CHAP. X.

1847 and 1848.

"The soul that lives ascends frequently and runs familiarly through the streets of the heavenly Jerusalem, visiting the patriarchs and prophets, saluting the apostles, and admiring the army of martyrs; so do thou lead on thy heart and bring it to the palace of the Great King."

BAXTER,

THE following letter, to a friend with whom at this period of her life she became intimately associated, was written in order to explain what she held to be the respective value of the Catholic and the Protestant principles.

It will be seen that the Roman Catholic Church is here used as the representative of one of these principles exclusively, and that the writer considers both the Catholic and the Protestant principles to be essential to the health and prosperity of the Church of Christ.

"My dear Miss S

"January 16th, 1847.

"I send you the little book of the venerated Mère Agnes, Religieuse parfaite.' It is, as you

will see, a book, like Thomas à Kempis, not to be read through at once, but for occasional meditation. It is one I very much not merely like, but love; for it has been my companion through many a long year, occasionally in bright sunshine, still oftener in

sorrow.

"I often wish you were acquainted with some of the Port Royal writings; for though you would 'pass over very much as tedious, and of little interest beyond its own day; and though not infrequently you would meet that with which you could not conscientiously unite; yet I feel assured there is far more which you could not but highly value. You will not, perhaps, consider me a fair judge. I do frankly own myself to be deeply attached to many Catholic writings; and though I could never join a Church through the corruptions of whose hierarchy the free access to the Scriptures may be interdicted, and where the honour paid to the Saints and to the blessed Virgin is, to use the mildest term, so indiscreet as to approximate to the honour due to God alone; and where the necessary practice of auricular confession transfers the rule of individual conscience from the word and the Spirit, the true ruler of the Church, to the hands of man; though I could by no means unite in submission to such a corrupt dominant hierarchy; I yet own I

trines of that Church, the ample room and help it affords for the abundant carrying out of every varied Christian leading, whether mystic, contemplative, intellectual, mechanical, or laborious. Yet I am conscious I value it not only for the good I truly think it actually possesses, enhanced, perhaps, by the prestige of its antiquity, and historic and picturesque claim on the taste; but I likewise do so by my affections being drawn forth towards it from early association; nay, I think, more than that, from its having been the channel through which our Lord himself has often sent His blessing when no other was open to me.

"Yet, while I deeply recognise this debt of personal gratitude, I also feel that my own peculiar circumstances, however they may have awakened the feelings, yet ought not to warp the truth of deliberate judgment on the comparative merits of Catholicism and Protestantism. Each, I believe, has been overrun with many accumulating corruptions, in its course through centuries of this evil world. Each, also, I as fully believe, has likewise at its respective root, a great, an invaluable and impregnable truth. The one is founded on love, on implicit faith, undoubting affiance and adoration. The other, the Protestant phase, becomes necessary, because, since the fall, what comes through the fallible channel of man requires sifting, doubting,

an

investigating, and testing. Now, I apprehend we live in a state in which these two principles are ever conflicting. Human existence, then, being subject to both these influences, requires, I think, the use of both the Catholic principle of love and faith and the Protestant one of distrust and examination. But the evil is, that instead of combining the two principles, they are dispersed, and thus rend the Church of Christ into two parties. And the worst is, that each party, instead of circumscribing the application of its own principle within its legitimate and proper sphere, disseminates it à toute outrance, as universal panacea, right and left, for every occasion. Thus, the Catholic applies the principle of undoubting faith and implicit obedience, not exclusively to the revelation of God, where alone it can be justly due, but equally to the dogmas and behests of fallible or interested men: whilst the Protestant, on the other hand, submits to the Procustean measure of his own narrow understanding, not the mere dogmas of his fellow-men; but he too often makes it the test of the truth or credibility of the highest doctrines revealed by God. And while the Catholic, like Milton's Adam and Eve, begins with prostrate adoration; the Protestant begins, like Minerva starting forth at once from the head of Jupiter, armed cap-àpie, and ready to give battle.

Protestant principle, combined in the same heart, ⚫ but restricted each to its proper sphere, are necessary to form a Christian course at once ardent and enlightened; that they are the centripetal and centrifugal forces, one of which urges the soul to rush towards its true centre, while the other compels it to fly off in the pursuit of its own speculation; and that the union of both is necessary to keep the soul in its true orbit. Nevertheless, I own I have more predilection for that principle of loyal love, which urges it on to merge itself in its central sun, than for that principle of self-reliance which tempts us to start off at a tangent, and wander in lonely isolation amidst the wilderness of unexplored thought, or to rush with headlong precipitancy into the wild chaos of conflicting speculation.

“In the ultra and misdirected application of these two principles, each dissevered from the wholesome countercheck of its antagonist, the Protestant might be caricatured as a man setting out on his Zionward journey in a vehicle drawn by wild undisciplined horses, regardless of any conductor, impatient of whip, bit, or bridle; each following his own private judgment of the road most expedient, and the opinions of all being different and conflicting. The Catholic, on the other hand, sets out as one in a vast steam train, smoothly gliding on at high pressure speed on its appointed well