protestant, and hence, in spite of its respect for the rights of conscience, and the privileges of the papal church, obnoxious to the Romish priesthood. The Belgic population, therefore, in which the long rule of Spain has nurtured a strong predilection towards popery, was led into dissatisfaction under the connection with Holland. The ease with which a street riot of three days in Paris had lately overthrown Charles X. encouraged a similar attempt in Brussels; and this, being backed by French power, completely succeeding, the protestant royal family was driven from its Flemish provinces. It is true that a protestant, Leopold, of Saxe Coburg, once husband of the Princess Charlotte of Great Britain, was placed upon the newly-created Belgic throne. He now, however, married a Romish princess, and in her faith his family is to be educated. Thus the papal church was relieved from her apprehensions respecting Belgium. The advantage gained in that quarter was, undoubtedly, somewhat counterbalanced by the suppression of monasteries in the great peninsula of southern Europe. Both Spain and Portugal have lightened financial difficulties by seizing the wealth so temptingly possessed by defenceless convents. It remains to be seen how far the Romish system, in those regions of its inveterate supremacy, can bear up against such a loss of its most effective appliances. In the Rhenish and Westphalian states of Prussia it has recently advanced all its old pretensions. That government found its elder Romish acquisitions governed by a law which directed, in case of marriages between protestants and Romanists, that male children should be educated in the father's creed, female in the mother's. This arrangement leading to much family dissension, Frederic William III. ordered in 1803 that in mixed marriages, all the issue should be educated in the father's religion. This order he extended to the new provinces on the Rhine, acquired by the peace of 1815. But he there found a spirit in the Romish clergy, that he had not encountered before. They did not venture openly to disobey him, but they refused to marry such as would not voluntarily, to appearance, promise to bring up all their children Roman catholics. Being abetted in this refusal by the archbishop of Cologne, an obstinate struggle for the absolute control over mixed marriages ensued, and it was not over when the king died, in June, 1840. This whole transaction deserves attentive consideration from all who would really understand how far the nineteenth century has acted upon popery. Among continental protestants, especially in Germany, the first forty years of the nineteenth century have exhibited a dangerous and delusive disposition to bring down all scriptural truth to the level of ordinary human knowledge and experience. From thus pushing religious inquiry into the very territories of infidelity, England has been protected both by the cool sense of her people, and the restraints of her religious institutions. A liturgy, articles, and an ecclesiastical polity, all universally binding, and capable of the most confident appeals to documentary evidence, are a firm security against the rash indulgence of a speculative spirit. They act, no doubt, favourably even upon those who dissent from the national church. English churchmen, accordingly, have only differed upon subjects which leave the main land-marks of belief quite untouched. In the beginning of the century they were divided upon the propriety or expediency of joining the Bible Society. That body was formed in 1804, and it secured the patronage of the bishops Porteus, Barrington, and Burgess, who were all very highly respected among the prelates of their day. The episcopal bench, however, generally stood aloof from the society, thinking the long-established Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge quite sufficient for the circulation of Bibles, and questioning the wisdom of joining a body which brought sectarians of the most discordant views into close contact with each other, and with churchmen. A great majority of the clergy held the same opinions, and the whole question raised a lengthened controversy. This, after the lapse of a few years, wholly subsided. Subsequently, the doctrine of baptismal regeneration was extensively canvassed. Latterly churchmen have been led into discussions by several talented and excellent men in the university of Oxford, upon the expediency of a closer attention than has been usual for many years to some points of principle and practice which England, in common with Rome, has inherited from catholic antiquity. Protestant refusal to recognise tradition as an authority for articles of faith has occasionally led into a neglect or disparagement of it, as an authority for other things. A dislike of the will-worship and sacerdotal pretensions, distinguishing Romanism, has often betrayed into the opposite extremes offered by puritanism. It is to the evils incurred by such want of caution that popular attention has been latterly called in England. Nor is the call likely to be unattended with considerable national advantage. But it has not always been made with due discretion. There have even been mingled with it, ungrateful and injudicious reflections upon the Reformers. To ritual ministrations also a degree of importance has been sometimes given, that England's inveterate habits appear unlikely to concede. But upon the whole, man's appetite for religious discussion has rarely taken a direction from which even opponents can augur less evil. Every support of the catholic faith is rigidly respected, and if possible strengthened; while in minor, but still important matters, men are taught to see the value of an unbroken connexion with the unsuspected periods of catholic antiquity. Name and Surname. POPES. Accession. Death. April 1, 1605 Ap. 26, 1605 ...... Jan. 22, 1621 July 8, 1623 Aug. 6, 1623 July 29, 1644 Sept. 15, 1644 Jan. 7, 1655 April 8, 1655 May 22, 1667 June 20, 1667 Dec. 9, 1669 Ap. 29, 1670 July 22, 1676 Dec. 10, 1676 Aug. 12, 1689 Official Designation. Michael Angelo } Innocent XIII. Feb. 1, 1691 Sept. 17, 1700 Mar. 7, 1724 Conti...... Vincent Maria Orsini Benedict XIII.. May, 29, 1724 Feb. 21, 1730 July 12, 1730 Feb. 6, 1740 1 By this convocation the canons of the Church of England were authorised. 2 Then were enacted the Irish articles incorporating those of Lambeth. 3 This convocation received the thirty-nine Anglican articles as the terms of conformity in Ireland. This synod ranked Calvin among heretics. Name and Surname. Official Designation. Prosper Laurence Benedict XIV.. Aug. 17, 1740 May 2,5 1758 ... 1758 ... 1769 Charles Rezzonico. Clement XIII.. ...... ...... John Angelo Braschi Pius VI. .... Hannibal della Genga Leo XII. Castiglioni Pius VIII.... Maurus Cappellari.. Gregory XVI.. Feb. 2, 1831 ..... |