Then you fall infinitely short of your duty. We are not Catholics because we admire Fénelon, or Bossuet, and we do not regard it as a compliment even to the Catholics you pretend to admire that you admire them, for you deride that to which they owed their virtues, and show your admiration is worth nothing by admiring also Luther, Calvin, Beza, Knox, and perhaps Cotton Mather. We do not thank you for praising our brethren, while you insult and calumniate our Mother. Speak evil of us, or of them, and we can forgive you. But call our Mother hard names, as you do, and nothing you can say in our favor or in theirs will enable us to forgive you. In the one case, you at worst only blaspheme men; in the other, you blaspheme the Holy Ghost, the eternal God, whose spouse she is; and even were we and our brethren to forgive you, it would avail you nothing.

XII. To the twelfth charge, that Catholicity "is fascinating to all classes," we will say not much. It is a charge we cannot retort upon Puritanism. That the Catholic

Church is attractive to all men of all classes who would have faith, who feel that they are poor, helpless sinners, and would have the sure means of salvation; to the weary and heavy laden, who seek rest, and find it nowhere in the world; to those who would have confidence in their principles, and free scope and full employment for their intellectual powers; to those who are tired of endless jarring, and disgusted with shallow innovators, pert philosophers, unfledged divines, cobweb theories spun from the brain of vanity and conceit, vanishing as the sun exhales the morning dew which alone rendered them visible, and who would have something older than yesterday, solid, durable, carrying them back and connecting them with all that has been, and forward and connecting them with all that is to be, admitting them into the goodly fellowship of the saints of all ages, making them feel that they have part and lot in all that over which has coursed the stream of divine providence, that has been consecrated by the blood of martyrs, and hallowed by the ebb and flow of sanctified affection, and permitting them to love, venerate, and adore to their heart's content, or their heart's capacity;-to all these, of whatever age or nation, sex, rank, or condition, the glorious, sublime, Godinspired, guided, and defended Catholic Church is full of attractions, we admit, even fascinating, if you will. But in any other sense than this, or to any other than such as these,

we deny it, and find the justification of our denial in the fact that the professor and his brethren are yet without her pale. The thirteenth charge we shall consider in a separate article, designed to show the necessity of Catholicity to sustain popular liberty.

We here close our protracted review of this Lecture. The unchristian style of writing adopted by the author has prevented us from being briefer. But we have been as brief as we well could be. We have doubtless omitted some points which the author judges important, but we have touched upon all the main charges. For the most part, we have had nothing but assertions, unsupported by fact or argument, to combat. Where these were such as could, from the nature of the case, be met by argument, we have so met them; where they admitted no argument, we have met them by counter assertions, and put the author upon his proofs. If he shall attempt to bring forward facts to sustain any of his assertions which we have contradicted, or left uncontradicted, he will find us ready to meet him.

In some passages we have spoken plainly, perhaps severely. We are not in the habit of seeking for soft words, nor has the present case seemed to us to demand them. No Protestant can feel or understand the outrageous character of the Lecture we have had to combat. Its real flagitiousness is apparent only to a Catholic; and it were to be false to our brethren, false to the truth, false to our God, not to rebuke its author in the tones of a just severity. We have spoken calmly, sincerely, conscientiously, but strongly, and we hope to the point, and to the purpose.

THORNWELL'S ANSWER TO DR. LYNCH.*

[From Brownson's Quarterly Review for 1848.]

ARTICLE I.

SOMETIME in 1841, Mr. Thornwell, a Presbyterian minister, and "Professor of Sacred Literature and the Evidences of Christianity in the South-Carolina College," published, anonymously, in a Baltimore journal, a brief essay against the divine inspiration of those books of the Old Testament which Protestants exclude from the canon of Scripture. To this essay, as subsequently reprinted with the author's name, the Rev. Dr. Lynch, of Charleston, S. C., replied, in a series of letters addressed to Mr. Thornwell, through the columns of The Catholic Miscellany. The volume before us is Mr. Thornwell's rejoinder to Dr. Lynch, and contains, in an Appendix, the original essay, and the substance of Dr. Lynch's reply to it. The rejoinder consists of twenty-nine letters, which cover nearly the whole ground of controversy between Catholics and Protestants, and, though written in a Presbyterian spirit, they are respectable for ability and learning. The work, though nothing surprising, is, upon the whole, above the general average of publications of its class.

