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dent? the failure is not alleged to be in the rule, but in its interpreter. And the same writers who know not how to express themselves highly enough respecting the perfections of Scripture, are as express as possible in declaring that it cannot be studied rightly without reference to the guidance of the Church. "They all quote Scripture,' says St. Hilary of the heretics, but without the sense of Scripture'; for those who are out of the Church cannot have any understanding of the Divine word.' In this matter,' says St. Augustine, 'we hold the truth, when we do that which has been decided upon by that Church Universal, which is commended to us by the authority of the Scriptures themselves; that since sacred Scripture cannot be erroneous, he who fears to fall into error through the obscurity of this question may consult about it that same Church which Holy Scripture unambiguously points out to him.' The Holy Apostles, we may well suppose, discerned the whole scope and relations of the covenant of God: the secrets of His unknown kingdom were laid open to them; but they applied themselves to the correction of existing evils; and they fed their converts with milk or with meat, according to their need. Hence, many points of great moment did not become subjects of detailed instruction in the Apostolic writings. We hear little about the existing office and duties of the Christian Priesthood; and nothing respecting that interference of kings and governments in the af fairs of the Church, which is now a subject of so much perplexity. For the one was not disputed apparently in the age of the Apostles, and the other had not yet commenced. On such points, then, we may argue from the principles which have been laid down in Holy Writ, and we may draw inferences from the allusions which have been made to them. But who is to judge the fairness of our inferences, and the cogency of our arguments? Is it the private reason of men, or the Divine Wisdom, speaking through the Church? Whichever judge we take, it is plain that the authority of the law remains unaltered. The sacred Scriptures themselves are of no use unless you understand them rightly. For all heretics, who admit them to be of authority, appear to themselves to follow them, when they rather follow their own errors; and it is not, therefore, because they contemn the Scriptures, but because they misinterpret them, that they are heretics.' For the Scripture does not consist in reading certain words, but in understanding them.'

"But, then, it may be said, this is to dethrone human reason, which God has given to every man as his guide in the determination of truth. Now, it is not disputed that reason has its functions: reason is supreme in things natural, and it is the guide which leads us to that higher Teacher, by whom we are instructed in things divine. But it cannot, surely, be maintained that a man's own

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reason ought always to be confided in, even by himself. Is it ever made a ground of complaint, that the private reason of the people of England is interfered with by the decisions of the Courts of Westminster? Yet many a law would be interpreted differently, if men were left to apply it by individual reason to their own case. But that laws may not be a mere mockery, it has been found necessary that there should not only be a statute-book, according to which justice should be administered, but a judge to administer it. Now, if men are admitted to be partial in deciding for themselves things earthly, why should they be supposed infallible in interpreting things divine?

"Further: If it is inconsistent with reason to allow of a judge of faith, it is inconsistent with it also to allow of a revelation. For is not our reason interfered with by the fact, that God spoke once, as really as it is by the fact, that He speaks always? It requires to be proved, of course, that God has given his Church authority in controversies of faith,' and grounds for believing it have already been adduced; but if this fact be rejected as an infringement on the independence of human reason, why should we not also reject revelation at large? pp. 71-74.

We cannot follow the author through his volume, but the extracts we have made will satisfy our readers that the work is the production of a scholar, a profound thinker, an able writer, and a sincere and earnest-minded man, and that it is full of interest and instruction. It is clear from the doctrine he establishes that the Church is a spiritual body, a spiritual kingdom, complete in herself, and subsisting by the indwelling Holy Ghost, who is her life, her light, and her authority. She is a supernatural body, not superseding the natural, but lying in a sphere above it and independent of it. Hence any attempt to subject her to the temporal authority, or to make her dependent on the secular order, as is the case with Anglicanism, is to strike at her essential nature, and to deprive her of her distinctive character as the Church of God. Obviously, then, the author, as an honest man, wishing to belong to the Christian Church, could not remain an Anglican.

ART. V.1. Il Protestantesimo e la Regola di Fede. Per GIOVANNI PERRONE, della Compagnia di Gesú, Prof. di Teologia nel Coll. Romano. Roma: Coi Tipi della Civiltà Cattolica. 1853.

2. Dissertazione Storico-Teologica, del P. GABRIELLE BIBBIA, del terz' Ordine di S. Francesco, contro le Bibliche Società de' Protestanti. Assisi. 1852.

