nation, and into which we can enter only through the door of faith, and which we can live and possess only in Christ Jesus,-only by being created anew in him, or becoming in him a new creature,-we deny Christ himself, or that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, and retain nothing really Christian, have nothing left but the simple order of nature alone.

The whole supernatural order in the distinctively Christian sense, is in the Incarnation, is in the Word-made-flesh, the father and founder, principle and end of the new creation, the new heaven and earth. Christ and Christianity are inseparable, and out of Christ there is and can be nothing distinctively Christian. All in Christianity grows out of the mystery of the hypostatic union. Christianity, no doubt, presupposes a natural order. It presupposes God, the Trinity, creation, reason, moral duty, the natural immortality of the soul, &c., all of which a man may fully recognize and firmly believe without recognizing or believing anything of the Christian order. God is eternal, and the distinction of three persons in the Godhead is eternal; the Word that became incarnate is eternal, and therefore precedes the facts of the Christian order. The creation of the natural world, including man with all that belongs to him in the natural order, also precedes the establishment of Christianity, for man exists only by virtue of creation, and his existence is presupposed by the fact of the assumption of his nature by the Word. The natural order precedes in time the Christian order, although the intention to found that Christian order may have preceded, and most likely did precede in the Divine mind, if we may talk of precedence where all is eternal, the intention to create the natural order, so that the real end of all creation may have been from the first, and we believe was, the glory of God in Jesus Christ, or, in other words, the natural may have been created for the sake of the supernatural, and not the supernatural precisely for the sake of the natural. But in the order of facts the supernatural is subsequent to the natural, and presupposes it. Though presupposing it, the Christian order is

always distinct from the natural, and is itself all in the Incarnation. Hence there can be no doctrinal objections to Christianity that do not directly or indirectly impugn this great and fundamental mystery. An analysis of the errors and heresies which the Church in every age or nation has condemned, will show that they all in some form contravene the doctrine that God became man. The Ebionites denied the Incarnation by maintaining that our Lord was simply a man, and not God as well as man; the Doceta denied it by denying the reality of our Lord's body, and maintaining that he suffered and died on the cross only in appearance; the Arians denied it by denying the Divinity of the Son, and maintaining that the Word was distinguishable essentially from God, really a creature, though the first-born of all creatures. The Nestorians denied it, by denying the unity of the person of Jesus Christ, as they did in denying that Mary was the mother of God, and implying that she was the mother of man only. The Eutychians or Monophysites denied it by denying the distinction of the two natures, and maintaining that after the resurrection our Lord had but one nature, and that the Divine nature, into which they contended the human nature has been transubstantiated. The Monothelites denied it by maintaining that our Lord had but one will, and denying that he had a human as well as a Divine will, as plainly implied by our Lord himself: "Not my will, but thine be done," since there is and can be no human nature without a human will. All these directly impugn the fact that the Word was made flesh, and strike at the very foundation of the supernatural order.

The same may in reality be said of all subsequent errors and heresies. They all, directly or indirectly, impugn the mystery of the Incarnation, either in itself or in its consectaria. The Pelagian heresy strikes at the Incarnation in denying the necessity of the grace that flows from it in the economy of salvation, and Pelagianism, in its historical developments, has always had a tendency to rationalism and humanism. Calvinism or Jansenism, the opposite heresy,

impugns the incarnation by denying nature, or destroying it to make way for grace; thus rejecting the office of the humanity in the Christian economy. The Reformers denied the same mystery, indirectly at least, in denying the infused habits of grace, or what is called sacramental grace, the Church, and the priesthood. All the objections we hear against the Catholic doctrine of the Church, the sacraments, the priesthood, the papacy, absolution, indulgences, the intercession of the saints, holy oils, holy water, the blessing of bells, the consecration of churches, altars, &c., are all directed against the Word-made-flesh, inasmuch as they impugn the great principle of mediatorial grace, as we hope, one of these days, to be able to show more in detail, and to prove to the full satisfaction of all who will read and understand. It is worthy of remark, that Dr. Nevin, who yet, we are sorry to see, lingers outside of the Church, was led by meditating on the idea of a sacrament, and by the endeavor to establish the fact that a sacrament signifies something, to the whole theory of the Catholic priesthood and the Catholic Church, as set forth in the writings of the Fathers, and we commend his essays in the Mercersburg Review on the Apostles' Creed, Primitive Christianity, the Incarnation, and St. Cyprian, as among the profoundest and most remarkable of all contemporary theological writings in our language. The Protestant movement in the sixteenth century did not openly, perhaps not even intentionally, make war on the Incarnation; but in denying the system of mediatorial grace, the very principle of mediation, except in a putative sense; in denying the Catholic priesthood, and therefore Christ as a priest; in rebelling against the Church, and denying it as the visible body of Christ, as, in some manner, the visible continuation of the Incarnation on earth, uniting the saints on earth in one communion with the saints in heaven, as Mohler has well maintained; and in rejecting the sacrifice of the mass, the veneration of the saints, prayers for the dead, indulgences, &c., prepared the way for all courageous and logical minds to reject Christianity entirely as a supernatural order of life and immortality.