The purpose of the essay was to "assert and endeavour to prove that Tobit, Judith, the additions to the Book of Esther, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, with the Epistle of Jeremiah, the Song of the Three Children, the Story of Susannah, the Story of Bel and the Dragon, and the First and Second Books of Maccabees are neither sacred nor canonical, and of course of no more authority in the church of God than Seneca's Letters or Tully's Offices." (pp. 339,

*The Apocryphal Books of the Old Testament proved to be Corrupt Additions to the Word of God.-The Arguments of Romanists from the Infalli bility of the Church and the testimonies of the Fathers in Behalf of the Apocrypha discussed and refuted. By JAMES H. THORNWELL. New York and Boston: 1845.

The Dr. Lynch here spoken of is the same who became Bishop of Charleston in 1858 and died in February, 1882.-ED.

427

340.) In the present work, the author attempts to maintain the same thesis, and to refute the objections urged by Dr. Lynch against it. He professes on his very title-page to have proved the books enumerated "to be corrupt additions to the word of God," and to have discussed and refuted "the arguments of Romanists from the infallibility of the church and the testimonies of the fathers in their behalf." The question very naturally arises, Has he done this? Has he proved that these books are uninspired, as he must have done, if he has proved them to be corrupt additions to the word of God; and has he refuted the arguments of Catholics, or rather of Dr. Lynch, in their behalf?

The arguments which Dr. Lynch adduces for these books are drawn from the infallibility of the church and the testimony of the fathers. If the church is infallible, the testimony of the fathers is of subordinate importance, for the infallibility alone suffices for the faithful; if the church is not infallible, it is of still less consequence what the fathers testify; for then all faith is out of the question, both for Catholics and all others. We may, therefore, waive all consideration, for the present, of the argument for the deuterocanonical books drawn from the testimony of the fathers, and confine ourselves to that drawn from the infallibility of the church. The argument from infallibility must, of course, be refuted, before the author can claim to have refuted Dr. Lynch, or to have proved his general thesis, that the books in question are "corrupt additions to the word of God."

The Catholic Church, undeniably, includes these books in her canon of Scripture, and commands her children to receive them as the word of God. This is certain, and the author concedes it; for he adduces it as a proof of her "intolerable arrogance." If she is infallible in declaring the word of God, as all Catholics hold, these books are certainly inspired Scripture, and rightfully placed in the canon. This is the argument from infallibility; and it is evident to every one who understands what it is to refute an argument that it can be refuted only by disproving the infallibility, or, what is the same thing, proving the fallibility, of the church. To prove the church fallible, moreover, it is not enough to refute the arguments by which Catholics are accustomed to prove her infallibility; for a doctrine may be true, and yet the arguments adduced in proof of it be unsound and inconclusive. It will, therefore,

avail the author but little to refute our arguments for the infallibility, unless he refutes the infallibility itself; for so long as he is unable to say positively that the church is fallible, he is unable to refute the argument from her infallibility. It may still be true that she is infallible, and if she is, the books are not uninspired compositions, but infallibly the word of God.

Mr. Thornwell, who regards himself as an able and sound logician, appears to have some consciousness of this, and indeed to concede it. Accordingly, he devotes a third of his whole volume to disproving the infallibility of the church, or rather, to proving her fallibility. "I have insisted," he says in his preface, "largely on the dogma of infallibility, more largely, perhaps, than my readers may think consistent with the general design of my performance,—because I regard this as the prop and bulwark of all the abominations of the Papacy.' (p. 8.)

But to prove the fallibility of the church, or to disprove her infallibility, is a grave undertaking, and attended with serious difficulties. The church cannot be tried except by some standard, and it is idle to attempt to convict her on a fallible authority. If the conviction is obtained on a fallible authority, the conviction itself is fallible, and it, instead of the church, may be the party in the wrong. The professor cannot take a single step, cannot even open his case, unless he has an infallible tribunal before which to summon the church,-some infallible standard by which to test her infallibility or fallibility. But before what infallible tribunal can he cite her? What infallible authority has he on which he can demand her conviction?

The only possible way in which the fallibility of the church can be proved is by convicting her of having actually erred on some point on which she claims to be infallible. But it is evident, that, in order to be able to convict her of having erred on a given point, we must be able to say infallibly what is truth or error on that point. Clearly, then, the professor cannot commence his action, much less gain it, unless he has an authority which pronounces infallibly on the points on which he seeks to convict her of having actually erred. But what authority has he? Unhappily, he does not inform us, and does not appear to have recognized the necessity on his part of having any authority. He sets forth, formally, no authority, designates no court, specifies no law, lays down no principles. This is a serious