strictest conformity to our noblest and purest conceptions of perfection-virtues such as had never been seen, or to the same degree developed under any other form of human society, and which constitute evidently a link in the chain of universal order. Nay, traverse in every direction, if you will, the vast empires that have lost unity-no where will you ever find these peculiar and inalienable titles, which raise the Catholic morality above all that the human intelligence of itself had ever taught, or the human unassisted nature ever practised; graces independent of individuality of temper or genius, of national character, or local influence, which defy all attempts to praise them worthily, or even to define them with precision, separated by a slender, hardly traceable, but wholly impassible line, from all human virtue ;graces, than which nothing is found sweeter, nothing stronger, like the dew of heaven, while descending in separate drops, following a universal and invariable law, so as to be perfectly the same in each, dispensing equal benediction over the whole face of nature;-graces, which the eyes of humanity are never quite prepared to witness, which, after having been practised nearly two thousand years, seem still in each contemporary act a divine novelty,-before which, astonished sufferers, and those who dread impending wrath, are often constrained, as we have seen in the late afflictions, to renounce all their fondest prejudices, and to fall upon their knees in a rapture of grateful admiration ;-gifts that almost render the person of man angelic, godlike, which the just of the middle ages all received, and which, in the Catholic church, will be found for ever.

CHAPTER X.

FROM a view of historical facts and characters during the middle ages, an attentive observer will have perceived that there were still many peculiar features of great import

ance in the system of Catholic morals, besides those which we have already examined. These it must be our object in the remaining pages of this sixth book to investigate and explain. The difficulties which encompass persons without the sphere of unity in their first deliberations respecting the importance of returning to it, cannot be a subject of surprise when we bear in mind that the question then before them is one which must affect thein in the most susceptible and intimate part, since it is one not alone of speculation and abstract philosophy, but much more of practical life and manners--a serious deliberation truly, to use the words of Plato, οὐ γὰρ περὶ τοῦ ἐπιτυχόντος ὁ λόγος, ἀλλὰ περὶ τοῦ, ὅντινα τρόπον χρὴ ζῆν *. In fact, where men had not been formed to the manners of the Catholic type, there was something far more difficult to overcome than any opinion before they could become living members of the universal Christian society. It was not merely principles and doctrines in that case that were to be changed. The men were to be changed: their souls, by means of new acts, and voluntary thoughts were to be put in a new psychological condition; things were to be brought out by the associating principle in new intellectual combinations. St. Ambrose remarks the connection between belief and manners, saying, "ubi cœperit quis luxuriari, incipit deviare a fide vera t." Before a comparison had been instituted between the moral philosophy of the ages of faith and that of latter times, it would have been well for many writers if they had studied the former in other sources besides the writings of the licentious satirists, and the annals of Scotch and English wars. If the work of Richard of St. Victor, De exterminatione mali et promotione boni, or his book de statu interioris hominis, or Abelard's treatise on morals, "know thyself;" had been examined, or if men had only read the twelve rules of John Picus of Mirandula, entitled Regulæ Dirigentes, or the letter which St. Francis addressed to all the Christians, religious, clergy, laics, men and women, who dwell in the universal world, greeting them with peace from heaven and charity in the Lord ‡, I am willing to believe that we should never have been

*Plato de Repub. Lib. I.

+ Epist. Lib. VI. 36.

Wadding, Ann. Minor. an. 1213.

told by respectable writers that morality was now better understood.

"To form a good system of ethics it is required, first, that it be precise, not to give place to the illusions of selflove; secondly, certain, to bind firmly the liberty of man, who would not be subject to an uncertain law; thirdly, predominant in the ideas of man, in order to overcome his passions; fourthly, efficacious, administering an internal force to the assistance of reason, to sustain man in the practice of his duty." "All these qualities," concludes Spedalieri, "belong to the Catholic religion, and to no other." The consequence of the modern principle of private judgment, which reduced the Christian religion to the rank of a human discipline, and from being a deposit of faith to be the sport of men's fancies, was that there arose as many opinions concerning it as there were heads, nec circa credenda tantum, sed circa agenda quoque; for it is a fact of history and of experience, that there were not wanting persons who sought to justify from the Holy Scriptures, theft, adultery, and murder. It will be in vain to talk of appealing to extreme instances, and of drawing undue inferences from them when we have the histories of Germany, Switzerland and Scotland, furnishing a concurrent testimony to the truth of this assertion. A custom prevailed in the canton of Berne, associated with the first communion, which it is impossible to describe in these pages, and which, as the count of Stolberg before his conversion remarked, could only be elsewhere sought for among the inhabitants of the South Sea Islands +. Endeavouring, therefore, that at least the rule of manners might be preserved from wreck, other men, laying aside the interpretation of the sacred books, applied themselves to the study of what was termed the law of nature, founded on the authority of human reason; supposing that they who differed concerning revelation might be made to agree upon moral doctrines. Hence a custom prevailed of teaching a moral discipline without any reference to religion, and of submitting all duties to the tribunal of human reason: which gave birth to innumerable treatises on moral philosophy and the law of nature, in which Christian motives were laid aside,

