4. '98 and '48. of Ireland. pp. 384. The Modern Revolutionary History and Literature WE have as many quarrels on our hands already as we can well manage at one and the same time. We cannot be expected to approve all the sentiments of this book, redolent of Young Ireland, and we have said as much on former occasions against its doctrines as we consider necessary. We are too old, and too much of an old Fogie to sympathize with the author in all his views, but then we admit he writes with spirit and eloquence, and if we were of his "parish," we suppose his pages would powerfully affect us. We cannot bring him to our way of thinking, and as we see no great harm he is likely to do, we simply thank him for his attention in sending us his volume, and express our hope that it is meeting all the success it deserves. 5. A Vindication of Italy and the Papal States. From the Dublin Review for October, 1856. Cincinnati: J. P. Walsh. 1856. 24mo. pp. 115. WE are glad to see this able article reprinted from the Dublin Review. It is "an able vindication of Catholic Italy, and a dignified but withering rebuke of the injustice of British Protestant Letter Writers and Journals." It is no part of our vocation to defend every thing we find in the temporal governments of Catholic States, but we know no Catholic people who even as to the temporal order need blush before any Protestant State. By the way, we should be pleased to see reprinted and widely circulated the article in the last Dublin Review, on the Irish in England, which is as appropriate here as in Great Britain. The last number of the Dublin is one of the very best numbers of that very able periodical we have seen for a long time. The article on the Present Dangers of Catholics, we especially like. We did not like the Rambler's sneering remark in regard to the "remnant of English Catholics." The Rambler mistook the nature of our complaint, and we are sure the Catholic mind in England is prepared for as broad and comprehensive views as any we wish to see put forth. It is not for us who have come in at the eleventh hour to complain of those who have borne the burden and heat of the day. Catholics, inside of dogma, should be free and tolerant, but Catholic Journalists should beware of hobbies, and we converts must be on our guard against bringing with us peculiar crotchets of our own. We may know more of error than old Catholics, but they are likely, other things being equal, to know a great deal more of Catholic tradition. ** The call for the January number of our Review being greater than we anticipated, we find ourselves under the necessity of printing a second edition, which will soon appear, so that new Subscribers may rely on being supplied from the commencement of the volume. BROWNSON'S QUARTERLY REVIEW. JULY, 1857. ART. I.-The Catholic. Letters addressed by a Jurist to a Young Kinsman proposing to join the Church of Rome. By E. H. DERBY. Boston: Jewett & Co. 1856. 12mo. pp. 293. WE have in fact dissected in our three articles already published, only a small portion of Mr. Derby's volume; but we have commented on nearly every point of much importance it raises. The bulk of the volume only repeats, with variations and farther developments, the objections to Catholicity contained in the first five or six letters, and in continuing our review we can do little else than go over ground we have already travelled. Yet we suppose the learned Jurist will pretend that we have failed to give his book the thorough dissection we promised, if we fail to repeat our refutation as often as he repeats his objection. We shall therefore continue our remarks for some time to come, and we pray those of our friends who are disposed to blame us for expending so much powder on an author comparatively so obscure, to bear in mind that in replying to him we are replying to the whole mass of popular objections to our religion urged by the "No Popery" ranters and declaimers of the day. We have said enough to show the futility of the author's attempt to disprove the Primacy of Peter and his successors in the See of Rome. We will therefore pass to another of his objections. "Let us now glance at some of the abuses which the usurper has sanctioned in his path to power. Let us consider the worship of the Virgin Mary, of saints, images, relics, and shrines. NEW YORK SERIES.-VOL. II. NO. IJI. 19 "St. Paul, in Holy Writ, gives the assurance that Neither have we any other Mediator and Intercessor by whom we may have access to God the Father, but only Jesus Christ: in whose name only all things are obtained at his Father's hands.'* "But the Church of Rome worships the Virgin Mary, and allows such adoration to be offered to her as follows: 666 Holy Mother of God, who hast worthily merited to conceive him whom the whole world could not comprehend, by thy pious intervention, wash away our sins, that so being redeemed by thee we may be able to ascend to the seat of everlasting glory, where thou abidest with thy son for ever.' "And again a similar worship and prayer : "Let our voice first celebrate Mary, through whom the rewards of life are given unto us. O queen, thou who art a mother and yet a chaste virgin, pardon our sins through thy son.' Even Cardinal Bembus, the Pope's secretary, in an official letter to Charles VI., the great Emperor of Spain and Germany, § calls the virgin our lady and goddess.' And the seaman when he commenced his voyage, the palmer when he began his pilgrimage, and the knight when he went forth to fight the Saracen, were sent to pay their orisons at her shrine, and to bow before her image. 