bequest after your death, the means at your disposal than in the education of pastors and teachers for the work of souls. The need of such seminaries is evident, for two reasons: first, because the multiplication of our people demands a multiplication of our clergy; and, secondly, because the rising standard of intellectual culture, both in the Catholic and the non-Catholic population around us, demands a higher intellectual culture in our priests. We would, therefore, earnestly exhort you to consider how you can promote the founding either of additional seminaries, or of burses for the maintenance of students in those that already exist. We would also specially exhort parents to remember that they can offer to the Lord no more precious gift than their sons to be His disciples. It is an exceeding honour and a signal grace to a house when a son is called to be a priest. A vocation brings a benediction into the home, and sanctifies it by a special relation to the altar and to the presence of Jesus in the Holy Sacrament.

7. The change which has been introduced into the popular education of England demands of us all a redoubled effort to preserve the Christian formation and traditions of our people. Hitherto the whole education of our poor schools was pervaded with faith and piety. Even the books of secular instruction were so written or compiled as to form at one and the same time the intellect, the conscience, and the will. The secular instruction, without ceasing to be literary, or falling below the required standard of efficiency, was throughout Christian and religious. It is so no longer. Our national education has ceased not only to train Christian men, but even to form the character of citizens. Four hours of secular teaching, in which neither Christianity nor the religion of nature may be taught, will not form conscience, or will, or character in The office of shaping the character of men belongs to a higher power. God has placed it in the hands of parents and of those to whom they confide their children. It is one of the penalties of religious division, that, because men have lost the unity of faith, the faith is banished from the schools of a Christian people. The State has ceased to admit Christianity into schools, because the people is not agreed as to what Christianity is. In saying this, we do but recite and describe our position, that we may point out our duty for the future. are bound, pastors and parents, and all the faithful according to their power, to labour, and, by all means they can devise, to maintain in the hearts and minds of Catholic children of every class the full doctrinal knowledge of the faith, which throughout the four hours of the school time may no longer be taught. For this purpose no care on our part will be omitted:

man.

All

first to provide catechetical formularies adapted to the several degrees of intelligence and culture in our youth; secondly, to maintain a constant and minute examination, year by year, of the religious knowledge in our schools by inspectors in every diocese ; and lastly, to promote the diffusion of Catholic books, and, after the custom so widely spread in Catholic countries, of devotional objects, and of prints, and brief instructions of piety. We shall never know till the great harvest is gathered in, how much has sprung up from a diligent scattering of these unnoticed seeds of piety and faith. Happy are they who go through life casting the words of salvation along their path. "In the morning sow thy seed; and in the evening let not thy hand cease: for thou knowest not which may rather spring up, this or that; and if both together, it shall be the better."-(1 Eccl. xi., 6.) This admonition we give above all to heads of families. Let your homes be schools of faith and piety: Gather your children and your servants together day by day in some common acts of prayer. Sanctify your households, that they may be worthy of the Apostolic salutation, "the church which is in thy house."

8. We cannot leave this topic without urging on you, dear children in Jesus Christ, to ascertain carefully what is the character of the literature admitted into your homes. For the most part our English literature continues to be pure; and it is at least free from impiety. But there are recent books of fiction in prose and in poetry, and works professing to be history and philosophy, which ought not to be under your roof. You are not without advisers who can tell you the real nature of such works. Twenty years ago we were almost without a modern Catholic literature. We have now a literature growing up, partly original, partly translated from other languages, which for variety and excellence promises gradually to supply much of our need. In commending our modern works, we do not mean to give them precedence in solidity and truth of expression over our older books. In devotion indeed we should rather commend the writings of our Catholic forefathers, to whom the realities of persecution taught a deep and simple piety, such as men learn in suffering, and would desire to rest upon in the hour of death.

9. There yet remains one other subject on which we desire to speak not indeed to instruct you; but to justify your fidelity, in cases which bring upon us much unreasonable and perverse censure from the world around you.

The Church has by its earliest discipline, and at all times, in language of great energy, condemned marriages of mixed religion. The reasons of this prohibition to you are self-evident; to the world they are, like the Catholic Faith itself, unintelligible. The Church has added to

its prohibition the impediment whereby a mixed marriage without dispensation is unlawful. For grave causes, such a dispensation is granted by the Church. But it cannot be granted except upon the mutual and united promise of the two parties, Catholic and non-Catholic, made to the Bishop who grants the dispensation, that the Catholic party shall have perfect liberty to practise the Catholic religion, that all children born of such marriage shall be brought up in the Catholic faith, and that the marriage shall be solemnized in the Catholic Church alone. Of these three conditions the first is so self-evidently right and necessary that we need do no more than recite it. But on the two last much censure has been cast, and many things unreasonable and untrue have been said. We will therefore place in your hands a statement of the law of the Church, by which you will be able to satisfy all just minds, and to answer even those whose contentions are not just.

