the monarchical cable, and the Delos of the Church was seen immediately looming off to the Romish Gyaros; and the Pontifical fisherman of that island lost no time in seizing hold of both the cables, and has now tied the Gallican Delos to himself,

"Immotamque coli dedit, et contemnere ventos 8."

The Crown has suffered irreparable injury from this annihilation of the Church as an Establishment. The Church being left to itself, has become extra-national, and indeed anti-national; it declares in a bold and somewhat menacing tone, that the Crown having now become unchristian, has no pretence whatever to meddle in the affairs of the Church. The King of France, it says, was formerly Rex Christianissimus ; as such he had ecclesiastical jurisdiction: but now he has renounced that title; and his Regale, therefore, is at an end'.

The Church of France, it may also be observed, has been changed from Catholic into Papal, as well as from Gallican into Ultramontane; that is to say, it has undergone alteration both in its religious and political character. The religious Orders, especially the Jesuits, who (it is well known) are bound by a special oath of obedience to the Papacy, in addition to the three other vows common to other orders, are

8 Virg. Æn. III. 77.

9 See below, p. 166, 167.

operating a silent and gradual change on the spiritual character of the priesthood, and of the people,-both by means of their own society, and by other affiliated fraternities and sodalities,-not openly Jesuitical in name and profession. The works of Pères Ravignan and Cahour have tended to familiarize the popular mind, and even to enamour it, with the Jesuitical discipline; the preaching of the former has fascinated the ardent devotees among the women and the young men of France—the religious "Retreats" (somewhat of the same character as the American Revivals) for which the Jesuits are famous, have roused and fed the spirit of pious enthusiasm-miracles and visions, trances and ecstasies, cures and conversions, have come in to fan the fire into a fanatical flame of religious frenzy; and the character of the secular clergy, the priesthood, and even the episcopate, finds itself influenced by a secret and mysterious power which has beguiled it of its religious sobriety, almost without its knowledge, and perhaps against its will.

It must also be observed, that the religion of the Regulars that which I call the Papal religion, as distinguished from the Roman Catholic-has gained much from the character and proceedings of its opponents. Messrs. Quinet, Michelet, &c., are men of great ability; but unhappily they are associated in the public mind with a sceptical and Antichristian system of teaching; and hence it is that when they attack the Jesuits, they are believed to impugn

religion: and thus, in the popular notion, the cause of the Jesuits has become identified with that of Christianity; and when charges brought by them against the Jesuits are shown to be exaggerated or unfounded (as they have been in many instances), their own arguments recoil upon themselves, and the cause of their adversaries gains strength from their attacks. The misfortune is-and an unspeakable calamity it is—that the French Monarchy has nothing to set against the Papacy (acting in the Church and by the Jesuits) but what is termed Philosophy, and which is Atheism.

Louis Philippe has no force to bring into the field against the Pope, but the Professors of the Collège de France and of the Sorbonne : and he cannot contend with any prospect of success against such a power,-which has now the episcopate and the secular and regular clergy of France as its allies,— with such weapons as these. He may indeed keep it at bay he may control it; but, in the meantime, in the persons of his own auxiliaries, he is encouraging and developing other principles no less dangerous to the Monarchy than those of the Papacy -the principles, I mean, of infidelity, anarchy, and demoralization.

The Crown has been jealous of the Church, and has kept the doors of the colleges of the State closed against her; but it now finds that in so doing it has excluded Christianity; and that it has to deal at

present with a generation which has been educated without any sense of religious obligation, or of moral and civil duty, and which has no more regard for the Throne, or for the Sovereign upon it, than it has for Christianity and the Church.

What would not Louis Philippe give for a National Church, founded on the solid basis of evangelical truth and apostolic discipline, devoted to the Monarchy, and untrammelled by Rome? And why should he not endeavour to restore to France the Church of his forefathers? Why should he not attempt to revive the Church of St. Hilary and St. Irenæus? If he could effect this, he would have nothing to fear from the Jesuits; he would have his eighty Bishops devoted to his throne; and he would have no need of the aid of the Antichristian philosophy of the sceptical Professor of the College of France, to encounter the Antichristian policy of the domineering Pontiff of the Church of Rome'.

But to return, after this long digression, to M. Gaume.

Among other marks of Antichristianism in France, none perhaps are publicly more apparent than those which are presented by a view of national education. M. Gaume cites particularly those demonstrations which have recently taken place in one of the first, if not the very first, academical institutions of the country, the Collège de France at Paris. There, Pro

1 See note to p. 160, at the end of the volume.

fessors appointed and salaried by the State have had the blasphemous temerity to announce publicly ex cathedra to their hearers, that the Christian dispensation is but one link in the chain of Divine revelations to man! that it has now served its purpose, and is soon to be superseded by a new publication of the Divine will, of which every man may be the recipient by his own independent act!

Other Professors of the Collège de France have as publicly declared to their young scholars, that they have seen with their own eyes a new prophet, whom God has sent into the world to regenerate it! And these Professors have appealed to their hearers whether they, too, have not seen this prophet; and above sixty of them at a time have replied, in a public lecture-room, "Oui, nous le jurons, Yes, we swear that we have seen him!" and this dreadful blasphemy has been allowed by the Minister of Instruction and his Council to be broached by national teachers, in the great college of the capital, without any interference or remonstrance!

Other public predications of false prophets are referred to by the Abbé Gaume; and my friend M. Bonnetty has put into my hands a number of his "Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne," published in April of this year, 1844, in which there is a full and circumstantial detail of their proceedings.

2 I annex the following extracts from the last-named publication on the topic referred to in the text, as a warning to England what