another awful catastrophe―of fierce human passions rioting in blood and terror; and they seem prepared to look the consequences that may ensue calmly in the face. Alas for human nature, when unchecked by the influence of a heavenly religion!

Agair we ask, who is Michelet, that he should be entitled to credit on religious subjects? He is not only a pantheist, or outright deist, but he is also an obscure and grandiloquent transcendentalist; a man who often involves his meaning in such obscurity as to be wholly unintelligible, in or out of France; a man who walks shrouded in mystery, and who retreats, when pressed, from the clear light of truth behind a cloud of unmeaning words. Out of many illustrations of this, we select, almost at random, the following passage, which the reader may understand, if he The author is speaking of the spiritual death induced in the soul, according to the teaching of Molinos and the Quietists:

can.

"Poor, naked, ugly, and dirty, she loses the taste for everythingthe understanding, the memory, the will. At last, beyond the loss of the will, she loses a something indescribable, which is her favorite,' and which would take the place of ALL, (the idea that she is a child of God.) This is properly the death to which she must arrive. No person, neither director nor any one else, can offer solace here. She must die; she must be put into the earth, that the crowd may walk above her, that she may grow putrid, rot, and suffer the odor and fetor of a corpse, until, the rottenness becoming dust and ashes, there scarcely subsists any thing which can recall the fact that the soul ever existed."

If this is not all sheer nonsense, we really know not what it is. The translator, who appears to be a bold man, and not easily discouraged, is himself sorely puzzled to understand the meaning of that wonderful ALL. He says in a note:

"Very much like nonsense; and if the reader does not understand it in English, he may be very sure that there are abundance of people who do not comprehend it in the original.”

We

Rare consolation this, truly! By the way, we have a word to say to to this same translator; who, we suppose, is a Reverend preacher. are probably indebted to him for the beautiful fancy titles that head each page of the book; titles which are vastly tasty, pointed, and appropriate, and which afford a sort of key to the author's meaning, where it is vague and obscure, supplying the reader with many valuable hints and ideas, which he would scarcely have derived from the mere perusal of the book itself. The trickery is transparent; and if Michelet was bad enough in the original, we may be assured that he has lost nothing of his malignity in his English dress. If the author blundered much, it may, perhaps, be some consolation to him to learn that his translator has blundered still more. He translates the French word monde — the world, instead of—the people, thus: "It was placed in the sacristy of the monastery, where, at nine in the evening, the world having retired," ' &c. Whither, we would ask, did the world go, when it "retired" from the monastery? Again,

1 P. 32.

2

2 P. 61.

he speaks of "elevating a tottering Babel two stages," whereas we suppose that Michelet only said two stories! The city of Meaux, Bousset's well known episcopal see, he very wittily translates "the Meaux" in several places. Finally, are we indebted to him or to his author for the following exquisite shall we call it French bull: “several of these ladies are eminent business men!" 2

But Michelet is not only an obscure transcendentalist and clumsy blunderer; he is not only a vulgar infidel and a base reviler of woman; but he is likewise a downright falsifier of the plainest facts. His work is made up of transparent sophistry, animated by a heartless malignity, and founded upon glaring perversion of the truth on almost every page. We cannot furnish even a catalogue of his falsehoods; they would fill a volume. We must confine ourselves to a few, as specimens. Here are two sweeping untruths in one single passage:

"Rome surrendered Christianity in the principle which lies at the foundation of it-salvation by Christ. Placed in the position to choose between that doctrine and its opposite, she had not the courage to decide. (How then did she decide to make the surrender referred to?) Christianity, the Jesuits surrendered morality," &c.

After

Is not morality a part of Christianity? If so, it does not appear what Rome had left to the Jesuits to surrender. So absurd and so self-contradictory is error; and yet this nonsense passes current among us for sound philosophy and acute reasoning!

In another place, Michelet utters the following falsehood, which every one at all conversant with such matters knows to be a falsehood:

"First, through the controversial works of the Jesuit Bellarmine, they (the Jesuits) stated and defended the dogma of the infallibility of the Pope as a matter of faith.”

