ry as the medium of our relation to Christ. He himself would contend that communion with Christ should be proposed as the condition of communion with the Church, not communion with the Church as the condition of communion with Christ. He therefore regards communion with Christ as the means, and communion with the Church as the end, - placing thus the Church above Christ, and making Christ necessary only as the way into it. In this, he and the Catholic Church unquestionably differ in opinion. She proposes communion with Christ as the end, communion with her simply as the means of coming into relation with Christ, thus subordinating herself to Christ, and not Christ to herself. We shall not undertake to say which is the sounder view, for we think St. Paul has done that effectually for all who are not without understanding (Eph. v. 22-32). Yet, if we can have full communion with Christ without the ministry of the Church, we confess we see no reason for the Church. Does the Professor object to Catholicity because it is not No-Churchism?

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The second objection, under this same head, appears to be, that the Church proposes Holy Communion as a condition of the Christian life, and not the Christian life as the condition of Communion. "It calls on us not first to live and then eat," but the reverse. The Professor's doctrine, then, is, that we should live in order to eat, and not eat in order to live, very general Protestant doctrine. Yet the Professor is mistaken, if he supposes the Church does not demand life before eating; for a dead man cannot eat, any more than he can perform any other function. The communicant must have been born again, made alive in Christ by the sacrament of baptism, or, if he have sinned mortally after baptism, by the sacrament of Penance, before he can worthily commune. He does not eat, then, as a dead man, that he may become a living man, but that he may have life more abundantly, that he may nourish, sustain, invigorate, and augment his divine life.

The Professor is inexcusable for asserting that Catholicity "represents a sacrament as communicating rather than presupposing the fitness for receiving it," for he knows better; as also for saying, the only obstacle forbidden to be interposed to its operation" is not sin in general, but only a particular species of it, sin against the Church, and this is the sin unto death." We will not trust ourselves to characterize this statement as it deserves. The references the Professor himself makes prove that he knew he was stating an absolute falsehood.

No sacrament imparts the fitness to receive it, for no sacrament can be received with improper dispositions without sacrilege, and especially is this true of so great a sacrament as Holy Communion. We are everywhere admonished of the danger of eating or drinking unworthily; for he who does so eateth and drinketh condemnation to himself. In order to receive Holy Communion without eating or drinking our own condemnation, and being guilty of the Lord's body, we must be free, not from one species of mortal sin only, but from every species of it (Conc. Trid. Sess. XIII., can. 11); and in order to receive the plenitude of its fruits, we must be free from even the affection to venial sins, and have a lively faith, a firm hope, and an ardent charity. The effect of the sacrament, indeed, does not depend on these dispositions as the causa efficiens, but it is not produced where these dispositions are wanting. They are not the efficacy of the sacrament, but the conditions without which it is not effectual in the recipient.

The objection, which the Professor urges against Catholicity for teaching that the sacraments produce their effects ex opere operato, is one on which he will hardly dare insist. He himself, in the Andover creed, admits sacraments. The sacrament is intended to effect something, or it is not. If not, let it be dismissed, for it is an idle ceremony. If it is, then it must produce its effect in one of three ways: 1. ex opere operantis; 2. ex opere suscipientis; or, 3. ex opere operato ; for these are the only conceivable alternatives. The first assumes the efficacy of the sacrament to be in the administrator. If you say this, you make the virtue of the sacrament depend on the priest; that is, you make the priest the efficient cause of the grace received in the sacrament. But this would be to put the priest in the place of the Holy Ghost, and to assert another source of grace than the merits of Jesus Christ, which is inadmissible. Moreover, the priest may be a sinful man, and to suppose a sinful man can be the efficient cause of grace is absurd. If, to obviate this, you assert that none but holy men can be legitimate priests, you fall into the old Donatist heresy of making the validity and efficacy of sacraments depend on the sanctity of the priest, - a fact which God alone can know. If you adopt the second view, which supposes the virtue to be in the recipient, you deny that the sacrament, as a sacrament, has any virtue at all. If the efficacy of the sacrament depends on him who receives it, as the efficient cause, he, in receiving it, receives only what he gives it, and therefore noth

ing which he had not before receiving it; which is to say, he receives nothing at all. Cause, so far forth as-cause, receives nothing from its effects. The creation does not react on the Creator, and augment his power. That which leaves us as it found us, or returns to us only what it receives from us, produces no effect in us. One needs to be no very profound metaphysician to know all this. The Professor, we apprehend, is not aware of the consequences of making the virtue of the sacrament depend on the recipient. He contends, that the efficacy of the sacrament is in the faith of the recipient, and that it consists in strengthening faith, and thereby the life which is by faith. But this involves a principle which may lead where the Professor is not prepared to follow. If our faith be the efficient cause of the sacramental effect, to assert that by it there is an increase of faith, or an augmentation of the grace of faith, or of the effects of faith, implies that faith can be augmented from itself and by itself, or that of itself and by itself it can increase its power and fruitfulness; which implies the principle of self-growth, an evident absurdity; for it implies that a given existence can, in and of itself and by itself, make itself more than it is, that the possible is able to actualize itself, vacuum to fill up itself and become plenum, precise absurdity of the modern Progressists and of the old Buddhists. Is our Professor prepared to accept this absurdity? If not, he must not say a thing can augment itself, or be augmented, save as it receives and assimilates somewhat ab extra, from a source foreign to itself. Then he must either admit in the sacrament a virtue not derivable from the recipient, or deny that it has any virtue at all.

