private schools and colleges is invaded, or threatened to be invaded, by illegal and unconstitutional legislative committees; our dead are all but denied a burial; our children are kidnapped and placed in Protestant families to be brought up in what we regard as a damnable heresy; legislatures are devising ways and means to confiscate the funds given by Catholic charity for the support of divine worship and feeding of the poor; our lives and property are insecure, and the authorities afford us hardly a shadow of protection; and our rights as Catholics, as citizens, or as men are every day trampled upon with impunity; and yet Protestants have the incredible impudence to accuse us of conspiracy, to represent themselves as the victims of our secret councils, -as in danger from us of losing their liberty, and may be their lives! This is adding mockery to injury, and, if it is a fair exhibition of Protestantism, as we have but too much evidence that it is, we and all Catholics cannot be too thankful to Almighty God, that we are not Protestants.

Quem Deus vult perdere, prius dementat. Nothing can more clearly prove that Protestants are demented, than their present violence against Catholics. Never has Protestantism been willing to concede to Catholicity an open field and fair play. It boasts of religious liberty, but the only religious liberty it has ever recognized is its liberty by civil pains and penalties, or by material force, to shut the reason and close the mouth of Catholics. No country has ever become Protestant through the labors of peaceful Protestant missionaries, or by appeals to reason, history, and Scripture. Among whatever people Protestantism has gained an establishment, it has been by violence, by civil or physical force, and wherever it has sustained itself, it has been by falsehood, misrepresentation, calumny, and for the most part by civil laws disabling Catholics. It was not to be expected that it would change its nature on being transplanted to this New World. It indeed used fair words, and appeared gentle and tolerant when Catholicity was not here, or when it was so weak as to excite no fears; but the moment that Catholics became a little numerous, and seemed likely to gain a permanent foothold in the country, its tiger nature broke forth as of old. It could not be otherwise, for it is only a modern form of that old Gentilism which in the martyr ages cried out so vehemently, Christianos ad leones!

Christians to the lions! This is now seen, and save for the sake of Protestants we do not regret it. In fact, we rejoice to see Protestantism exposing itself, throwing off the mask, and confessing itself to be able to sustain itself only by persecution. This book by Dr. Beecher justifies all that we have ever said against Protestantism, and the rage of the Evangelicals against unoffending Catholics now exhibited will disgust every intelligent and fair-minded man in the Protestant ranks with a pretended religion that can inspire it. These recent movements show Protestantism in its true light, in its inherent ugliness, and will drive from the Protestant ranks all who have the least love of justice and fair dealing in their hearts. For, after all, what have we as Catholics done to provoke them? Have we not always, in these United States, demeaned ourselves as good and loyal citizens? Have we ever resorted to unfair or underhanded methods in our dealings with Protestants? Have we ever denied or sought to deny them any of their rights? Have we ever burnt down any of their meetinghouses or school-houses? Have we ever tarred and feathered any of their ministers? Have we kidnapped their orphan children, placed them with Catholics, and forced them to grow up in our religion? When have we set snares for unsuspecting Protestants? When have we attempted to convert them by any but fair, open, and honorable means? When have we tried to provoke them to riot and bloodshed? When have we mobbed them, and shot them down in the streets, or in their own houses? Or when have we without provocation stirred up a mob against them, killed and wounded large numbers of them, and then published in all the journals that it was they who mobbed us, and that we acted only in self-defence? Thank God! none of these things can be laid to our charge. There are men amongst Protestants who know this, and have the honesty and manliness to avow it. These see and feel Protestant injustice towards us, and we may be assured it will not deepen their attachment to Protestantism.

We are here what the Christians were under Diocletian, Galerius, and Maximian, and the Protestants represent the part of the persecuting pagans. We are the descendants of those Christians, holding their faith, and animated by the same spirit. They conquered, and so shall we; not in slaying, but in being slain. The old pagans were de

feated in the very moment of their apparent triumph, not by being slain, but by slaying. Let our soil be saturated with the blood of Catholic martyrs, and it will no longer bear Protestantism. Protestantism will wither and die. How little, then, have we to fear Protestant persecution. "It is sweet," sings the patriot, "to die for our country"; how much more sweet to die for our God, who has died for us, and to know that in dying for him we win the victory? How pants the true soldier of the cross for the glorious crown of martyrdom! Courage, my brethren! perhaps that crown is reserved for some of us, and that we may not always have to envy those who fought the good fight under Nero, Decius, and Diocletian. Martyrdom is fearful only to those who inflict it, and persecution need alarm only persecutors. They, indeed, have reason to fear and tremble. We, for ourselves, can forgive them and pray for them, nay, thank them for the service they render us; but there is One above us and above them who will not forgive them unless they repent. God will avenge his Spouse, and the blood of his saints. Let men like Dr. Beecher, Rufus W. Clark, and the host of puritanical ministers at the head of the violent movements against Catholics, reflect on the fate of the persecuting pagan Emperors, and remember that they who are most responsible for them are they on whom the Divine vengeance will fall swiftest and heaviest.

