We cannot expect a large number of Protestants to continue to take and pay for a work devoted to a cause against which they protest. The Review is decidedly and exclusively Catholic, and must be supported by Catholics henceforth or not at all. We have no reason to complain of the liberality of the Catholic public for the past year, and none to distrust its continuance. The bishops and clergy have, we believe, very generally approved our labors, and to their liberal encouragement and support we are deeply indebted. On them we must depend for the success of the work, and against their wish we should be sorry to have it succeed, if it could. It is only through them we can receive or are willing to receive the support of the Catholic public for any publication.

We have aimed to deserve the liberal support we have received; but we are deeply sensible of the imperfection of our labors, and are pained to think how far short our Review falls of what a Catholic review should be. But, novice as we are in the Catholic faith, we have done the best we could. We have aimed to be true to the Church, and to be at least sound in the faith. We have not wished to put forth any crotchets of our own, or to attempt to improve the doctrines taught us. The Catholic Church, faith, and worship, as they are, always have been, and always will be till the end of time, is what we have embraced, what we love, what we seek to defend, not relying on our own private judgment, but receiving the truth in humility from those Almighty God has commissioned to teach us, and whom he has commanded us to obey.

The

We cannot promise to do better or otherwise for the future than we have done for the past. Having, however, set forth and defended the great questions between Catholics and Protestants, we may be able hereafter to give to our pages more variety, and introduce articles of a more popular character; thus adapting the work, if not to a better, at least to a wider, circle of readers. But the public must take it as it comes. Committing it to the care of Him without whose blessing nothing can prosper, we start on this new volume, grateful for the past, and with cheerful confidence in the future. It was confidently predicted a year ago that we should turn back to Protestantism before the year was out. year is out, and we are still a Catholic, and much firmer in the faith than we were at its commencement. It is idle for our old friends to look for our return to the errors and speculations we have abandoned. We are satisfied with the Church. We have thus far found it all and more than we expected. The more we become acquainted with it, the more true and altogether lovely does it appear. We have experienced during the year a peace, a serenity of mind, a joy and consolation in the midst of many afflictions, that we never knew before, or believed it possible for any one to experience in this life. We have found what we sought, and we ask for this life no greater boon than to be permitted to labor to refute the errors we formerly taught, and to promote the cause of Catholicity among our countrymen. With these remarks we send out this first number of a new volume, with the wish of " A HAPPY NEW YEAR " to all our friends and readers, Protestant as well as Catholic.

ERRATUM.- Page 109, line 36, for chappelles read chapelles.

Exchange
New York

State Library

BROWNSON'S

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

APRIL, 1846.

ART. I.1. Prælectiones Theologica Majores in Seminario Sancti-Sulpitii habitæ. De Matrimonio. Opera et Studio Jos. CARRIERE. Parisiis. 1837. Vol. III.

2. De Justitia et Jure. Parisiis. Vol. II.

3. Compendium Theologiæ Moralis Sancti A. M. DE LIGORIO. Auctore DEOD. NEYRAGUET. Ruthenis. 1839-44. 4. Theologia Moralis concinnata a FRANCISCO PATRICIO KENRICK, Episcopo Philadelphiensi. Philadelphiæ. Vol. I. 1841. Vol. II. 1842. Vol. III. 1843.

THE author of the two works which we have placed first on our list is a professor in the celebrated seminary of Saint Sulpice, and one of the vicars-general of the Archbishop of Paris. The lectures which he delivered to the numerous students of that institution form the groundwork of the learned and voluminous treatises in which he labors to adapt theological principles to the altered state of affairs in France and the actual laws, and to solve many practical cases which perplex the clergy in the exercise of their holy ministry. It is not for us to say whether, in all cases, he has been successful in untying the knot; but we can cheerfully bear testimony to his great learning and high integrity. The compendium next on the list is from the pen of a priest of the diocese of Rhodez, in Gascony, and was first published in 1839; but has already passed through three editions, the last of which was in 1844. It is what it professes to be, an abstract of the moral doctrine of St. Alphonsus de Liguori, whose words are, for the most part, retained. In a volume of above eight hundred pages, the substance is given of what fills three large volumes of the great

VOL. III. NO. II.

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work of the Saint, besides his practical manual, called Homo Apostolicus. Of the excellence of this work its success affords most satisfactory evidence. The last on our list is a work in three volumes, which, in three successive years, issued from the Philadelphia press, from the pen of the present Bishop of Philadelphia. It also is, to a great extent, a compendium of the work of St. Alphonsus, especially in what regards matters of a delicate character, which the author generally expresses in the very words of the Saint, to shield himself against censure under such high protection; it being, however, his object to adapt the moral system to our laws and usages, he has necessarily introduced much that is not to be found in St. Alphonsus or other European writers, who, for the most part, were guided by the civil law in what regards legal questions, whilst the common law and our State legislation are frequently referred to by Bishop Kenrick. We do not feel competent to pronounce on the merits of this work; but not to appear to send our readers across the Atlantic for information, we take leave to refer to this domestic specimen of Catholic morality scientifically treated, and invite attention to a science full of practical interest, and which presents social attractions at this moment, when the echo of the ravings of Exeter Hall against Peter Dens has scarcely ceased, and may have awakened suspicion in some minds as to the purity of our moral system. We shall introduce our readers not only to the lecture-hall, but to the college penetralia, the lonely room of the student, and submit to their inspection what might not be uttered without wounding delicacy.

Ethics, as a Christian science, are the principles of morals as divinely revealed and sanctioned. Independently of revelation, certain rules of action are known to us from reason; and a power of discriminating between right and wrong, virtue and vice, is inherent in our nature; so that the nations to whom the divine revelation has not been made known are to themselves a law; which when they obey, they do, as it were by natural instinct, much of what is prescribed by God in his revealed law, and when they transgress it, they are self-rebuked, and condemned by conscience.* These principles, written on the hearts of all, are recognized and inculcated by the Christian science, which takes them as its basis, whereon it erects a divine superstructure. They are