First, as to the education of the children in the Catholic faith, it has been said, and thought, that the Church used to permit that the sons should be brought up in one religion and the daughters in another. The Church has never permitted such a thing; it could not permit it: because such a practice is intrinsically sinful. It would be not only the breach of a law, but it would also be a denial of the Catholic faith. The Catholic Church knows of only one faith in which we can be saved. To consent to, or to countenance, an agreement by which one soul shall be brought up out of that way of salvation would be a mortal sin, and a tacit denial of the one only way of salvation. This the Church has never done, nor has ever even implicitly countenanced. They who have done such things will answer at the judgment-seat for their own personal acts, which were not acts of the Church, nor sanctioned by the Church, but were in direct variance with its express commands and with the law of God. It is in the memory of living men that the Archbishop of Cologne endured imprisonment in vindication of this divine law. We are bound to walk in the one only way to life, and to allow no soul for whom we are responsible to be led away from it. The Catholic father or mother who, for interest or any worldly motive, consents that their offspring shall be educated out of the way of life in which they profess to desire to die, thereby denies in deed the faith which they profess in words. Both by the natural and the revealed law of God, parents are bound to rear their children in the same grace of salvation in which they hope for eternal life. This condition, then, that all children of such marriage shall be brought up in the Catholic faith, is not a new or an arbitrary rule. It is an intrinsic law, founded upon the revelation

of God, old as the Church itself, and inseparable from the faith. They who believe that all forms of Christianity are indifferent will perhaps not understand our words. They who believe that the Catholic is the only revealed way of salvation will need no further reasoning.

The other condition, that no Catholic shall solemnize marriage before any minister of religion other than the priests of the Catholic Church, rests on principles equally plain. From the unity of the faith springs the unity of divine worship. As it is unlawful to hold communion with any professions of faith out of the unity of Catholic truth, so it is unlawful to hold communion in any acts of religion out of the unity of Catholic worship. Matrimony is a Sacrament of the Church; and no Catholic can therefore hold communion with any marriage ceremony professing to be religious, or in the presence of any person professing to be a minister of religion, out of the unity of the Catholic Church.

So long as penal laws inflicted legal nullity upon all Catholic marriages unless they were solemnized before the ministers of the Established Church, Catholics were compelled to go before them to obtain the legal validity of their marriage and the legal security of their estates. But they went before the minister of the Established Church, not as a minister of religion, but as a civil authority, and for civil effects. The Catholic marriage was the only marriage they recognised as perfect and valid before God and man; but, for its civil recognition and legal validity, they were compelled by penal laws to appear before the appointed civil officer, who was also a minister. of the established religion. When, however, in the year 1836, this penal law was abolished, and the validity of Catholic marriages, with the presence of the Registrar, was legalized, the Registrar took the place of the Protestant clergyman, as the Protestant clergyman had until then discharged the office of the Registrar. From that moment the necessity of appearing before him ceased for all civil effects; and no other lawful motive for a Catholic to appear before him could exist. Thenceforward he could only be regarded as a minister of religion; and to go before him as such for any religious act, and especially for matrimony, which a Catholic knows to be a Sacrament, has ever been and ever must be forbidden, as an act intrinsically sinful. The highest authority in the Church declares such an act to be "unlawful and sacrilegious." This, then, is no new or arbitrary law, recently enacted by us. It is as old as the Church, and directly, and by necessity, resulting from the unity of Catholic Faith.

We cannot but add another reason which ought to weigh with our fellow-countrymen, and to satisfy every just mind. The

Catholic Church recognises as perfect and valid the marriages of the people of England contracted before the law of the land, if there be no impediment which in itself annuls the contract. The Catholic Church does not re-marry those of the English people who are received into its unity. It regards them as already man and wife, and their children as legitimate. Therefore if any Catholic solemnize a mixed marriage before the Registrar, or before the Protestant minister, the Catholic Church refuses to re-marry them. For two obvious reasons: first, they are already married; and secondly, the Catholic party has committed a sacrilegious act. If the Catholic Church know beforehand that a Catholic intends, after his Catholic marriage, to commit that act of sacrilege, the law of the Church forbids the Catholic clergy to bless such a marriage. The intention to commit sacrilege excludes a Catholic from the Sacraments, and matrimony is a Sacrament. They who chose to forfeit the Benediction of the Church chose their own lot. The Church is neither responsible for their act, nor severe in withholding a Sacrament which, if sacrilegiously received, would add sin to sin. But, beloved brethren and children in Jesus Christ, you know these things: and we are speaking rather to those who reproach you than to you.

10. And now, in drawing these words of affectionate counsel to an end, we would once more thank God for the graces which have visibly descended upon us since the first Councils of Westminster were held. They met in times when a momentary outburst of fear and of ill-will had revived what lingered and smouldered of the anti-Catholic spirit of England. We were then in the first beginnings of our restoration to order. The walls were raised; but the mortar was yet moist, and the structure had not hardened into its solidity. We have now a system covering the whole land. The Church in England is now so rooted and so fruitful, that it needs only time to grow to its fullness. The malevolence which then threatened us has given way before a truer knowledge of what the Catholic Faith and Church really are. For three hundred years both have been studiously hidden from the intelligence of England by penal laws, and by controversial misrepresentation. Ever since the Church regained her liberty, this has become impossible. She is now seen, and heard, and known. Englishmen have now, for more than forty years, that is, for nearly half a century, been with us in our divine worship: they have heard our preachers; they have seen our colleges, convents, and schools; they have laid aside suspicions, fears, and hates, in the open light of day. These old superstitions are gone to the moles and to the bats. Educated Englishmen know us better. The poor in England have no animosities