Spedalieri de diritti dell' uomo IV. + Reise in Der Schweiz, 20 B.

and the office of instruction was ascribed to philosophy. as in the heathen books *. Accordingly so similar was the result, that the words of Cicero might be taken into any narrative of recent times, and pass for a true delineation of them. "Other precepts have now succeeded to these," says the philosopher, "therefore some hold, that wise men should do all things for the sake of pleasure; for even from this turpitude of speech, learned men have not fled. Others think that dignity is to be joined with pleasure, that things greatly at variance with each other may be conjoined by the faculty of language. They who approve of that one direct course to praise with labour, are now left almost alone in the schools. Prope jam soli in scholis sunt relicti. This way, therefore, is now left desert and uncultivated, and already it is grown over with leaves and boughs +." A wondrous thing indeed it was, and most worthy of the attention of men truly wise, that whilst all people every where who had been trained according to the traditions and discipline of the Catholic church, possessed sure principles of justice and virtue, so that the rudest minds, although unable to give accurate definitions, nevertheless knew perfectly what was good, what was evil, what was agreeable to nature, what repugnant; in a word, all duties and all principles, and were able to exercise a right judgment respecting all the offices of life, the men who wished to be called wise, and the reformers of the church and of philosophy, were still disputing in schools respecting good and evil, and the foundations of a happy life, the origin of laws and duties, the principles of government and of society, and with such violence and diversity of sentiment, that after so many ages of disputation they were unable to agree in any definition; there being some found even to palliate if not to approve of sins that Gentiles in their parables condemn to their abyss and horrid pains; so that there was more judgment among the ignorant and rustic multitude, among boys and women than among bearded philosophers; more in the workshops of artizans than in the lyceums of learned men; and no kind, no condition or sex were so wanting in moral truth as those philosophic inquirers, whose only employment was the investigation of truth; the

• Ventura de Methodo Philosophandi, cap. 3. art. 5. + Pro M. Cœlio, 17.

words of Cicero being still applicable to philosophers, "quanto melius hæc vulgus imperitorum." The moderns seem to think, that in the judgment of morals as of poetry * there is nothing which gives pleasure or indignation, but what is mutable; nothing in the principles of human society, or in the rule of human duties, fixed and eternal. The arrival of each new sophist is therefore hailed as the harbinger of some fresh light, which is to dispel the clouds and uncertainty in which their moral philosophy may be still involved. Let the system of this stranger be ever so extravagant and absurd, still if it only seem to be new, and above all if it hath been condemned by the Holy See, there are instantly found ingenious and eloquent men to advocate it, and to encourage the author.

"Undique visendi studio Trojana juventus

Circumfusa ruit, certantque illudere capto."

In general on these occasions they are divided between the advice of the rash Thymoetes and the prudent Capys, "Scinditur incertum studia contraria vulgus."

Is the novelty to be admitted or not? becomes the question with a Christian people, who were to have been established and rooted in the faith once transmitted, and persevering unto the end in the doctrine of the apostles. The men of Catholic ages knew that there is an eternal law, as St. Thomas remarked, not from there having been from eternity those who might be subject to it, since God alone is from eternity, but because things which exist not in themselves exist in God, inasmuch as they are foreknown and preordained by him †. The Catholic had his eyes always fixed upon what is arranged according to perfect and eternal order, and therefore it was he who attained to that condition described by Plato, for in consequence of having such an object he neither committed nor suffered injustice, since when he suffered, he only suffered what providence permitted, and moved always conformably to reason and to order . St. Augustin speaks in no measured terms of an opinion which would now be designated as liberal, and says, that "some being moved by the variety of innumerable customs, sleeping men as it were, who have

Hor. Epist. II. 1.

† 1, 2, 9, 91, Art. I. Plato de Repub. Lib. VI.