our hands. We have no right to overlook them, or to leave them unanswered; unless indeed, we choose to give up our boasted Protestant prerogative itself, and substitute for reason and science in religion the weight of mere outward authority, the prejudice of uninquiring and unthinking tradition.

We have a curious, almost laughable, illustration we might say, of the character of a certain portion of our modern Protestantism, in the hue and cry which was raised by some of its more zealous representatives against Prof. Schaff's work, when it first came out, on the score of its supposed Romanizing tendency and spirit. When we compare this charge with the actual structure of the work as a whole, we can easily understand how such a man as Krummacher, surrounded with other relations altogether, might be led to say rather harshly, that a man must be either a fool or a knave, of weak head or bad heart, to prefer it in serious form. Such a sweeping judgment, we have no wish to endorse; for we are well satisfied that many persons of good mind, in this country, by reason of a certain wrong cast in their religious education, might very well fall into such an error as that now mentioned, without any malignity of spirit whatever. With such persons, the mere fact that any word should be spoken in favor of Romanism, or in censure of Protestantism, must serve as an occasion of jealousy and alarm. The case before us, however, deserves to be remembered always, as a singular exemplification of the peculiar Protestant habit now mentioned, in the form of what may be styled a regular anti-popery panic. The book was proclaimed, first more quietly, and then in a sort of loud scream, a treasonable assault upon the very foundations of Protestantism. It was made to smell of Puseyism and Popery on every page; by distortion and exaggeration, all sorts of abominable doctrine were found lurking within its leaves; and those who knew least of it by actual inspection, showed themselves most fully convinced in many cases that it was rotten to the very core. A serious suspicion seems indeed to have prevailed with some, that the worthy author was himself in truth no better than a crafty Jesuit in disguise, a real body and soul emissary of Rome itself, who had contrived by some legerdemain to palm himself off on the German Reformed Church in this country, as a theo

logical professor, for the express purpose of working with more success, in such insidious style, for the overthrow of our American Protestantism. Happily the Synod of the German Church had moral force enough, not to give way, in so high a case, to this spasmodic pressure. Opportunity was furnished to try the book, and bring its hideous features fairly into the light. But now, as in all similar cases of fright, the fictions of the imagination resolved themselves rapidly into unsubstantial air. Giant spectres, on close probation, shrank into dwarf realities; and the sounds that terrified men's ears, were found to be only the sense which their own fears had put into the murmurings of the hollow wind. The panic has passed entirely away. Few now would venture to repeat its exploded accusations, against Dr. Schaff's work. May we not trust besides, indeed, that a more wholesome tone of thought altogether has since come to prevail. Three years, at times, bring with them a great change of opinion. Hereafter it may be still harder to understand even, how it could ever have been possible for Protestant zeal to have such poor trust in the cause of the Reformation, as to see any danger to it in the concessions of this book.

The openly professed object of the work, to which it shows itself honestly and ably faithful throughout, is to vindicate the right of Protestantism to be owned and obeyed as the religion of Jesus Christ over against the exclusive pretensions of the Church of Rome; by referring it to its true and proper priniciple, in the constitution of christianity itself, so as to determine in this way its necessary existence, and the real character of its mission in the world.

It is not proposed, in this article, to follow in detail the general argument of the book; but only, as already intimated, to notice some of the leading positions embraced in it, as challenging and meriting a more vigorous attention than they have yet received.

1. It is assumed in the work throughout, that Christianity is historical. By this is not meant merely, that it has passed through different hands, and experienced various outward fortunes in coming down from the age of the Apostles to the present time. History in its true sense, is the evolution of some form of life, hu

man life, which in the midst of continual progress, remains still, with unbroken continuity, always one and the same. Christitianity, in such view, is a new order of life, starting in Christ himself, which as such has an independent being in the world, that requires for its completion, like all life, a steady evolution of its contents in the actual onward flow of our human existence. This real historical constitution of the new creation in Christ Jesus, by which it is clothed with an objective and enduring character so as to be properly an object of divine faith, as we have it in the Creed, is precisely what we are to understand by the Holy Catholic Church. Were this an abstraction only, or a creature of mere reflection and thought, it could be no such reality as faith necessarily requires. It is however no abstraction, but a concrete revelation of the fact of christianity itself under an outward and in all respects truly human form. Hence of necessity its historical character. Christianity has its very being in the form of history; showing itself thus through all ages, a single whole; the present bound always indissolubly to the past, and carrying in its womb, with like necessity, the life of the future. This process includes the most inward interests of the Church, as well as the most outward. Every doctrine has its history, without which it is not possible that it can ever be adequately understood.

