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unknown for the most part in heathendom, because the heathen religion chimed in with the worldly spirit of the people. As they had broken away from the orthodox instruction, rejected the worship of God, and "liked not to have God in their knowledge, God delivered them up to a reprobate sense, to do those things which are not convenient. Being filled with all iniquity, malice, fornication, covetousness, wickedness, - full of envy, murder, contention, deceit, malignity, whisperers, detractors, hateful to God, contumelious, proud, haughty, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, foolish, dissolute, without affection, without fidelity, without mercy. Who, having known the justice of God, did not understand that they who do such things are worthy of death, and not only they who do them, but they also who consent to them that do them."* This is the description which an inspired Apostle gives us of the heathen, and therefore of Gioberti's noble Italo-Greeks, and we can easily understand from it that there should have been in their case a completeness and roundness of character, reference had to the order of character to which it belonged, a proportion between their religion and the daily life of the people, which we cannot find or expect to find among Christians, on the one hand striving after the supernatural virtues of the Gospel, and on the other drawn away by their corrupt nature in the opposite direction, towards the vices, the crimes, and the abominations of the heathen.

The author tells us, that in civilization there is, besides the religious element, the human element, and his pretence is, no doubt, that the human element of civilization was more perfect among the cultivated Gentiles than it is among the moderns. This view we ourselves took when we wrote the essay in our number for July, 1849, on The Church in the Dark Ages; but the study of Gioberti's own dialectics which we have since made has of itself served to convince us that it is not true, and that the Christian cannot consistently entertain it. Civilization he makes the creation of the priesthood, and, as we have seen, he identifies it with religion; then in civilization proper there is and can be no human element distinguishable from the religious; for it is only as instructed and informed by the sacerdotal culture that man is, or can be, civilized man. The sum total of the life of a so-called civilized country is, no doubt, a mixed result, composed of a religious and a human element, but

* Rom. i. 28-32.

this life, in so far as distinguishably human, is defective, and not yet civilized. Thus far religion has not been able to subdue the human element, and transform its acts into religious acts, therefore into civilized acts. If the priesthood creates civilization, then civilization cannot be a mixed result of the human and Divine, in any other sense than is religion itself as exhibited by men a mixed result, but must be a pure result of the religious element acting on and subduing the human. Then, again, if man is in his normal state only in the Catholic society, how can it be possible for the human element to attain a more perfect and exquisite development out of that society, and therefore, as Gioberti contends, as well as we, disjoined from the true human race, the human race living in the unity of the ideal, therefore in communion with God, than it can or does in that society itself? If this were so, we should be obliged to assume that the abnormal is more perfect and exquisite than the normal, a monstrous paradox.

We are pained to be obliged to remark, that Gioberti nowhere, so far as we can discover, recognizes the influence in promoting civilization of the sacramental principle of our religion. As far as we have been able to ascertain, he holds that religion operates as dogma and government, as doctrine and authority, but we do not find that he recognizes in it any other mode of civilizing action. Now he places the seat of barbarism in the flesh, as well as we, and he attempts to identify civilization with religion, for the reason, among others, that it gives man a dominion over instinct, passion, the body. But religion can, in this view of the case, promote civilization only by the means she adopts to give us a victory over the flesh, in which are the seeds of barbarism. These means are not simply dogma and precept, for the devils know these, and believe and tremble, but joined to these mortification, prayer, meditation, and the sacraments, as set forth in an excellent tract entitled Influence of Catholic Prayer on Civilization, by Father Taperelli, translated from the Italian, and published in this journal for July, 1848. The surest way to destroy barbarism is to destroy its cause, or to dry up its fountain. This is done, as

far as it can be done, by the practice of asceticism, and the purity and strength obtained from the sacraments, especially, after Baptism, from Penance and the holy Eucharist. After all, then, the devout mystics, and the pious ascetics, who, in the view of Gioberti, are rather the enemies than the friends of civilization, take necessarily as such the most, and, we may

No

add, the only, effectual way of advancing or securing it. doubt there are evangelical counsels distinguishable from evangelical precepts, and we are far from pretending that, in strict law, we are all obliged to lead the life of the religious. The life of seculars is lawful, but that of the religious is higher and more perfect, and the nearer we approach its elevation and perfection, the better for us, and the better our influence on the world, both for time and eternity.

We intended to offer something more, and we may resume the discussion hereafter, but for the present we must content ourselves with what we have already said. We frankly acknowledge that on many points we have been enlightened by reading Gioberti's writings, and had we not read them, we could hardly have given the statement we have of the truth opposed to his errors; we also acknowledge, nay, contend, that his errors do not necessarily grow out of his fundamental philosophy, but are distinguishable from it, and in fact opposed to it. They have another origin, and ought not to lead us to reject the philosophy itself, because he has bound them up with it. Nevertheless, as these errors chime in with the grand heresy of our age, that is, the secularization of Christianity, the rehabilitation of the flesh, the revival of paganism, and the conceptions of the carnal Jews, who expected a temporal prince and temporal prosperity, instead of a spiritual ruler and the salvation of the soul, they are precisely that in his writings which will give them their popularity with the mass of readers, and determine their practical influence, and therefore are exceedingly dangerous. They seem also to indicate the practical results the author has had in view in writing his philosophy. Hence, however sound may be the philosophy itself, the author's writings cannot be safe, and we have felt it our duty to admonish our readers to be on their guard against them.

