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speaking of the law applicable to the soldier, for which, in their day, the term martial law, or law martial, was the only designation in use."

It is a curious and startling fact, but distinctly proved in this book, that so far is martial law, as commonly understood, from being, as is commonly imagined, any remnant of the arbitrary and cruel proceedings of despotic times, that in fact there is more precedent and grave authorities for it in the last century, and most especially since the accession of Queen Victoria, than are to be found in the whole of our previous history and laws.

The points laid down by the Lord Chief Justice have hitherto been three. First, that the proceedings against Mr. Gordon, if they would have been unlawful in England, were unlawful in Jamaica. Next, that after very careful examination and study, he is wholly unable to find any authority whatever for the trial and punishment of civilians by martial law. Thirdly, that, assuming such a thing can in any case be lawful, there is only one kind of martial law, and that civilians, if subject to it at all, are entitled to every safeguard which has been laid down for the trial of soldiers.

Next he passes on to "whether G. W. Gordon, who was put to death under the sentence of this court-martial was amenable to its jurisdiction, if that jurisdiction existed?" Upon this point he says :—

"I entertain a very strong opinion that the whole proceeding the seizing him where he was, the putting him on board a steamer and taking him to Morant Bay, and handing him over to the martial tribunal-was altogether unlawful and unjustifiable. To Mr. Gordon it made the difference of life and death. I say so advisedly, because, after the most careful perusal of the evidence which was adduced against him, I come irresistibly to the conclusion that, if the man had been tried upon that evidence-I must correct myself -he could not have been tried on that evidence. No competent judge acquainted with the duties of his office could have received that evidence. Three-fourths-I had almost said nine-tenths-of the evidence upon which that man was committed and sentenced to death was evidence which, according to no known rules-not only of ordinary law but of military law— according to no rules of right and justice, could possibly have been admitted; and it never would have been admitted if a competent judge had presided, or if there had been the advantage of a military officer of any experience in the practice of courts-martial, who knew by what rules a tribunal desirous of doing justice ought to be governed in the reception of evidence against a person who stands accused, especially a man who stands accused upon a charge which involves his life. And I must further say that, looking at this evidence, I come irresistibly to the conclusion that no jury, however influenced by prejudice and passion, arising out of local or other circumstances, if they had been guided by a competent impartial and honest judge, could upon evidence so morally and intrinsically worthless, and, as I shall show you presently, so wholly inconclusive as that evidence was, have condemned that man on the charges on which he was tried” (p. 115).

The Chief Justice then shows that the excuses invented by writers her for sending Mr. Gordon for trial at Morant Bay, are wholly without foundation. This is very important, because we have repeatedly heard it laid down in society and seen it asserted by newspaper writers, that Governor Eyre was obliged by law to send him there for trial. For that statement there is not so much as a pretence of foundation. Upon that point the Chief Justice

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Correspondence.

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[It is, of course, out of the question that we should insert argumentative replies to any of our articles. On the other hand, whenever we find ourselves to have unintentionally misrepresented an opponent, it is our bounden duty to retract and explain. But there is an intermediate case, viz., where an opponent mistakenly thinks us to have misrepresented him. We would not ordinarily insert the remonstrance of such an opponent; but yet an exception to this general rule may be permissible. Now we think so very unfavourably of Mr. Ffoulkes's opinions--we have said, and are likely hereafter to say so much against them-that we are particularly desirous he should not suspect us of personal unfriendliness. We have thought it better, therefore, on the whole, to insert the following letter; to which we append a very brief reply.]

To the Dublin Reviewer of Christendom's Divisions.—Part I.

DEAR SIR, I cannot believe for a moment that you have been desirous of merely writing down a book that you did not like, or consider opposed to your own private views, but you must excuse me for saying that the greater part of your criticisms seem founded on a simple misapprehension of its intent and aim. It assumes neither to be a didactic treatise on Churchgovernment, nor on the formation of Christendom (a subject just now in abler hands than mine), but, as its title implies, on "Christendom's divisions." It endeavours to show how they arose, and what occasioned them.

When S. James asks, "From whence come wars and fightings among you?" what is his answer? From the Spirit of God that is in you? certainly not. "From your own lusts," according to him; and he goes on to say: Do ye think that the Scripture saith in vain, "The Spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy." Who ever argued from hence that S. James denied baptismal regeneration? Similarly, there is a human as well as a divine element involved in the papacy, and because it is the human element that I have to dwell upon almost exclusively in treating of Christendom's divisions, must I therefore be set down as having denied the divine? What I mean by the human element in the papacy is so fully brought out in the facts adduced in my new volume that I need only refer you to them.

2. A remark of yours, p. 405, is "This singular notion that the history of the Church is to be found in the history of the Jews seems to underlie all that our author has written." True; but I had written a book on all this as

article was devoted in the DUBLIN soon after its appearance. I refer to it, note 5. Had you consulted it, you might have found several of your objections answered beforehand. At all events you must have seen that this theory had not prevented my joining the Roman communion, which my reviewer in the DUBLIN in fact prophesied it would lead me to do. It certainly had that effect on me : nor can I now explain many facts in Churchhistory without it; you may start objections to it, but can you offer any better explanation of those facts which I explain by means of it without shirking or ignoring their full force?