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This whole view however, as we all know, is opposed to a large amount of thinking at this time current in the christian world. Romanism when true to itself, allows no proper history to christianity, in the sense now described. It admits no development, but claims for itself the character of unvarying stability from the beginning. Newman mistook its nature, in seeking to establish a different theory in its favor. Protestantism also, however, to a wide extent, is found taking substantially the very same ground; not questioning indeed the fact of vast changes in the progress of church history; but holding these for the most part to have been no better than diabolical corruptions, which need only to be thrust out of the way, in order that the church may fall back again to what it was in the beginning, and what it was bound to have observed and kept as its standing traditional shape through all ages. Christianity, in this view, is no living pro

cess in the concrete life of the world, and has no objective being strictly under a historical form. We are to get it wholly from the Bible and God's Spirit; each man for himself, and all in a direct original way. Its continuity in the world holds in this only, that some in all ages have been under its saving power; while the way has always been open, by means of the scriptures, to bring it into view in its original character; which however was not done to much purpose till the age of the Reformation. So in brief, runs the theory, destroying in truth the article of the Holy Catholic Church. In room of this, it acknowledges only the phantom of an invisible abstraction which it chooses to dignify with such high name.

Now we have here, as all must see who care to think, a most interesting and momentous question, lying very near the ground of christianity itself and necessarily conditioning the view we may take of its constitution at almost every point. Are we bound to admit a truly historical character in the case of the Church, or are we not? In the Principle of Protestantism, it is assumed throughout, as already said, that we are. The whole argument of the work is based on the supposition that christianity has had a real objective being in the world under this form from the beginning; and that Protestantism must be vindicated, if successfully vindicated at all, on this ground and no other. Any vindication, it is taken for granted, would be insufficient and unsatisfactory altogether, that might proceed on any different view of what is included in the idea of the Church. The opposition which has been shown towards the book, on the one hand, has always involved the assumption that the Church, as such, has no strictly historical being in the world. And yet, strange to say, this primary fundamental question is never met, from that side, in an open and manly way. No one seems prepared to come forward with a formal denial of the historical character of the new creation, and an attempt to make good this position in the way of scientific argument against Dr. Schaff; although the case plainly requires the controversy to start here, and what should thus be boldly asserted and proved is in fact constantly assumed without proof as the ground of almost every objection that is made. This of course is most unreasonable and unfair. Our

theology, if it pretend to have any opinion at all on the general subject here discussed, is bound to meet in some manly style the main view on which the whole discussion rests. It will not do, to treat this question of the historical nature of christianity as though it were of no account; to be silent in regard to it, or to hold it in abeyance, and still presume to pronounce judgment on the merits of the case in debate. The argument of the Principle of Protestantism begins here; it holds, in its subsequent progress, only with those who admit the preliminary idea of a truly divine historical constitution in Christ's Church; for those who call this in question, it can of course be of no value or force; and if they think it worth while to meddle with it at all, consistency requires that they should grapple first of all with this primary question, and bring it if possible to some satisfactory resolution. Prof. Schaff has a right to complain that this has not been done. Among all his assailants, no one has had courage to come out and say: Your main position is false; christianity is no such historically human fact as you pretend; and there is no reason in the world, why we should think it necessary to bring our Protestant revolution into agreement with any theory of this sort; enough that we see our way clear to accept it, as a fresh construction of the church, by our own private judgment, out of the Bible; this, and this only, is the religion of Protestants. So much most of the opposition made to Prof. Schaff's book means; but it has not been found willing thus far to commit itself distinctly to any formal vindication of its own cause, under such aspect, in the way of open argument.

It would be vastly desirable, in the present posture of the Church, to have this primary point brought into discussion in some able and truly scientific style; and we see not indeed, how our reigning Puritanism can well avoid the responsibility of so taking it in hand.

2. In necessary conformity with the idea of a truly historical character belonging to christianity, it is assumed by the Principle of Protestantism throughout that the stream of its life, before the Reformation, lay mainly in the bosom of the Roman or Papal Church. The case requires, that it should be allowed to have come down, under a strictly continuous form, from the time of