As to Gioberti himself, while we have not spared him where we have thought him wrong, we have aimed to treat him with candor and respect. It is possible that he began writing with good intentions, with the sincere and earnest desire to promote the cause of truth and piety; but the tone and style of his works are not such as to win our confidence in him as a sincere, humble, and devout Catholic priest. They are laical; and his spirit is proud, his bearing haughty and disdainful. He strikes us as a politician, or as a man of the world, rather than as a spiritual father. We miss in his writings that unction which so charms us in Fénelon, and especially in St. Francis

of Sales, and we cannot help feeling that he has spent an undue proportion of his time in studying philosophy and profane literature, and has reserved himself too little to spend at the foot of the crucifix in prayer and meditation. We are sorry to think so, for we see in him a man whom God has endowed with extraordinary gifts, and who might be an honor to his country, and a useful servant of the Church; but so we must think, till he breaks his present silence, submits to the Holy Father, responds to the affectionate entreaty of Pius the Ninth, and sets nimself earnestly at work to purge his writings of their mischievous errors.

ART. II.1. Sermons on the Obedience of Faith. By the Right Rev. SILLIMAN IVES, Protestant Episcopal Bishop of North Carolina.

2. Pastoral Letter on the Priestly Office. By the same. 3. Pastoral Letter on the Salisbury Convention. By the same. 4. A Voice from Connecticut. By SAMUEL FARMER JARVIS, D. D., Historiographer of the Protestant Episcopal Church.

5. Auricular Confession in the Protestant Episcopal Church. By a Protestant Episcopalian.

6. The History of the Confessional. By JOHN HENRY HOPKINS, D. D., Bishop of the Diocese of Vermont.

OUR readers must not imagine that we have undertaken to furnish them with a bookseller's catalogue; we have only placed on our list a few out of many publications which have been recently issued on the great controversy concerning Confession. This has been chiefly an internal dispute in the Protestant Episcopal Church, occasioned, we imagine, by the efforts made on the other side of the Atlantic to restore the practice in the Established Church of England, of which a distinguished advocate (Mr. Maskell) has recently passed to our communion. The Protestant Episcopal Bishop of North Carolina, a few years since, became an ardent supporter of the same views, which he urged on the consideration of his hearers throughout his diocese. The publication of his sermons gave form and consistency to the reports which were spread abroad of his Roman tendencies, and notwithstanding the caution with which he expressed himself, and the protection which he sought

under the bulwarks of the English Establishment, he was denounced at home and abroad, by presbyter and layman, as a dangerous innovator. A North Carolina Senator of the United States rebuked his assumption; a presbyter of the diocese and a New York presbyter, a native of North Carolina, undertook to refute him; the aged historiographer of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States sent forth his warning voice, with oracular solemnity, from Connecticut; the late editor of The Churchman resumed his pen to trace the precise limits of the midway course to be pursued between orthodoxy and Protestantism; and last, not least, the chivalrous Bishop of Vermont appeared on the battle-ground, encased in the ponderous armour of antiquity, to make a diversion by attacking the Roman camp, instead of leading back his too adventurous fellow-knight, who was incautiously advancing in that direction.

We regret that decision and firmness have been wanting, on the part of Bishop Ives, throughout this whole controversy. Although he exposed himself to considerable censure by recommending confession as a salutary practice, in some instances necessary, he shrank from the odium of inculcating its absolute necessity, in virtue of the Divine ordinance, and sheltered himself beneath the English rubrics, and the authority of Angli-. can divines. Now and then he ventured to refer to the power of forgiveness granted by Christ, and condemned "that presumption which leads neglecters and violators to trust for pardon to a vague and general repentance, a repentance not accepted by the representatives of Christ, who alone have charge. of the discipline of his Church, or the power to remit or retain sins."* He asked with earnestness, "How can the merits of Christ be applied now except through that priestly judgment, intercession, and absolution, authorized and made binding by his express commission, Whosesoever sins ye remit,' &c. ?"t He insisted that confession is "a remedy for sin, which the experience of the one Catholic and Apostolic Church has ever sanctioned." He ventured to affirm that it was, in some cases at least, indispensable. § But he had not courage clearly and unequivocally to avow that it was Divinely commanded. On the contrary, not content with the qualifying terms * Pastoral Letter on the Priestly Office, p. 24. Sermon on Self-examination, p. 113.

Sermon, Obedience the Way to Knowledge, p. 151.
Sermon, The Case of the Baptized without Self-discipline.

NEW SERIES.

- VOL. IV. NO. IV.

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