His self-contradictions and open absurdities are, perhaps, more numerous than even his falsehoods. They run through his entire book, which is, in fact, little more than a mere tissue of them. Thus, he reasons throughout on the assumption that priests, being celibataries, are much more exposed to temptation than other men; yet, when he comes to paint the celibatary in all the horror of his condition, he represents him as a man who leads "a dry and mutilated life," who has the fountains of his natural sympathies dried up, and who has a heart withered, hard, and unsusceptible. And how does he escape from the manifest self-contradiction? By the pitiful evasion, that "the heart may be dry and sense very eager!

Again, we ask, who is Michelet? He is a man of a heated brain, who palms off on the world his own disordered fancies and foul suspicions, as sound reasoning against celibacy and the confessional; a mere incoherent declaimer, who thinks that other people are as bad as himself, and who paints the priests as wicked men, merely because he hates them with a fiendish hatred; a man who defiles every thing that he touches, and will

1 P. 83, &c.

2 P. 156.

3 P. 41.

4 P. 61. The italics are his

5 P 216, note. Appendix.

fully and wickedly perverts the meaning of the clearest things; a man, in fine, who will convince those who are already convinced, and will hurt those who wish to be hurt.

But does he not quote authorities, does he not reason on them? Certainly. Satan himself was an adept at quoting Scripture, as well as a subtle reasoner; yet Satan is the "father of lies." Michelet quotes different authors, but does he furnish chapter and verse? He cites authors, but what authors? Writers of both sexes, who were renegades, apostates, or infidels, and as little reliable as himself. He refers, with commendation, to Sue's Wandering Jew, the truth of which he confirms :' he quotes Llorente, the apostate priest and the traitor, for one of the foulest and most infamous aspersions on Catholic morality that we have ever read.' He quotes authorities, forsooth! He takes the easy method of quoting whole books at a time, and of quoting them sometimes from memory alone. And yet he is an historian and a reasoner !

Such a logician would have been likely to reach erroneous conclusions, even had he started out with correct premises; but the premises of Michelet are, in general, wholly false and untenable, as little to be relied on as his facts and authorities. The burden of his reasoning against the moral tendency of the Confessional consists in the wholly groundless assumption that, even at the present day, the principles of Quietism are those by which the confessor is regulated. And how does he defend this palpable untruth? He defends it, by showing that the Spanish Monk Molinos, and a few other obscure casuists once taught this dangerous and impure doctrine.' But does he not himself admit, that Molinos and his principles were publicly and solemnly condemned by the Catholic Church? Does he not admit, that he was condemned for the very reasons that he himself assigns against his doctrine? Does he not admit, that this doctrine has been dead and buried for centuries? That so soon as its impure tendency was discovered, it was rejected with horror and loathing by the Church? Yes, he well knows all this; and yet he would hold the Church and the Confessional responsible for the principles of Molinos, some of the most disgusting of which he parades in his book, and gloats over with manifest delight. How blind is malignity!

And yet, gentle reader, this impure wretch, whose whole book teems with foul obscenity, treats his readers to the following curious specimen of hypocritical prudery in his preface:

"The work presented a grave difficulty, that of speaking with decency on a subject which our adversaries have treated with incredible grossness. To the pure all things are pure;' I know the maxim, but I have often preferred to let my opponents escape, when I had them in my power, rather than follow them into the marsh and mire!!"""

Risum teneatis? The man who indited this passage would fain per

1 P. 156, note.

2 Pp. 178-9, note.

8 The distinctive and worst feature in Quietism, was the assertion that the soul might attain to so great a degree of quietude in God as to be incapable of sin, no matter what was done in the body. 4 P. 105. 5 P xiii

suade his readers, that the greatest and best men of the Catholic Church during the last three centuries were little better than wicked and impure hypocrites, whose whole lives were given up to libertinism, and whose whole study was to cloak it over with ingenious expedients and sophistry, that deceived every one but the acute and pure-minded M. Michelet; that the holy friendship of St. Francis de Sales and St. Frances de Chantal was nothing but a well sustained amour; that Fenelon's spiritual direction of Madam de Guyon and Madam de Maisonfort, and Bossuet's advices to Madam Cornuan, were prompted and guided by the same impure motive; and that this feature is apparent from the published correspondence of all those eminent and saintly personages! This foul-mouthed slander of men, whose names will be radiant with brightness and glory for centuries after his own shall have been forgotton, or remembered only with execration, runs through many long chapters of his book.