We have already said that we have no intention of offering a formal reply to Dr. Beecher's book. It is not worthy of an answer. There is nothing in it against the Church that has not been answered over and over again. It may have weight with a few credulous and fanatical Protestants, who would read no answer to it were we to give one; it may be used as a pretext, by artful and unprincipled demagogues, for attacking the political and civil rights of Catholics; but to all intelligent, well-disposed, and fair-minded Protestants it carries with it its own refutation. The author has overshot his mark. He lies stoutly, but not adroitly. He betrays too openly his malignity, and the thoughtful and sober part of his readers will not believe that either we, or our Church, are so black as he paints us. Then the motives which govern him and his brethren are too patent. The undeniable fact is, that Protestantism as a religion is in this country on its

Its

last legs, and is fast going the way of all the earth. ministers are losing their social position, their hold on the people, and their livelihood. They see and feel that their craft is in danger, and that their calling is no longer held in reverence or respect by the community at large. They are fast sinking into popular contempt, as were sunk, in the time of Diocletian, the pagan priests. They must do something to recover their standing and influence, and they hope to be able to do so by getting up a violent persecution against Catholics. But we tell them it is too late. Their day is over, and these violent movements they are heading are only the violent throes of one in his agony. The people of this country are not yet Catholic, but they have lost their confidence in Protestant ministers, and hold them in about the esteem that the intelligent Romans, under the Empire, held their priests. Whenever a party is obliged to resort to a secret organization in order to effect its purposes, it virtually confesses its weakness, and owns that the public is against it. If it has been in power, if it has once held the public, its resort to secret organization and to subterranean methods of operation is a proof that it has fallen, and that its doom is sealed. Its agony may be long and painful, but in its agony it is. Here is a fact that the Protestant leaders would do well to consider. Their secret organization, or their readiness to avail themselves of such organization, proves that they have no longer the mind or the heart of the American people on their side. This Know-Nothing movement is an humiliating confession of Protestant weakness; this book of Dr. Beecher is a cry of despair from the depths of the American Protestant heart.

No doubt expiring Protestantism may be revived to one last, vigorous, and desperate effort, as expiring Paganism was under Diocletian and Galerius, and the persecution of God's people may be severe and terrible; but that effort will exhaust it. To whom the empire will descend, we say not; but the people will be found to have had enough of Protestantism. No heresy has ever retained its vigor for much over three hundred years; those three hundred years for Protestantism have passed away, and it seems now to have the presentiment of its doom. The American people are not yet Catholic, they are not very generally disposed to become Catholic; but the day is near at hand when they

must make their election between Catholicity and no religion. The half-and-half religion of Protestantism no longer satisfies their hearts, hardly blinds or confuses their intellectual vision. They are beginning to see that whoso holds that God has made a revelation of his will to man recognizes, in principle, an authority as universal, as positive, as inflexible, and as obligatory, as that which the Catholic claims for his Church; that the Protestant, who asserts any supernatural authority, can never make good his defence against the Catholic, is inconsequent in rejecting Catholicity, and either goes too far or not far enough; and that there is no alternative for a man, who can and who does reason, but to fall back either on the Church or on unmitigated rationalism. He who questions this is ignorant of the state of the American mind. The fact is really undeniable, and therefore it is that we tell the Protestant ministers that their day is over, and that they will never recover their authority. Convinced of this, we see no use in spending time in replying to their tirades against Catholicity.

There are, however, one or two points raised by Dr. Beecher, on which we will offer a few remarks; not for his benefit, for he is past all human aid, but for the benefit of such honest-minded Protestants as are willing to know the truth, and to be just even to Catholics. Professor Park of Andover, some years since, asserted that the Church teaches that "no faith is to be kept with heretics." This we, of course, denied. Dr. Beecher cites certain documents, which he calls Papal bulls, in which he maintains. that the doctrine is taught. In this he does no great credit to his critical sagacity, or to his principles as a moralist. The documents assert no doctrine we denied. There is in them, even as given by the author, no such doctrine as that "no faith is to be kept with heretics." The only doctrine we find in them bearing on the point is, that men who enter into engagements with heretics, or anybody else, to do that which it is unlawful or wrong for them to do, are not permitted to keep those engagements, but are bound to break them off. Does Dr. Beecher maintain the contrary? Suppose he had entered into an engagement with John Smith to cut my throat, would he be bound to keep that engagement? Suppose I entered into an engagement with some of my associates to burn down his