3. I notice that in several places you take exception to my statements, where I am in fact but repeating others. For instance, p. 417, "Could it have been otherwise than a mere question of time to delegate to him (the Pope) the same executive powers over Christendom generally that had been already delegated to metropolitans over provincial (churches)." Now in all this I was merely giving what I took to be the plain sense of Can. Apost. 27, about the obedience to be paid by the bishops of every province to their chief bishop; and canons 3, 4, and 5 of Sardica respecting appeals to Rome. These canons were passed by a number of bishops in Synod I presume. Again, p. 421, my words are given: "As far as the sanctuary is concerned, one bishop, one priest, one deacon, is as good as another;" in all this I was merely paraphrasing S. Jerome, Ep. cxlvi. All bishops are equals amongst themselves. The bishop of Rome is no more than the bishop of Bethlehem, nor he of Constantinople more than he of Rhegium; all are invested with the same priesthood; all have the same dignity."

4. In the two following passages I am sure you will own on second thoughts you have much mis-represented me :

a. "Mr. Ffoulkes, continuing his observations on the shortcoming of the middle ages, attacks S. Thomas, and thinks the Saint in error more or less for his inadequate discussion of the doctrine of Justification . . ." (p. 429); and b. "He praises heretics and excuses them . . . but for the Catholic theologian, what has he to say?"

As regards justification (and "mutatis mutandis," the same with regard to my remarks on penance, p. 424) all I say, or meant to say, amounts to no more than what has been often said before, e.g. by S. Augustine (De Præd. ii. 20), “Didicimus enim singulas quasque hæreses intulisse ecclesiæ proprias questiones, contra quas diligentius defenderetur Scriptura divina, quàm si nulla necessitas cogeret." The subject had excited no controversy when S. Thomas wrote: hence he is not so full on it as those who wrote after Luther. Me attack S. Thomas! after I had written of his Summa: "Shall we not recognize in it one of the grandest pictures of man in his state of grace ever achieved by man; one to which western Christendom can never cease to look back upon with just pride, as being, in a peculiar sense, its own ; as one of the vastest and most imperishable monuments ever reared to truth on the deepest of all earthly subjects". . . and a good deal more (p. 78). Was it right to pass over all I had said there of S. Thomas and his contemporaries, all I had said (p. 131) of what was done in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries for good by others, all that I had said (pp. 182–88) of the great achievements of the Jesuits, and ask at the end of your article, "for the Catholic

theologian what has he to say?" or again, to state summarily: "he praises heretics and excuses them," without quoting any one passage in which I had done so. I had distinctly headed p. 754, "Errors of Luther weighed against corruptions in the Church." Was I praising Luther when I spoke of his errors? On the other hand, if I was wrong in pointing out how many things needed reforming in the Church of his day, what is to be said of all those popes cited by me,from Martin V. to Pius IV., who spoke of a thorough reformation of the head and members of the Church as what they wanted so much to effect? The heading of the first chapter in the "Histoire des Variations" by Bossuet is "La réformation de l'Église était désirée depuis plusieurs siècles." And the Archbishop of Besançon in 1808, commenting on the facts adduced by Bossuet in his letter to M. Beaufort, says: "Tandis que Luther resta dans les bornes d'une certaine moderation . . . il parut loin de vouloir ébrauler l'édifice du Catholicisme. Il ne démandait que la réformation des certaines choses qu'il jugeait des abus." In the hypothetical case quoted from me, p. 432, I suppose Luther to have emigrated before he fell into heresy, not afterwards; while he was only agitating for reform, as the archbishop says. Yet for merely supposing this, I am charged in the "table of contents" of your article, p. ii., with "implicitly denying the definitions of Trent," which in p. 43 of my book I had extolled to the skies. Is this quite the treatment that one Catholic, especially in these days, should receive from another? Yours very faithfully,

...

EDMUND S. FFOULKES.

1. We did not profess to review the whole of the book, and so we said we should "confine ourselves to one subject ;" the author's accounts of the origin and growth of the Church.

2. Mr. Ffoulkes, by his interpretation of the Old Testament, denies that the Papacy existed before the conversion of Constantine, and maintains that the Fathers, not necessarily Popes, governed the Church, fulfilling the alleged prophecy in the history of the Judges. All Catholics must account this theory heretical. It may have helped Mr. Ffoulkes into the Church; but so did the letters of the high priest help S. Paul: nevertheless persecuting Catholics is not, therefore, to be recommended.

3. Mr. Ffoulkes said that "inequalities" among bishops "whom the rite of consecration had left equals," were introduced by themselves. For this he now quotes S. Jerome. Well; does he really think that S. Jerome considered the Bishop of Rhegium as the equal of S. Damasus, Pope? The question is not about orders only, but is about jurisdiction as well; for Mr. Ffoulkes uses the word "service" of God.

4. Mr. Ffoulkes described the Medieval Catholics as having learned grossly erroneous notions of the Sacraments, and as being roused to consciousness by Luther's preaching of justification by faith only. Now, one of the teachers of the Medieval Catholics was S. Thomas; another was Peter Lombard, Bishop of Paris; and of these he says that the latter does not speak of justification at all-contrary to the fact-in the Book of the Sentences, and that S. Thomas gave to that doctrine "a mere corner" in his work. We thought this, and think still that it was an attack on S. Thomas.

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