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All in the non-Catholic ranks have not yet advanced so far as to renounce absolutely the Incarnation, have not pushed the Protestant movement to its last logical consequences; but what we may call the age has done so. The age believes in no supernatural order of life founded by the Word-made-flesh. It believes in no Jesus Christ, the mediator between God and men. In its heart it has said of our Lord, we will not have this man to reign over us. It may be learned, scientific, philanthropic, but it is not Christian, even when in relation to the natural order its conduct and pursuits are not reprehensible, or are even commendable. It may worship the God of nature, worship as can a Mahometan, a Unitarian, or a Deist, but it performs no act of Christian worship; for it worships not Jesus Christ, the God-Man. Here is where the age now stands. Where it is not anti-Christian, it is un-Christian. The governments of the world act no longer from Christian principles, with a sense of obligation to the Church, and for the interests of religion as the supreme interests of individuals and nations, but from simple state policy, with an exclusive view to political and material interests. At times the age even goes further. If we recollect aright, Humboldt, in his Cosmos, never uses the name of our Saviour, or the word God, or, at most, but once. The savans who dominate the age, seek to explain all the phenomena of nature without recurring to a creator even. Historians see no Christ in history, and seek to explain all history on natural principles alone. Religion, we are told, is the result of the efforts of man to supply the wants of his nature, and the differences of religion are explained by differences of race, of soil, climate, production, etc. Even Dr. Bellows seeks a Church only to satisfy the wants of the soul.

Arrived at this point, the old controversies between Catholics and Protestants, with regard to particular doctrines, cease to interest the age. The controversy as it existed in the time of Bellarmine and Suarez, has done its work for the higher intelligences of the times. It received its coup de grace from the great Bossuet in the seventeenth cen

tury, and since then, Protestantism has virtually ceased to be dogmatic, and is now defended rather as a movement towards freedom, individual and social, intellectual and religious, than as a definite system of truth of any sort. The grand argument in favor of Protestantism just now, is that it sustains, and is sustained by, liberty, as the grand objec tion to Catholicity is, that it enslaves the mind, upholds despotism, and prevents the political, civil, and material prosperity of the nations that adhere to it.

It is on this ground, below the supernatural, and from the point of view of the natural order, that we have now to conduct the controversy between us and our adversaries. Take the work before us, Pope or President? its only significance is, that it places the controversy in the natural order, and requires us in order to meet it to establish the fact and the supremacy of the supernatural order. Its alleged startling disclosures, "its pretended facts for Americans" would be impertinent, and conclude nothing, if non-Catholics, as well as Catholics, believed in the Christian supernatural order, as we have endeavored to explain it. But as it is, we overcome their damaging effect only by proving, first, the fact of the Incarnation; and, secondly, that the order it founds, or that grows out of it, though above nature, is not contrary to nature,―does not suppress nature, abridge or supersede any of its rights. To meet entirely the difficulties or wants of the age, we have not only to prove these two points, but we have to explain the various historical and other phenomena which seem to militate against them. We have also to show that without coming into this supernatural Christian order, no man can attain to his supreme good, and that no one can by his own natural reason and strength, attain to a knowledge of this order, much less enter into it, and live in it.

None of our old controversial works can render us much service in any of these things. Nothing can be more excellent for the controversy in the form it then wore, than the de Civitate Dei by St. Augustine, or the Summa Contra Gentiles by St. Thomas; but though necessary to be