exercise, in making incursions into the regions of science and philosophy. Of the innumerable men of genius, who have discussed the laws of intellectual association, who have investigated the motives of human action, and extended the progress of knowledge in spite of the opposing bulwarks of prejudice and authority: the intellectual acuteness would not have been awakened in Catholic countries, nor been devoted to subjects so dangerous to the authority of a church that professed to be infallible. Nor does it detract from the correctness of this reasoning, that the philosophers of France have displayed a boldness of investigation more than equal to that of the English and German metaphysicians. But for the example of Puffendorf and Grotius, Mallebranche and Montesquieu would never have written. In the early writers of France, their liberality of sentiment may be traced to their collision with the great body of their fellow Protestants, and in later times, philosophy has only been another name for atheism and licentiousness. In the paths of theology, the progress of the first Reformers was rapid and successful. Their inquiries were conducted with the energy of truth, condemned to struggle against the sophistries of authority and the prejudices of the world. To give a reason for the hope that was in him, became the duty of every man who did not wish to be considered as an impious deserter of religion, and a renegado from a faith of which it was possible that he might only dislike the restrictions and austerity. The founders of a new sect, or the seceders from an established worship, are equally excited by the necessity of justifying their own conduct, and of obtaining proselytes. Luther and Calvin were urged to the composition of their theological works by a regard to their personal authority, as the leaders of their respective sects, and by the expedience of refuting the calumnious sophistries of their enemies, as much as by any previous attachment to ecclesiastical or theological literature. Even after the Protestant faith had obtained, in England, a settled pre-eminence, the remembrance of a struggle so arduous as that in which it had lately been victorious, and the contemplation of the still formidable means of re-ascendency that remained in the hands of the Catholics, impressed the Reformers with the necessity of unremitted activity and constant vigilance. The names of Cudworth and Baxter, with those of their predecessors and contemporaries, evince the anxiety of the members of the English church to guard the people from the deception of the Catholic doctrines, and the learning and ability which that anxiety tended to develope. Among the Catholic clergy, freedom of inquiry was restrained by the conviction of the infallibility of the Church, and by the fear of exciting the curiosity of the vulgar, respecting truths in which it would be better that their faith should be implicit, than that their understanding should be enlightened. But the reformed divines were excited to extensive and varied inquiry by the very causes that restrained or forbade the investigations of their Catholic predecessors and opponents. They believed that the more deeply they fathomed the resources of theological knowledge, and of ecclesiastical history, the greater would be their triumph over the doctrines and reasonings of catholicism. Ancient and modern history, therefore, every department of learning, and every branch of science, became the subjects of their research, and afforded them the materials of argument. The erudition of the scholar was animated and enforced by the earnestness of the divine, and the enthusiasm of the Reformer. Productions of which the materials must have demanded a long continuance of almost unexampled industry, and bearing in their expression the character of solemn and fervid eloquence, remain to testify at once the labour and the zeal of these celebrated men. But it was in the science and practice of politics that the influence of the Reformation was most strikingly observable. The members of the Catholic church, accustomed to regard their spiritual superiors as the delegates of heaven, resigned all sense of personal independence, and every power of volition to their ecclesiastical superiors. The practice of auricular confession 1 was admirably calculated to induce a habit of submission to their spiritual guides, and to imbue them with a spirit of general dependence and subservience. The Catholic regarded the lights of his church with a reverence bordering on devotion, and so intimately was the ecclesiastical united with the temporal power that, except in extreme cases, to offend the majesty of the sovereign, was not only violating a political duty, but a religious obligation. The divine right of kings was, during the supereminence of Catholicism, a doctrine universally received; and while the monarch did nothing to incur the anger of the head of the church, he possessed in himself the united attributes of the political governor, and the spiritual guardian.. But the ideas of regal infallibility, and the reverence for absolute power, vanished with the downfal of the papal supremacy. The spirit of free inquiry extended from theology to politics: they who had not been afraid to deny the infallibility, or defy the despotism, of the Pope, could not be expected to entertain a greater portion of delicacy for the temporal princes of Europe: they discussed without fear or restraint, the relation between the monarch and his subjects; and the favour of the head of the church, that had been so lately the chief security of every Christian sovereign, was now a substantial pretext for the disobedience of his people. The multitude who had, within the Asia was very early distinguished by several sorts of Christians; as those of Palestine, under the Patriarch of Jerusalem; the Syrians, or Melchites, under the Patriarch of Antioch; the Armenians, under the two Catholic Patriarchs; the Georgians, under their respective Metropolitans; the Mingrellians, Circassians, and Christians of Asia Minor, under the Constantinopolitan Patriarch; a few Christians in the same quarter of the globe, under the Patriarch of Moscow; the Nestorians, under the Patriarch of Mousul; the Jacobite Monophysites, under their peculiar Patriarch; the Christians of St. Thomas;* and, lastly, the Maconites, under their own Patriarch. To these E Asian Christians might be added, those who were subject to the Emir of Sidon; the Mordwits, between the Russias and Tartary; and the Christians, inhabiting the great isle of Tarobana and the islands adjoining. * In a Chaldee Breviary, entitled Gaza, belonging to the church of Malabar, there is the following singular enumeration of the good deeds performed by St. Thomas :-" By St. Thomas, the error of idolatry vanished from India: by St. Thomas, the Chinese and Ethiopians were converted to the, truth by St. Thomas, they received the Sacrament, and the adoption of sons: by St. Thomas, they believed and confessed the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: by St. Thomas, they kept the faith which they had received in One God: by St., mas, the splendour of the life-giving doctrine appeared : Me: by St. Thomas, the kingdom of heaven fled ra hina." |