does not save the logic to say that the Scriptures may be taken as historical writings. In the concrete the Scriptures are inspired, and their authority is because of their inspiration, without which they would not have been written. The disputes about general councils, their number, their opposition to popes, the contradictions of popes, and the unhistoric and unreasonable doctrines of Rome, forced me to think that something was radically wrong. By Rome's own tests, Scripture, history, and reason, she could not prove her claims. What should I do? The time for my ordination was at hand. My confessor said I was overscrupulous, while I believed my faith in Rome had failed. He recommended me to be ordained. After ordination I continued my studies in college. The operations of my mind continued to lead me further and further from Rome. Gradually I altogether ceased to believe in some of her doctrines, while my mind was in a negative state as to others. I looked around me in dismay. Could others see that I was a heretic? I prayed for faith and tried to believe. After a time I rose to a higher plane. I thought Christ's religion should be brought more home to the masses of the people than it is in the Roman Church. Very few of her members know her teachings. I began to look for the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic church by the lights vouchsafed me from God. I saw that unity of faith did not consist in believing in a pope or in a pretended uniformity of discipline.

History now revealed Rome to me as the imperial patriarchate of the West, laying claim to the empire of Christ's Church as pagan Rome had claimed the empire of the earth. The Eastern Church and the Anglican Church I began to regard with less fear, less prejudice. I had studied their history and doctrines for years. The accusations brought against them, especially against the Anglican, I saw were the calumnies of bigotry. Reading the works of leading Anglicans, I came closer to the Catholic Church. The Anglican Church has the noble, grand faith of the apostles, and she makes religion and Christ dear to her people. True, she prefers Christ and his teachings to the pope and his doctrines. In an unbroken line she traces her bishops to the apostles, and does not make the church consist of a few bishops or cardinals or of a pope, but of Christ's people and ministers

united. The calumny about Anglican orders is beside our notice. Dr. Lingard shows up the falsity of the accusation, that nowadays is repeated only by the more ignorant and prejudiced.

The first was the

Two difficulties now stood in my way. charge that there is no unity of faith in the Anglican Church; but this I found to be false, and now, from a fuller and better knowledge, I know it to be false. The Anglican Church must not be confounded with all that goes by the name Protestant, nor must men, in speaking of her creed, represent her by the extravagances of those who being in her are not of her. There are radical and unbelieving minds in the Anglican Church, just as there are practical atheists and unbelievers in Rome herself.

The second difficulty was, that owing to private judgment in the Anglican Church I could not make an act of divine faith. Why does Rome say so? Is not her own fundamental principle private judgment? Must not Romanists use their private judgment, if they reason at all, in making up their minds that the Roman is the only true church? If they do not exercise their priva e judgment in doing so, how do they conclude to accept Rome? Is it on the authority of Rome or of the pope? But in examining this authority and its right to dictate do not Romanists use their private judgment? Or is there a special foregoing and forcing grace that compels Romanists to believe in Rome? Does not Rome herself teach that non-Romanists in looking for the true church should use their private judgment? Does she not allow men to use their private judgment in examining the authenticity and genuineness of the Scriptures? Do not her theologians use their private judgment in explaining decrees of councils and texts of Scripture, as is evident from the disputes about certain canons in the Roman Church? Roman teachers say Rome allows the use of private judgment to those outside the church in their search for the church, and if they honestly follow the lights of mind and conscience they are in the way of salvation, even though they finally conclude to reject Rome's claims. But if one is born in the Roman Church, and exercising his intellect and conscience, finally concludes to reject Rome's claims, then Rome teaches that such a one is a heretic.

and in the way of damnation! Using private judgment concerning the whole church and its doctrines in a body, would it not, a fortissimo, be strictest logic to use it about individual doctrines? The use of private judgment is the root of all faith. Private judgment conscientiously used and energized by God's grace is that which leads to faith in God, his revelation, his church.

My mind was fully resolved now to leave the Roman Church, for I could not believe in and preach her doctrines. I prepared to leave her, but at the last moment I feared, and on the advice of friends I sought a change of occupation and undertook missionary work. But my faith in Rome was dead and I had not any rest. At last I resigned my position, and after some time was admitted into membership with that branch of the church which was on earth before the papacy, and was in Great Britain long before Rome sent thither her missionaries. For Rome I have nothing but respect and love for all the good that is in her, and a grateful memory for the good she did me in leading me, though against her will, into a truer, more catholic, and more apostolic church, having the doctrines and sacraments of Christ pure and uncorrupted.

So much for the objective side of Christianity as history presented it to my mind. As to my inner experience of religious life in the Anglican Church, I must say that it far surpasses anything I had hoped for; Christ and his graces are nearer to my soul, and make me more forgetful of self, more trusting in him. In the Roman Church I had no peace, no happiness, no rest of soul. Where before all was agitation, doubt, and unbelief, now all is an affectionate repose, a full confidence, a holy calm. As it is with myself so I find it with all whom I meet. Faith and hope in, and love for, the Saviour of men predominate where before the figure and beauty of the Crucified and the grandeur of his teachings were obscured. In Rome I met many devout souls; since I left her I have met with holier and nobler Christians, with more sublime ideas of Jesus Christ and his teachings, and a more practical and Christian observance of the virtues his Gospel teaches.

EUGENE J. V. HUIGINN.

The Forum.

APRIL, 1888.

CIVIL GOVERNMENT AND THE PAPACY.

SOME years ago there was a general tendency to consider the papacy as an old-fashioned institution, whose influence over the affairs of this world was rapidly diminishing. True, the faithful members of the Roman Catholic Church continued to believe in the eternal duration of the supreme authority of the successors of St. Peter; but, at sight of the many dangers with which the mystic bark was encompassed, they could not restrain a cry of alarm, and each time that the voice of the pope was raised at the Vatican, it was to bewail the sad condition to which he was reduced by the ingratitude and perversity of the nations gone astray. More especially in 1870, when Italy took advantage of the defeat of the French to annex Rome and the remaining States of the Church, it was believed that the papacy had received a mortal blow. How erroneous this opinion was later events have clearly demonstrated. In 1876 I met at St. Moritz, in the Engadine, Count Arnim, formerly German representative at Rome. It had been his great object to prevent Bismarck's engaging in a kulturkampf against Rome, and he expressed himself to me as follows:

"The chancellor is of opinion that the suppression of the temporal power will weaken the pope's sway, and that it will now be no very difficult matter to overcome him; whereas just the reverse is the real truth. So long as the pope was in possession of territory, he had temporal interests, and could be in