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Nothing remains, then, but the third supposition, namely, the virtue of the sacrament is ex opere operato, non merito operantis vel suscipientis; that is, that the virtue or efficacy of the sacrament is of God, who instituted it, and operates in and through it. The Professor must admit this conclusion, or either assert another source of grace than the merits of Jesus Christ, or deny the sacraments altogether. The last is, in fact, what Protestants generally do.

These remarks on the sacraments contain a sufficient answer to all that the Professor says of the influence of Catholicity on the clergy. The Professor has become so enamoured of the modern German method of finding in human nature or in a philosophic theory the measure of all institutions, that he forgets that the Church is to be judged not as a human, but as a

divine, supernatural institution. He forgets, that, as a simple human institution, having its origin and cause in human nature, and operating only by human agencies and means, according to the simple laws of human nature, nobody proposes it, nobody pretends to defend it. His speculations, however ingenious, nay, however true they might be, were it a human institution, and to be judged as we would judge a temporal government, are valueless, and must count for nothing; because, as speculations, they proceed from a false assumption, and are not in return borne out by facts. To apply a priori reasoning, which might be legitimate to a natural, human institution, to a supernatural, divine institution, is an error which no man of any tolerable scientific attainments would willingly be guilty of.

The Professor's objections all proceed from his overlooking one rather important fact, namely, the gracious presence of God. He reasons as if there was no grace of God. Here is his primal sin. If he chooses to deny that the Church is a supernatural, divine institution, and that the grace of God operates in and through her sacraments, well and good; but then comes up the Church question we began by stating. But till he does that, and ousts the Church from her possession, by invalidating her claims, his present line of argument is illegitimate; and when he shall have done that, it will be unnecessary.

VIII. The eighth charge, that Catholicity has a tendency to separate religion from good morals, and to undervalue morality as distinct from religion (pp. 475, 476), is altogether unfounded. The basis of ethics, according to Catholicity, is theology; and ethics are uniformly treated by Catholic writers under the head of Theologia Moralis, or practical theology. Religion is always presented to us as the basis of good morals. The foundation and motive to the love of our neighbour is in the love of God. We are taught to love our neighbour for the sake of God, and throughout the whole range of morals the propter quem is God, who is our beginning and end; and every action not referred to him as the end or final cause, for the sake of which it is done, is always sinful, or at least morally imperfect. Here is the closest union between religion and morals conceivable. It is impossible to say more.

The assertion, that Catholicity places the fulfilling of the law in the external observances of the Church, is false and inexcusable. The Church can dispense from any of her own observances or laws, but she denies that she can dispense from a

precept of the moral law. The Professor knows this, if he knows any thing of the subject he pretends to treat. Where did he learn that it is, in the estimation of the Church or of her doctors, "a comparatively humble virtue to speak the truth"? Do Protestants hold, that to speak the truth is a virtue at all? Judging from the Professor's assertions against Catholicity, we should presume not. Catholic morality denies me the right, in any case, to speak what is not true, or what, in the plain, legitimate sense of my words, is false, though, in some restricted sense of my own, what I say may be true. No intentional falsehood, no intentional deception of any kind, in any case, or for any cause whatever, is allowed. This is Catholic morality. The author's assertions respecting Bossuet, Massillon, &c., and especially the general councils, that they divorce morality from piety, authorize pious frauds, teach that no faith is to be kept with heretics, &c., are barefaced falsehoods, and convict him of the very vice he is trying to fasten on others. He knows these charges have been denied and refuted over and over again, unless his ignorance is more profound than even we believe it. Wherefore, then, does he not blush to reiterate them, and to reiterate them in the same breath in which he is trying to monopolize candor, fairness, and love of truth as Protestant virtues, born, as it were, with Luther and Calvin ?

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"The spirit of mediaval piety was in too fearful a degree the spirit of robbery, and burnt-offering; of falsehood, and devotedness to the Church; of an Ave Maria on the lips, and carnage in the heart."-p. 476. This from a man who is accusing the Church of a want of candor, fairness, love of truth! man is mad, and not "with much learning." The Middle Ages are not without their faults, but who knows any thing of them knows this when intended to describe their predominating spirit is false, totally false, as prove all the records of that glorious period of human history, on which he who loves God and man lingers, as the traveller on some green oasis in the sandy waste. But, even if true, a descendant of the Puritans, who robbed the Indians of their lands, then massacred the poor savages or sold them into slavery, while saying their long graces or interminable prayers, should, for shame's sake, hold his peace. A descendant of a class of men whose spirit was condensed in Cromwell's famous exhortation, "Pray to God, my brethren, and mind and keep your powder dry," should not talk about Ave Maria on the lips and carnage in the heart. It is