He picks up a sentence here, and another there; he poisons their meaning by causing the words to pass through the alembic of his own impure mind; he strings them together to suit the theory devised by his own foul suspicions; and he thus succeeds in extracting impurity out of things the most pure, darkness out of light. Like a serpent crawling through a beautiful flower garden, and infecting the fragrant atmosphere with its pestilent breath, he succeeds in extracting nothing but poison from the sweetest and loveliest flowers. He leaves the slime of his poisonous fangs on every thing he has touched, while his hissing excites no other feelings than those of unspeakable disgust. He has not even the fascination of the serpent about him; there is "no speculation" in his dull, glaring, lustreless eye. Every one feels that the foul creature should be cast out, and be permitted to crawl only among kindred reptiles.

Such precisely was the feeling lately awakened in the French chambers, when the very book we are now examining was made a matter of complaint by certain members, who expressed their astonishment in the face of all France, that a public professor in the College de France should be allowed to depart from his appropriate sphere, and to prostitute his professorship to purposes so utterly vile.' A member friendly to Michelet was appointed to examine and report on the merits of the book, especially in reference to the professorship held by the author; and he reported that, having perused the work with attention, notwithstanding the unspeakable disgust which every page of it awakened in his bosom, he was of opinion that its author merited an indignant rebuke. There was no opposition in the chambers; the same feeling of loathing seemed to pervade all minds; and even the most unblushing infidel of them all dared not offer an apology for the author.2

1 Michelet and Quinet, two professors in the College de France, both of whom had glaringly perverted their respective professorships of history and the literature of southern Europe into envenomed assaults on Christianity, were lately compelled, by the French government, to confine themselves to their appropriate spheres of instruction.

2 We have derived these facts chiefly from a distinguished individual, who was in Paris at the

Such, then, is Michelet: the transcendentalist, the pantheist, the deist, the falsifier of the clearest facts, the open perverter of history, the foul slanderer of the great and good, the hot-headed, incoherent, raving hater of the priesthood, of Catholicity, of Christianity; the man who would, if he dared, avow the sentiment attributed to Diderot, a wish that "the last of kings should be strangled with the bowels of the last of priests ;" and who would, if he had the power, re-enact in France the bloody horrors of the French revolution. And yet this man's pestilent book is re-produced in this country by Reverend preachers of the gospel of peace, charity, and truth, and commended by them to the perusal of the public! It is republished as a capital work against the errors of "popery," and as one likely to produce a powerful impression! It is well for these men to charge the Catholic Church with teaching and acting on the maxim : "The end justifies the means." They will truly have an awful account to give at the bar of God. Let them look to it in time.

Is it not after all a great honor to the Catholic Church, that her holy institutions can be attacked only by such men and by such means as these? If Catholicity could be assailed by fair means, why resort to foul? If the Confessional be so immoral in its tendency, why cannot this be shown without employing base slander and transparent falsehood? If the Catholic priesthood be so very wicked, why not prove it by other evidence than low and unworthy suspicion? Are the Protestant clergy, even in this country, so very immaculate themselves, that they can afford to throw stones at their neighbors? Is there no beam in their own eyes, that they should be so very solicitous about extracting the mote from those of their brethren? Let them take heed to themselves before the great day of account, when "the hidden things of darkness shall be made manifest, and the counsels of hearts shall be revealed."

If the Confessional be so very immoral and impure, why was not the discovery made centuries ago? How has this institution been sustained for so many ages? How did it happen that the whole Christian world, for the first fifteen centuries, revered it as an institution of God, and resorted to it as a divinely appointed means of obtaining the remission of sins, through an application made therein of the blood of Christ? How has it happened that both sexes and all classes, that men, women, and children, that Popes, bishops, priests, and laymen, that emperors and empresses, kings and queens, princes and princesses, have so long, so perseveringly, and so universally practised Confession. How has it happened, that husbands and fathers have been so long slumbering, when their nearest and dearest interests were assailed, when the very fountains of their domestic bliss were poisoned? How has it happened, that they not only looked calmly on, while their most warmly cherished affections and hopes were thus blighted, but even aided by their counsel and example in the continuance of the horrible violation?

And is it come to this, that, in the nineteenth century, in the boasted age of enlightenment and gallantry to the sex, men should be found