every honorable profession and pursuit in life, shut them out from official station and even forbade them an entry into the capital or corporate towns! They disqualified them from the purchase of land, denied them the right of worshipping the Almighty according to the dictates of their conscience, and finally forced them into compulsory ignorance. No wonder, under such circumstances, that the code aiming at and producing such deplorable consequences should be pronounced by competent authority to be one which "would have dishonored the sanguinary pen of a Draco." But as regarded its actual results we shall see its deplorable consequences in the second half of this work. Supplementing the opposition offered to religion by the monarchs of England during the period to which I refer were the persecutions undergone by the Church at the same time in the distant regions of the east, especially in the empire of China, in Japan and the Corea. Thus down to our own times when, at the very moment we are writing, numbers of faithful ecclesiastics under the arbitrary rule of an intolerant German monarch, and for no other crime than the assertion of the rights of conscience, are undergoing a painful incarceration in a felon's dungeon, the Church has never for a moment been wholly free from opposition and persecution.

CHAPTER II.

THE CHURCH NOT ONLY CONQUERS HER ENEMIES BUT CIVILIZES THE WORLD -SHE LEADS IN SCIENCE-SHE ESPOUSES THE CAUSE OF OPPRESSED HUMANITY-THE ENORMOUS PROPORTIONS THAT SLAVERY HAD ASSUMED -HOW THE CHURCH MET THE EVIL THE CHURCH'S EFFORTS IN BEHALF OF WOMAN-PAGAN CIVILIZATION-HOW IT DIFFERED FROM CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION.

Not only did the Church conquer the numerous and powerful adversaries that attempted to obstruct her progress during the first centuries of her existence, but, while engaged with these in mortal combat, she was also occupied in carrying the light of civilization all over the world, not indeed by applying herself directly to the destruction of barbarism, but by the faithful discharge of her heavenly commission. For civilization, properly so called, has been begotten of divine faith; it is the child of Christianity as truly as that liberty is the offspring of civilization. Hence the church, while witnessing to divine truth, conferred also upon the nations of the earth the inestimable boon and the treasure of civil and religious liberty, "If you give the word 'liberty'," says one of the greatest of modern philosophers, "its reasonable, just, and beneficial signification then the Catholic religion may fearlessly claim the gratitude of the human race, for she has civilized the nations who embraced her, and civilization is true liberty."

Europe is especially indebted to her in this respect, for by her noble endeavors and under her fostering care that quarter of the globe not only ceased to be barbarian,

Balmes p. 50.

but became the mother and centre of enlightenment. This is freely acknowledged by the most thoughtful and careful historians and philosophers.* "No fact of history," says an eminent American writer," is better attested than that the Catholic Church, and the Catholic Church alone, christianized, humanized and civilized the various European nations which occupy the first place in civilization, and from which we in America are descended... The deliberate verdict of modern history is, that the Catholic Church has been the mother of civilization, and it cannot be set aside by either self-glorifying ignorance or partizan prejudice." The Catholic church did more; she saved the world at large from mere blind brute force. This is ungrudgingly conceded, even by her adversaries. Thus, referring to the danger that threatened the countries of Europe at the beginning of the fifth century from the incursions of the northern barbarians, that able statesman and philosopher, Guizot, says: " had not the Christian church at this time. existed the whole world must have fallen a prey to mere brute force."

What is particularly characteristic of the Church, too, in her progress through time is the fact that, though constantly assailed and unremittingly at war with the world and the powers of darkness, she has yet uniformly led in the onward march of science and knowledge. She has ever held high the banners of learning and influenced the thought and speculation of every age. "The Church," says the last quoted author, "has exercised a vast and important influence upon the moral and intellectual order of Europe; upon the nations, and the sentiments and manners of society. This fact is evident: the intellectual and moral progress of Europe has been essentially theological. Look

* See Guizot, Schlegel, Hallam etc. Hist. Civilization, vol. i., p. 54.

Hist. Prot. Ref. Spalding, vol. ii, p. 20,

at its history from the fifth to the sixteenth century and you will find, throughout, that theology has possessed and directed the human mind; every idea is impressed with theology; every question that has been started, whether philosophical, political or historical, has been considered in a religious point of view. So powerful indeed has been the authority of the church in matters of intellect, that even the mathematical and physical sciences have been obliged to submit to its doctrines."* In short the church's cloisters have ever been filled with a body of holy, devoted men whose natural ability and vast attainments in every branch and department of knowledge and science, have earned for them the proud title of the master minds of their respective countries, and the leaders of the human intellect in their various ages. Such were the philosophers Athanagoras, Aristides, Justin Martyr and Ireneus of the second century; Origen, Tertullian and Lactantius of the third and fourth; Jerome, Basil, Ambrose, Augustine and a host of others later on, and continued down to our own days so that the author of European Civilization has judiciously remarked that "No one who has studied the history of letters can deny that the Church has in all ages possessed men illustrious for science."

Again when in the course of time men led astray by the false principles of an unsound philosophy were on the point of embracing a doctrine which if accepted and reduced to practice would have thrown the world back into its original barbarism, it was the church that once more came to the aid of society, interposed her authority and saved the dignity and freedom of the nations by saving divine truth.† Europe thus owes a twofold debt of grati

*Guizot, p. 136-137.

"The Church by repudiating the destructive errors taught by Protestantism preserved society from being debased by these fatalistic errors."-Balmes.

tude to the Church of God, one in having drawn it out of barbarism, and another in having saved it from falling back into its original condition.

The Church did still more, she struck the chains off the limbs of numberless slaves, she ameliorated the condition of those whom she could not wholly set free, while, in behalf of the weaker sex, she elevated woman from her lowly, downtrodden condition as man's reputed inferior and raised her to her proper sphere and condition in society as man's copartner and coequal before God and the world. Had the Church done nothing more than this for the human race she would indeed be entitled to the gratitude and admiration of all mankind for all time.

And in order to appreciate this great fact at its proper value it is necessary to understand the abject condition of men in their capacity as slaves when the Church appeared upon earth and took upon herself their moral and civil regeneration. Words are inadequate to convey to the mind of the reader an accurate idea of this. The slave at that time had no rights, no privileges, no prospects in the near or distant future. He was a chattel, a thing and not a man. No principle was more generally taught, accepted and acted upon by the great and noble than that the slave was an inferior being-a creature destined like the beast of burden to minister solely to his master's needs and pleasures. The entire system of servitude prevailing in those ancient times was based on this erroneous, iniquitous principle-the inequality between man and man, or the superiority of the master over the slave as a human being. Not only was this accepted and reduced to practice by the governing body, but it was taught and inculcated by the profoundest and most enlightened philosophers of the age. Plato and Aristotle gave it their sanction and approved it. Let any one who wishes," says the former, "provided he

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