborhood," is the self-commendation of one curate; and "married, but without children," is the bashful apology of another, who seems to hope that his modus vivendi may be condoned. "Curacy wanted by a mod. Cath." As there is probably a good deal more of the "mod." than of the "Cath." in this gentleman of too transitional a theology, we should think that a prudent rector would wish the gentleman to strike a balance between the two somewhat contending states of mind. "In exchange, for a few months, pleasant country vicarage, good fishing, pony-chaise, light duty:" this must be tempting to any clergyman of quiet tastes. 'Wanted, a title to priest's orders, good voice, single, private means." Rector's daughters will draw the attention of their reverend parents to a curate who may prove to be an acquisition. "Town curacy wanted; views broad." This advertisement, at least, strikes us as bona fide. "Breadth" is the supreme requisite of every honest Anglican mind, which, like the Church Reviewers, despises all churches except the orthodox-with which it has no more real communion than with the Wesleyans.

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Hopeless as all these "attitudes" must seem to be, on the part of the ritualist rectors and curates, there is, undoubtedly, a minority of English Ritualists who are still asking for the old paths, and who are in earnest. But, if we inquire of the LowChurch party what is their attitude or animus, the answer is exactly the same as it ever was. Thus, we find in the Record and in the Rock-two papers which have been for half a century the guiding organs of the most rabid of the Low-Church party-exactly the same tone, the same spirit, which was theirs, say, in the year 1846. The Record, when speaking of the Pope's Jubilee, says: "We are very sure that, whatever may have happened in other quarters, there still remains a large section of the public to whom the reopening of diplomatic relations with Rome will be a source of undisguised pain and dismay; an act calling for the strongest protest against all responsible for it." The Rock says: "Emphatically we say, as Protestant Englishmen, that no greater curse could fall upon us than a recognition of the Pope's power." And again: "Our remarks in reference to the flirtations that have been carried on between the Vatican and the British government would be just as applicable had the Pope represented the truest system of religion ever known, instead of being the representative of the most bigoted, superstitiously corrupt form of Christianity." And once more, the Church Times, a sort of half-way, or via media, organ between Ritualism and pugnacious Low-Churchism, is of opinion -while speaking of the Pope's Jubilee-that "a Pope is still wanted who would drive out the hysterical cults and crazy superstitions which have sapped the moral strength as well as the Catholic orthodoxy of the Latin races."

A glance at the favorite organs of the Nonconformists (and the present writer has been at the pains to read every one of the Dissenting organs which have referred, during the past two months, to the Papal Jubilee) will show exactly the same bitter Protestant spirit. Methodists, Baptists, Independents, all display the "heretical pravity." If we turn to the Scotch journals, it is the same thing. "Our Church is well represented in Italy," says a foreign correspondent of "The Free Church of Scotland Monthly Magazine"; "but Popery, a new form of paganism, reigns there.”

It would be unendurably tedious to quote more of the nonsense which deluges all these Protestant papers. The sort of sensation which a Catholic has, after spending one whole day in looking down the columns of Dissenting journalism, is an enfeeblement of the mind, such as he would experience after waking from a nightmare of fantastic illusions, in which imbecility and falsehood had been choking him. Yet it was necessary, when judging of the English "attitude," to gauge the length and breadth of English