hand many holy Popes have been canonized, as for other reasons, so also because of the unwearied assiduity with which they have guarded purity of faith. It is no derogation, then, from the Papal office, that a Pope shall be honoured by the Church after his death for his especial diligence in defending the Faith. Neither therefore is it a derogation from his office, that he shall be anathematized after his death for his signal neglect in the fulfilment of that duty. But secondly, Honorius was very far indeed from being the only orthodox bishop, who took no active measures against the spread of Monothelitism. Why, therefore, was he alone anathematized? What other reason for this circumstance can even be imagined, except the obvious one, that a duty is incumbent on the Bishop of Rome, differing altogether in kind from that appertaining to any other bishop, of watching over the Universal Church?

Dr. Pusey proceeds to cite S. Leo the Great and Pope Adrian (p. 315) as mutually contradictory on the Patriarchate of Constantinople. The former says that the order of patriarchal precedency was settled by the Nicene Canons; the latter that it had been decided by Papal authority. But since the Nicene Canons were confirmed by Papal authority, where is the discrepancy? S. Leo says indeed, that he obeys the Nicene Canons: but so also Pius IX, obeys the law of the Church; he abstains, e. g. on Friday, and would tell you that he does so in obedience to the existing law. Would he mean by this, as Dr. Pusey seems to suppose, that he has not the power (if to him should seem good) to dispense the Church from this law of abstinence? Dr. Pusey indeed, in his comment (p. 317), says, that S. Leo appealed to "the immutable decrees of Nice;" but this word "immutable" is his own most gratuitous introduction.

Lastly, our prejudiced opponent quotes (p. 315) passages on the Immaculate Conception, from sermons preached respectively by S. Leo, by Gelasius, by Innocent III. If these sermons had been published for the Church's instruction by order of those Pontiffs, there would have been much force in such quotations. But we never heard of any Catholic who maintained, that whenever the Holy Father ascends a pulpit his address to the hearers is infallible.

Then after an interval, Dr. Pusey (p. 328) returns to the charge, and brings an accusation of historical inaccuracy against various passages of the Bull "Ineffabilis." No one who has studied F. Harper's treatise on the Immaculate Conception, will find any difficulty in replying to these charges; but the whole matter is absolutely external to our present subject. What was the doctrinal instruction conveyed

by the Bull" Ineffabilis?" Of course the definition of faith with which it concludes. All the rest is, as F. Harper indeed calls it, a "preamble." We have throughout carefully and consistently excluded preambles from our claim of Papal infallibility; and there is no possible reason therefore for our entering on the very easy task, of defending this particular preamble against our opponent's assault.

Dr. Pusey complains (p. 290) that, "in Pontificates so full of activity as that of Pius IX.," there is, on Ultramontane principles, an "almost yearly" addition "to the faith of those in the Roman communion." "Union with the Roman See," he adds, "on the part, e. g., of the great Russian church. would involve this, that every one should be ready to receive whatever all past Popes had authoritatively uttered, and whatever any future Pope, though unhappily a Borgia or a Julius II., might utter upon any subject whatsoever."

do wish our opponent would try for once to apprehend the doctrine of those, from whom he so fundamentally differs. If we firmly hold these various utterances to be infallible, how can we regard it otherwise than as a signal blessing that, in every year, or (for that matter) in every month and in every week, we should learn more distinctly than before the bearings of truth on this or that error? And what on earth have the names of Borgia and Julius got to do with the matter? Certainly we needed not Dr. Pusey to tell us, that it would be a most intolerable burden if we were required to accept as infallible what does not really possess that prerogative: the only question at issue is, whether these utterances do possess it.

In real truth, as we said in our last number (p. 5), Dr. Pusey is as wholly astray on the Church's teaching authority, as is Mr. Martineau or Mr. Spurgeon. His own way of deciding about the possibility of communion with the Roman Church, is this: he examines her various definitions of faith, and sees whether he can ingeniously screw them into accordance with his own interpretation of Scripture and Antiquity. Why, if he were able to do so with the greatest ease, he would not on such an account be one step the nearer to admissibility into her communion. Until he is prepared to believe with Divine faith that she exclusively is the one Catholic Church-that she exclusively is commissioned by God to teach infallibly priest could admit him as one of her members. when he is prepared so to believe-when he is prepared humbly to bow his intellect before her infallible voice-when he is prepared to accept everything which she teaches, not because he finds it in Scripture or Antiquity, but because she

no

But

teaches it-then he will understand the Catholic's true position; and he will then see that it is the very same thing in principle, whether he is only permitted to accept ten doctrines on the Church's word, or whether he is privileged on the same authority to accept ten thousand.

And here, for the reasons mentioned at starting, we terminate somewhat abruptly our long series of criticisms on the Eirenicon.

ART. III. THE LIFE OF S. ALOYSIUS GONZAGA.

The Life of S. Aloysius Gonzaga. Edited by E. H. THOMPSON. London : Burns & Oates.

