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sympathising with Him in His sufferings, and entering into the spirit of His great atonement. "Flesh and blood hath not revealed this doctrine to her, but the Father who is in heaven." It is plainly unearthly, and of heavenly origin; man could not possibly have devised it; it is clearly from God.

With how many blessings has not this doctrine strewn the earth! How many splendid temples, how many magnificent hospitals for the sick, how many asylums for the afflicted of every class, has it not erected! Visit the noble institutions of the middle ages, still existing all over Europe; ask the history of their foundation; and some old record will inform you that they were reared, in many cases, by opulent penitents-ad expianda peccata, for the expiation of sins committed in their past life! Let innovators produce monuments like these!

1 Matth. xvi, 17.

2 See "Ages of Faith," by Digby, vcl. ii.

XXIV. THE CONFESSIONAL.*

TACTICS OF ITS ENEMIES.

Strong presumptive evidence of Catholicity-The proud position of the Church-Phases of the warfare against her-Appeal to passion against truth-Luther's tactics-Those of other reformers similar-Protestant and infidel arguments against Catholicity compared-The vilest of all the modes of attack-Closing the Church against ladies-Books teeming with obscenity-A burning shame for Christian ministers-Sympathy with infidels-Who was Michelet? -An amusing incident-Translator of Michelet-A horrid picture of woman-Mohamedanism revivedMethodist Camp-meeting-A female Jesuit "—"Incarnation of Satan "-TranscendentalismA rare consolation!" French bulls "-Inconsistency and contradiction-Michelet as an historian and logician-His premises false-And his reasoning illogical-Blindness of bigotry-The serpent in paradise-A portrait-"The end justifies the means "-Great honor to the Church-The beams and the mote-The confessional considered by the light of experience-A palpable absurdity-A gross libel upon the sex-Course adopted by the Protestant preachers-Extracts from our theologians-Parallel cases-"Whipping hypocrisy"-Whence all the clamor against the Confessional?"-Did the priests introduce it?-What motive could they have had?—Was it possible to make the change-The question of innovation tested-History appealed to-Prescription-Our Saviour and the Pharisees.

ONE of the strongest and most striking evidences of Catholicity is found in the fact, that its enemies cannot attack it with any plausibility or semblance of success, without grievously misrepresenting its doctrines, and appealing against them to the worst passions of the human bosom.

The Catholic religion always maintains her lofty position, as the handmaid of heaven, and the divinely constituted witness of the truth: she flatters not the passions of men, in order to win their homage; she would not compromise one particle of the truth committed to her in deposit, though by the sacrifice she should gain the whole world; she is prepared to fulfill her high mission for the glory of God and the salvation of men, though she should, in the discharge thereof, be nailed to the cross with her divine Founder and Spouse. She changes not, though all else is changing around her. Her institutions may displease the world, and become unfashionable; still she fondly clings to them; she will not suffer ore of them to be impaired or destroyed: her mission is not to please, but to save men. She will not "stoop to conquer," will not descend into the arena of the world, will not wield the weapons of carnal warfare, will not enter into alliance with flesh and blood. She will not stain the laurels of

*Du Pretre, de la Femme, de la Famille."

Spiritual Direction, and Auricular Confession; their History, Theory, and Consequences: being a translation of “Du Pretre, de la Femme, de la Famille." By M. Michelet, Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Letters, &c. Philadelphia James M. Campbell. 1845. Pp. 224, 12mo.

victory, won during eighteen centuries of glorious strife with the world, the flesh, and the devil, by any such unhallowed means: and hence it is that the world hates her. It hated her divine Founder before her, and for the self-same reason.

She will not, because she can not, change; and her adversaries cry out that she is not adapted to the spirit of the age, which is eminently a spirit of progress and of change in every thing,- from simple machinery up to the higher departments of philosophy and religion. She proclaims to the world, as the revelation of God, many doctrines unfathomable to reason and humbling to human pride; and the world cries out, absurdity and nonsense! She enforces the divine obligation of many things painful to human nature; and men cry out that she is the enslaver of the world, and that her principles are incompatible with human liberty. Still she heeds not all this clamor, but firmly, yet mildly, pursues her divine pilgrimage of mercy and charity, without turning either to the right or to the left, to please men.

It has ever been so. The tactics of the evil one, in his assaults against the truth, have not varied in the lapse of long centuries. From the time that he dared tempt Jesus Christ Himself in the wilderness, down to the very latest campaign he has made against His Church, the spirit of his warfare, as well as its chief appliances, has not changed. He tempted Christ by an impious and most unblushing appeal to the human passions of sense, of avarice, and of pride; and he tempts the disciples of Christ by the self-same weapons of the flesh. To the disciples as to the Master, he says: "All these things will I give you, if, falling down, you will adore me;" but the disciples answer, as did the Master: "Begone, Satan; for it is written, the Lord thy God thou shalt adore, and Him only shalt thou serve."'