66 · Again, the churches have been filled with her pictures and statues, and with images of saints. A patron saint has been found for nearly every Roman Catholic village, and saints have been recognized for various diseases, to whom sufferers are encouraged to address prayers, and to make votive offerings if relief be obtained. The images of the virgin, and saints with their shrines, like the statues of the heathen divinities, and like the shrine of the chaste goddess Diana at Ephesus, against which St. Paul bore witness, have been fashioned from precious metals, and decorated with gold, silver, and jewels. "Statues and images are borne in solemn procession through churches and streets, with pomp, ceremony, and display. Waxen candles have been burned before them, while salt, oil, legends, and relics, real or pretended, have been, and are still used with imposing ceremonies, to impress the ignorant and superstitious. "Now let me ask you, because the Holy Virgin is said in Holy Writ to be blessed among women, and is called blessed in our prayer book and in the writings of St. Augustine, does it follow, as a necessary consequence, that she is to be made the queen of heaven, created a deity and a goddess, endowed with the power of pardoning sins, and that the follower of Christ must bow his knee before her image and shrine, enriched with gold and jewels, like those of the * See 1 Timothy 2: 5. Rom. 8:34. Eph. 2:18. 3:12. + See Collect in Hor. Paris, Fol. 4. + Ibid. Fol. 80. Bembus, in Epist. ad Carol. V. Virgin Diana of the Ephesians, and is he to present his gifts at her altar, and offer up his adoration to her image, or herself? "If this homage was sanctioned by our Saviour or his apostles, or authorized by the councils of the Catholic church during the first two centuries, refer me to the authorities. As respects the use of images in churches, not only is it against the language of Scripture, but the Council convened at Grenada, Spain, about A. D. 300, and still held in high respect, condemn the practice. The blessed Augustine, Tertullian, Lactantius, with Theodorus, bishop of Ancyra, join in the condemnation of such a usage; and Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis, in Cyprus, where St. Paul planted a church, who died about the age of seventy, A. D. 403, on his return from Constantinople, writes as follows: My children, be mindful that ye bring no images into the churches, and that ye erect none in the cemeteries of the saints, but evermore carry God in your hearts. Nay, suffer not images to be; no not in your private houses, for it is not lawful to lead a Christian man by his eyes, but rather by the study and exercise of his mind.'"*-pp. 44-47. The author began his Letters by assuring us that he had gone to the "fountain heads," and had cited only such authors as the Church approves. Yet the fountain head here, by his own confession, is the Protestant bishop Jewel. We have shown that the Jurist is so uniformly untrustworthy in his citations and translations of Catholic authorities, that we must be excused from the unnecessary labor of continuing to point out his inaccuracies. The fact that he alleges an authority apparently against some Catholic doctrine or practice, is primâ facie evidence that it is substantially a forgery, at best a total misapplication of it. In this extract, it will be seen that the author calls the Pope a usurper; but he has no right to call him so, till he has proved that the Pope claims and exercises an authority not conferred on him by our Lord. Our Lord had all power in Heaven and in earth as invisible Head of the Church, and could confer on his Vicar as much power as he pleased. The Jurist must prove that our Lord did not confer on him the power he claims and exercises, before he can call him a usurper for claiming and exercising it. He is not at liberty to make a charge and then conclude from it as a fact. Between making an accusation and sustaining it, a jurist ought to know there is a distance. The author alleges that the Church of Rome authorizes the worship of the Virgin Mary, of saints, images, relics, and shrines, and thence concludes against her. His conclusion is valid only on the condition that the worship of this sort which she authorizes, is wrong in itself or forbidden by the positive law of God,-a thing for him to prove. We agree that idolatry is forbidden both by the natural law and the revealed law, and is a sin of the deepest dye. But what is idolatry? It is offering the worship due to God alone to that which is not God, or failing to render due worship to God, and rendering an undue worship to creatures, whether living or dead, whether real or imaginary. He who renders due worship to God, and no undue worship to creatures, is free from the sin of idolatry. In the worship of Mary, the veneration and invocation of saints, and respect for images, relics, and shrines, do we withhold from God what is his due, and do we offer them any thing more than their due, they being what they are? If not, we are not idolators; and the fact that the Church authorizes it, is an argument in her favor, not an argument against her; for the eternal law of justice bids us give to every one his due, that is to say, to render unto every one his own. Mr. Derby's pretence is, that the worship we render to Our Lady and to the saints is taken from the worship due to God alone. But this he does not prove. He is so habitually inaccurate that he cannot even quote the Scriptures correctly. St. Paul says, indeed, that there is one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; but he nowhere says that he is our only intercessor with the Father. "There is but one mediator." Who denies it ? "Christ maketh intercession for us." Who denies it? We do not regard the saints as mediators in the theological sense of the term between God and us, but we do call upon them, in virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, to intercede for us, and this we may do, as every one must conclude who believes it proper for one man to pray for another. When a priest or a minister prays for his congregation, he makes intercession for them, but he can lawfully do it only in the name of Christ, through whose merits alone the intercession can be efficacious. So with the saints. They intercede for us by their prayers, on the same principle on which we pray for one another in the Church on earth. And why should the prayers and inter |