HIS work, the first in a new series of Lives of the Saints, is as delightful as it is unpretending. Its great charm is that which it derives from the character of the Saint it records- -a character which it illustrates with a skill shown frequently in wise and deep reflections, and everywhere in the felicity with which the most characteristic incidents of a career as beautiful as it was brief are selected and commemorated. It is not our purpose either to review the book as a whole, or to confine our remarks to it. In following out the thoughts it suggests, and illustrating them out of the materials thus presented to us, we shall probably best second the aims of its author, and profit by the lessons bequeathed to us by the Saint.

Sanctity is at once the simplest and the most "many-sided" of all things. The characters of the Apostles, even after Pentecost, remained distinct one from another-a proof in itself, as has been remarked, of the truthfulness which belongs to the chief source whence we derive our knowledge of them. From the corresponding distinctness in the character of dif ferent Saints, a similar inference may be drawn as to the authenticity of their "Lives." The gifts of grace are diverse, and in the supernatural order as in the natural, we find the most distinctive types of characteristic excellence. Saint is, so to speak, supplemental to Saint; and from the harmonized dissimilitude of its several members the Church becomes thoroughly equipped with all which it needs for ministration or example. It is true no less that among all Saints are to be found those great generic features which belong to the VOL. IX.—NO. XVIII. [New Series.]

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EL

Household of Sanctity; and that from any one of them the main characteristics of holiness may be illustrated. But where resemblance exists, diversity sometimes teaches us to appreciate it the more; and from a life like that of S. Aloysius we learn many lessons that relate to both.

The author of this biography well remarks: "Perfection is set before all as the object of their aim, but not the same perfection" (p. 371); and an analogous statement is made in the preface: "Every man has his especial call; and the grace that accompanies it corresponds to the idea of him in the Divine Mind, as elected from all eternity, to a certain conformity to the image of His Son-a purpose which the awful privilege of freewill enables the soul to ratify or to defeat" (p. viii). The Saints are those who completely ratify that purpose: the consequence is that those elements of character which, in the case of ordinary Christians remain a confused mass, in their case clear both into distinctness and brightness. They have the diamond's sharpness and definiteness of outline, as well as its splendour. If the worldling does not see that distinctness, it is in part because his dazzled eye does not note the lineaments for the radiance which invests them, and partly because he does not take that interest in the subject which alone appreciates individuality. A man without an interest in nature hardly discriminates between tree and tree, while the shepherd's dog knows every sheep in the flock by face. To the man of the world, the lives of the Saints are all alike. For the man "whose eyes are open" they include an infinite variety. In multitude of types and processes, the marvels of natural history are probably small compared with those which belong to the supernatural.

The man of the world sees distinctness in characters strongly marked by some defect of our fallen humanity-by some malformation which he identifies with individuality. Yet even he must see that to an eye which passes his own in discernment as much as his own passes that of an animal, individuality may be marked in a different way. It may be evidenced not through the ruling passion, but through the predominant virtue; not by some picturesque moral disproportion, but by some variety among types, all of which alike have perfection of proportion. The diversity among material forms, all of them imperfectly proportioned, is not greater than that which, in the vast range of ideal art, is reconciled with perfect proportion. The Saints of God are divine works of art: they are the living monuments of supernatural grace, wrought out, touch by touch, and line by line, by that

"Lives" of the Saints constitute the gallery in which those monuments are stored, that that Divine Artist may be praised.

Indifference to these triumphs of grace (a deadness which too often proceeds from an exaggerated interest in things devoid of all moral significance), entails even a greater loss than might have been expected. It is not only of their examples that we are deprived:-but the Supreme Exemplar of perfection is thus also to a large degree hidden from us. The Saints of Christ are mirrors of Christ. In their manifold and derivative perfections, that perfection, one and infinite, which belongs but to the King of Saints is brought down to our poor intelligence, and revealed to us in parts. In the character of Christ all perfections are blended in that ineffable Sanctity which exists but in a human nature assumed by a Divine Person :-in the Saints those perfections remain the attributes of beings exclusively human, though their human nature has been grafted into the Divine Humanity of Christ. In Christ we have the white light of Sanctity:-in the Saints the coloured beam of this or that virtue, especially imparted to one in particular. In one it is charity, in another humility; in one it is devotion to the Will of God, in another the contemplation of His Being. In all it is Christ; and in proportion as the eye becomes purified by resting upon those manifold but inferior semblances of Christ, the knowledge of Him who unites all perfections becomes more defined, and sinks with a more vital beam into the devout soul. To imagine that the spiritual eye requires little training, or that the Spirit Who alone gives it "Discernment," employs no subordinate instrumentalities for that end, would be a grave error. The mere human eye is trained by degrees; and the scientific eye is assisted by numberless instrumentalities which no rational student would discard. The Saints are lenses that accommodate to the eye the vision of a virtue higher than their own. But what we know of the Saints we know through a familiarity with the details of their lives. Each is a being in himself; and to make each what he is has required the whole world of God's Providence, and the whole world of His Grace. In no two of them do the virtues that bear the same names in mortal tongue imply altogether the same thing. In one, faith specially implies courage; in another insight; in one love specially implies zeal, in another patience. The relations of these virtues one to another, their progression, their combinations, their modes of joint or separate working-in all these things there is at once an infinite variety, and an absolute order. Amid the manifold and the inexpli