We might easily illustrate all this, by a reference to the different phases of the warfare against Catholicity in ages past. We might prove that, how different soever were the favorite modes of attack at different periods, they all, nevertheless, possessed this trait in common; they appealed to passion against truth. The older heretics did this; the modern dissenters still do the same. The ancient heretics succeeded partially and for a time; they seduced many from the truth by their maddening appeal to a corrupt nature but they finally disappeared from the arena, together with their victims ; and the truth still stood forth triumphant, waving its unsullied banner of victory over a conquered world. The modern innovators have but renewed the same phases of unhallowed warfare,-of apparent victory, and of final but certain and overwhelming defeat. It has ever been so ; it must ever be so. He who could not deceive, had foretold that the world should hate His disciples, but that the gates of hell SHOULD NOT PREVAIL AGAINST HIS CHURCH, BUILT UPON A ROCK. At the dawn of the reformation, Luther appealed to the political feelings and prejudices of the Germans against the primacy of the Pope. He

1 St. Matthew iv, 9, 10.

stirred up the slumbering embers of old feuds between the Popes and the emperors, blew on them with the warm breath of his indignant invective, and enkindled a fire in the bosom of Germany, which threatened to destroy the venerable edifice of Catholicity. He cried out at the top of his stentorian lungs, that the Germans had been groaning for centuries in the bondage of a worse than Babylonian captivity, and that the day of their emancipation was at hand. Those whom he could not lure to his standard by the impassioned cry of LIBERTY, he wooed by the softer, but yet more insinuating appeals which he made to their avarice or to their sensuality. To the princes he offered, as a bait, the plunder of the immense church property, accumulated during ages of faith and piety; to bishops, priests, and monks he held out the additional inducements of a handsome wife and a comfortable establishment; to all he offered freedom from many painful restraints on the passions, imposed by the ancient religion. Fasting, daily prayer, singing or reciting the divine office, celibacy, penance and mortification, were to be done away with; and Christians were henceforth to get to heaven by treading the primrose path of dalliance with human nature, with the light of only one single principle, that of faith alone, beaming upon them for their guidance. The painful restraint of Church authority was to be discarded, and each one was to live as he listed, with his Bible for his guide, and his own private judgment as the only key to its meaning. With the employment of such means, no wonder that he gained proselytes; but the whole scheme was manifestly a downhill reformation.

The very same system of tactics was adopted at Geneva, in northern Europe, in Switzerland, in France, and in England; and with precisely the same results. Everywhere the same maddening appeal was made to the worst passions of the multitude; every where people were lured to the standard of revolt against the Church by carnal arguments, eloquently stimulating flesh and blood to war against the Pope. All this is strikingly true of England. The bluff old tyrant, Henry VIII., broke with the Pope, that he might secure a young wife in lieu of a most virtuous one, stricken in years, of whom he had grown tired; he brought his people over to his cause by a series of acts of high-handed tyranny which would have disgraced a Nero, and by a course of sacrilegious spoliation of altars and churches which would have disgraced Antiochus and Nebuchadonosor. But the master stroke of his policy, and of that of his successors, was the adroit and persevering appeal constantly made to the passions of the multitude. Open English history for the last three hundred years, and you will read evidences of this truth on almost every one of its sullied pages.

The self-same spirit pervades that phase of the warfare against Catholicity, which consists in holding up its dogmas to execration as absurd and opposed to human reason, and its worship as a senseless mummery. The mystery of the adorable Eucharist cannot be comprehended, therefore it is absurd; the sacrifice of the Mass, based thereon, cannot be comprehended, therefore it is idolatrous; the ceremonies of Catholic worship cannot be

understood or appreciated, therefore they are downright mummery! With what other weapons does the Unitarian attack the mysteries of the incarsation, the atonement, and the trinity? And with what other does the deist assail all mysteries and all supernatural revelation? Do not the opponents of Catholicity, like the opponents of Christianity, stand forth. self-condemned of "blaspheming whatsoever things they know not?"" Are they not convicted, by their mad course of opposition to Catholicity, of an implied consent to the destruction of Christianity itself? Do they not, like the infidels, "despise dominion, and blaspheme majesty?"? Let them look to it, and to the awful denunciation pronounced by the inspired Jude against those who do these things.

But by far the most vile mode of attack, which was ever adopted by the enemies of Catholicity, consists in an unblushing appeal to that low animal passion, unfortunately inherent in our nature, which leads to crimes that St. Paul would not have to be even so much as named among Christians. This may be pronounced the latest, it is certainly the most disgraceful, phase in the warfare against Rome. Reverend "no-popery" champions, boasted ministers of the God of holiness and purity, make no scruple whatever of treating with the most disgusting detail, both in the pulpit and through the press, certain matters which a pure-minded Christian should blush even to think about. Such Reverend ministers as the Sparries, the Brownlees, and the Breckenridges, think nothing of giving circulation to obscene matter, which would cover with disgrace the most ordinary citizen, who lays no claim to any peculiar sanctity, but simply stands forth clad in the panoply of an honest and a decent man. They even sometimes go so far, in their mad zeal against Rome, as to desecrate the temple of God itself with obscenity, by preaching therein sermons not fit for ears polite, and with doors accordingly closed against the ladies! What is not fit for ladies' ears, is fit for preachers of the gospel, and quite good enough for the temple of the living God!

How blind is bigotry! How odious and detestable is hypocrisy ! Can we wonder that our beloved country is so much overspread with immorality and infidelity, when such men as these pass as the accredited ministers of God's word, and the organs and leaders of His people? When they continue to do their dirty work, with scarcely a rebuke from the representatives of popular sentiment? The inspired apostle draws a graphic portrait of such men, when he characterizes them as "raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own confusion, wandering stars; to whom the storm of darkness is reserved forever :" and, when he points the finger of withering denunciation at them, and says, "these are they WHO SEPARATE THEMSELVES, sensual men, having not the spirit."

Nothing can be too bad for these men, provided it be only directed against the Catholic Church. Their morbid appetite for scandal rejects no food, no matter how loathsome. The most obscene narrative of the most obscene and abandoned wretch, like Maria Monk, or of the most drivelling

1 St. Jude, v. 10.

2 lb. v. 8.

3 St. Jude, vv. 13, 19.

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