constructed a canal to convey water to a valley, in the expectation that the peasants would buy the water for the purpose of irrigation. The canal was completed, but the people would not buy the water. The company contrived to purchase some land in the district, and the superiority of the crops was soon made evident. Still, though their own crops were suffering for want of water, the peasantry would not take that of the canal. Rain had always been sent when needed. They went to the priest, brought out the image of the Virgin, splendidly dressed, and showed her the crops, now beginning to turn yellow from drought. They offered up prayers to her then and there, and waited a week to see the rain. None came; they brought her out again, performed a solemn procession, and urged her to send them the needed supply. Still another week of drought went by, and the crops were almost dying. Thereupon the people impiously cursed the Virgin, and went to the canal company, of whom they bought the water in time to save their crops. This culminating advantage assured the success of the canal company." The affair may serve as a type of what will be done with the pretty pictures and dressy dolls and reputed relics of Marian miracle-mongery, when the people open their eyes to the heathenish imposture upon which the priests shut theirs, and see that it is not worth their while paying sensual superstition to watch crops. "Mother, mother of God?" said Knox when, a galley slave on the Loire, he was required to do reverence to an image of the Virgin. "This is no mother of God: this is a pented bredd,' a piece of wood, I tell you, with paint on it! She is fitter for swimming, I think, than for being worshipped." At whatever risk, he "flung the thing into the river."1

1 Carlyle.

CHAPTER XVII.

DEVELOPMENT OF Doctrine.

"It was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints."-JUDE 3.

ROMANISTS hold that Jesus Christ put His Church under the guardianship and direction of Simon Peter and his successors, engaging in His promise of the Holy Spirit to save them from error, and this is their authority for what is called "the development of revealed truths." The pretended truths are in the Bible, it is said; but their existence is for a season doubtful. Some of them, in fact, do not come to light for centuries. At length they are disclosed to the hierarch of Rome, and he forthwith says in effect to the city and the world, "Such a doctrine is revealed. You did not know it; and now you might not be aware of it, were I not to tell you. I have only just found it out myself. But there the doctrine lies in the sacred page; and having my word for it, whether you can read it yourselves or not, you must admit and proclaim it, if you would be saved." In "the Roman Pontiff's infallibility, the Roman Church is the mistress of Christians, and the depository of divine revelation." "A Christian is impressed with the certainty that the doctrines to be believed by him are really revealed by God, because proposed

as such to him by an infallible authority." A respectable old gentleman, of average intellect and heart, reading and writing between the lines, gives expression and finish to the partial and indistinct teaching of the apostles, and will discover more revealed truths for you when necessary or convenient! Different was the inspired view of St Peter and his associates, that the faith was already settled.2

An eminent ecclesiastic3 accounts for the writers of the New Testament not mentioning the greatness of Mary by venturing the supposition that when they wrote "she was or may have been alive.” "Just one book of Scripture, certainly written after her death," he says, exhibits her in its description of the " woman clothed with the sun." Why in that book is she spoken of so obscurely that millions of Christians are unable to perceive that she is spoken of therein at all? Why is she only alluded to once, if ever, in that one book? How is it that, after the constrained silence, there was not a gush of testimony? Wherefore did not St John write a memoir of her after her departure? How did the Church flourish without any proclamation of her magnificence from the day of her Son's crucifixion to that of her decease? Why should the sacred writers be so delicately silent concerning her while she lived? Were they more her friends than, for Christ's sake, friends of the race to whom a knowledge of her exceeding greatness was of course vitally momentous? Was it right to feel so much for the one human being of whom Jesus was born, and so little for the thousands on whose behalf He died? Were St John and others afraid that, if they described her

1 Melia.

2 Acts xx. 27; 1 Cor. xvi. 13; Gal. ii. 5; Phil. i. 27; 2 Tim. iii. 10; 2 Peter ii. 21; iii. 1, 2; Jude 3.

3 Dr Newman.

greatness, they would make her proud? Was it not as bad to hurt her feelings and try her temper by publishing her littleness? If they might wound, why might they not also in compensation, and for the world's benefit, support her sense of dignity? She was incapable, it is alleged, of any fault. Why, therefore, did the Lord never directly commend her? For what reason did the evangelists and apostles so scrupulously refrain from acknowledging her excellent glory? If modern workmen about the Church know, surely its inspired builders were not ignorant that she was born and lived immaculate. Ought they not in their day to have acted upon such knowledge as much as any illuminated Englishman or conscientious Italian is bound to do so in ours?

But the Apocalypse is not the only book of the New Testament which must be supposed to have been written after the Virgin's death. The Crucifixion is believed to have taken place A.D. 29, and the author of the suggestion referred to is in circumstances to honour the tradition that Mary left the world fifteen years afterwards. Allowing that, as some think, she lived twenty-four years after the Ascension of Christ, her death took place in the year 53. Of all the books of the New Testament, only the Gospel according to St Matthew and St Paul's Epistles to the Thessalonians were published before that date. The rest of St Paul's Epistles, the Gospels of St Mark, St Luke, and St John, the Epistles of St James, St Peter, St Jude, and St John, and the Epistle to the Hebrews, all were subsequently written. It was fifteen years later than A.D. 53 when St John wrote his first and chief Epistle; the Revelation was written by him in 96 or 97; and his Gospel is believed to have been his last composition. Familiar with these conclusions of men honest and learned as himself, Dr

Newman must cherish his novel and uncatholic opinion somewhat uncomfortably; and he ought to tell us why, in the Gospel according to St John, not Mary's majesty is noticed, but her infirmity. Supposing her to have been all that Romanists see in their deified Lady, if it were possible for the New Testament writers, from whatever motives, to conceal her greatness while she lived,-if such a belief were not a reflection upon their inspiration as well as honour and zeal,-it would be incredible that no one else was inspired to record her excellence when she died.

The Christian authors immediately succeeding had no need to be silent, and we may expect to read much of the Roman magnificence of Mary, if she had it, in the writings of the Apostolic Fathers. Nothing is said about her in Barnabas, Clement, Hermas, Polycarp, and the fragments of Papias. Ignatius, contending against the Gnostics for the true humanity of Jesus, only says of her what is said in the inspired Gospels and the Apostles' Creed. Even his spurious epistles assert no more, with the exception of the clumsily forged correspondence mentioned in a previous chapter. Urging the Jews to accept Jesus Christ, Justin names Mary as frequently as does Ignatius, but only to insist on her virginity and obedience. If some of the less ancient fathers who deserve the title call her immaculate, what they mean is not that she was conceived without sin, but that though a mother, yet she was a virgin, and that by the grace of God she was singularly pure in heart. On the other hand, if none of them expressly say that she was a partaker of original sin, it is evidently because it did not occur to any of them that it was necessary to say so. They did not doubt it. Not excluding her, they affirm that all the descendants of Adam are naturally guilty and corrupt. Irenæus says of Christ, "He had a generation as to His

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