THE work by Father Perrone, together with a number of other books written since 1848 by Italians and by others, some of them devoted children of the Holy Roman Catholic Apostolic Church, some of them her sworn enemies, and all of them interested in the affairs of their country, was noticed in a former number of this Review; but as it excelled the others in point of size, importance, scope, and thorough management of the Italian question, we promised to recur to it on a future occasion. We expressed a hope, at the time, that some person well qualified for the task would translate it for the American Catholic public. We are a little surprised that it has not been already done in England. The close, though generally indirect connection, in an official sense, of England with Italy for the last sixty years, and the silent, though effective, influence which English statesmanship has brought to bear upon the affairs of that peninsula, would serve to prove that a well-planned translation of the work of Father Perrone might in no small degree advance the interests of Catholicity in England. The work was projected, begun, and finished in England, while the author was an exile, driven from his native land by the whirlwind which the unhappy Gioberti strove to ride, and the storm which he sought to direct against the Society of Jesus, but which turned out to be an anti-Catholic whirlwind, an anti-Christian storm, which the providence of God so rode, and so guided, that, while the intended victims are now seated under their own vine and their own fig-tree, with no one to disturb them or make them afraid, the authors of the mischief either sleep in dishonored graves, or wander abroad with the mark of Cain - the evidence of murder done and further murder planned-upon their brows, stamped in characters of everlasting fire. Like the master whom they serve, and who is the Prince of this world, disasters, defeat, ruin, teach them

nothing. They will try, as they have tried, again and again, to raise the storm which the breath of God has so often quelled in his own time and in his own way, they themselves being not seldom the very instruments chosen by him for the irretrievable destruction of their own work, and they themselves being not seldom the only victims borne by the tempest to the depths from which it was evoked. The race of Pharaohs, whose hearts are hardened, whose eyes are closed, and whose ears are stopped, still lives. So long as man is free, so long as the partial darkness of the understanding, and the weakness of the will, the sad effects of the Fall, remain, so long as Satan be not wholly chained, the heathen will rage, the PEOPLE will imagine vain things, and He who sitteth in the heavens will laugh them to scorn. In the course of this mundane contest the Church appears to be, humanly speaking, always falling, and the enemy always about to conquer. The enemy will not be blamed herein by the man who looks at the field of battle from an earthly point of view. No precaution that human intellect aided by diabolical malice can suggest, is omitted in the assault. Hence, when the Church is attacked, she prays. She rests mainly upon the promises of Christ, which cannot fail. And the enemy, being earth-born, when dashed to the earth rises, like the fabled earth-born giant of old, deriving new strength from the infernal source whence he sprung.

The work of the illustrious Perrone is directed against Protestantism, considered in its relations with the Rule of Faith. But it contains much more matter than one would be led to suppose from its title. It is written chiefly for Italians at home. It passes over modern Pyrrhonism, inasmuch as it assumes, as a starting-point, that every man who is a man holds certain truths to be incontestible; believes in some higher and better state than the present; hopes to enjoy that state, and receives or proposes to himself some rule of faith and of conduct by which he may obtain the fruition of his desires. He writes for his beloved Italy, and especially for those generous but misled young men of Italy whose cry is that they were Italians before they were Catholics. Let us remain true to our Church, say they, but, while we shut our eyes to the evidences of her increasing age, let us take from her hands, gently but firmly, lovingly but with such force as may be necessary

to accomplish our purpose, that temporal sceptre which she once knew so well how to wield, and which she refuses to drop now, because her hands are so accustomed to its touch, because she does not know how to drop it, and because there are no hands strong enough to take it from her. She clings to it, not because she loves it, but because she cannot bring herself to resign it. Ours are the hands of her own most beloved children, and she will yield to their gentle force what she would refuse to ruder hands. We are of age, and it is the will of God that we direct our own concerns in all things that pertain to this life. Let our mother, the Church, tell us what to do for the life to come. Is not that work glorious enough, even for her? And if she tell us that, in order to obtain the life to come, we must subordinate the temporal to the spiritual, and therefore in all things which pertain to this life receive our direction from her, we will listen respectfully, we will love her as dearly as ever, yet we will be firm in our just resolve, understanding well that she is from the mere force of habit repeating words which may have been not only true but efficacious once, but which are now as empty and as inoperative as the words of the Sanhedrim or of the schools would be, if uttered in tones of authority in this enlightened age.

Father Perrone does not fear that Protestantism in its theological or in its philosophical form will ever find favor in Italy. She long since weighed Protestantism under these forms in the balance, found them wanting, and threw them aside as rubbish. Still, there was a moment when the faith of Italy seemed to her enemies to waver.

"From the evil moment when the Protestant rebellion began in the heart of Germany to rend asunder the unity of Christendom, the eyes of the pretended Reformers were turned with guilty desire towards the beautiful plains of Italy, for they knew well that immense gains and a hitherto unheard of triumph would await them, if they would but transplant and cause to take root their deadly Upas-tree in that Italy which is so loyal to Rome and to the Popes, precisely because it is so warmly attached to the Catholic faith. They omitted no means, spared no pains, and left no one of the powerful men who favored their cause uninvoked, in order to spread the poisonous air throughout Italy. And they succeeded to a certain extent. John McCrie, a Scotch Protestant, is the author of a book called Memoirs concerning the Reformation in It