390

Reviews.

PROTESTANTISM AND SOCIALISM,

Du Protestantisme et de toutes les Hérésies, dans leur rapport avec le Socialisme: précédé de l'Examen d'un Ecrit de M. Guizot. Par M. Auguste Nicolas.

[Second Notice.]

IN our former notice of this work we gave a slight sketch of M. Nicolas's discussion of M. Guizot's proposition for a union of the Church with all the various sects professing a belief in the supernatural order and in a revelation made by God to man through Jesus Christ, in order to defend society against the evils which threaten it. Having then, as we have already remarked, ably demonstrated the falseness of the principles on which such a union would rest, the chimerical nature of the plan as well as the fatal results which would flow from it, were it even possible, he proceeds in the body of the work himself to propose the sole remedy for our social evils, the sole means of saving society from the ultimate consequences of error-death and destruction. Error is death, as truth is life; truth, then, one and entire, as held by the Catholic Church, and taught and enforced by her authority, can alone save society in its present crisis. To save and restore order, authority must be restored; and to restore authority, the principle of authority must be restored. Now there can be no real authority where truth does not exist-absolute Truth, divinely and infallibly propounded to man; and that is to be found only in the holy Catholic Church, which God has appointed to be its depositary and expounder. The Church alone can explain the moral problem involved in society and its relations, and it alone can uphold society, which is based on its doctrines. Protestantism and all heresies (and Protestantism is but the principle implied in all heresy raised to the condition of a dogma) lead logically at once, and practically have always led in the end, to Socialism. This is shewn at length by the gifted writer; and his arguments, to be appreciated, must be read in their own admirable connection and in his clear and forcible language. To quote any portion separately, or to attempt what could be but a most meagre sketch at best of the general plan, would be to do injustice to a work which we are most anxious to recommend to the attentive perusal and earnest consideration of our readers.

All we propose, therefore, to do is to advert to a few of the points which have struck us, and which we consider well

worthy of notice; and here the only embarrassment is to know how to select out of so rich a mine, or how to separate one portion from another without injury, so closely does all hold together.

The chief part of the work is occupied, as we have said, with tracing the connection between Protestantism and Socialism, which is nothing else than practical Pantheism; that one great social heresy, as Pantheism in the state of doctrine is the one great dogmatic heresy, constituting the one essential element which all heresies possess in common, the goal to which they all tend, and the ultimate form into which they inevitably develop, however much opposed they may otherwise appear. M. Nicolas, though principally concerned with Protestantism, devotes several chapters to proving that all the previous heresies, which he distributes into three periods, were but Pantheism in various forms, though starting from divers and often opposing points. He demonstrates this from historic facts, and he also shews why this was necessarily the case, and implied in the very character of heresy. We shall notice this reason briefly by and by, but for the present we will return to the connection of Protestantism with Socialism, which is the main subject of the work.

Protestantism is the most radical of all heresies, as attacking the very principle of authority. This, however, it would never have been able to undertake with any success, except by first fostering and then artfully availing itself of a misconception into which the human mind, injured in its powers by the fall, and when unsanctified by grace, suffering both an obscuration of intellect and a perversion of the will, is continually liable to be betrayed. This prejudice of the evil part of our nature consists in supposing that liberty and authority are naturally in a state of conflict. It is the old error, that with which man was deceived in the beginning. "Why hath God commanded you, that you should not eat of every tree of Paradise?" was the perfidious suggestion of the arch enemy; and ever since that fatal day, the injurious suspicion that the commandments of God are "heavy,"-that which the apostle of love emphatically declared them not to be-has rankled in the bosom of the children of Adam; heavy and grievous, a yoke and a burden on that liberty which is their birthright.

We quoted a passage of our author's in our former article, which shews that this supposed opposition between the true liberty of man and divine authority has no existence, and that the contrary assertion proceeds upon a misunderstanding of that in which true liberty consists, and a total loss of belief in the practical existence of any infallible authority. We

shall now only add the following observations, grounded on M. Nicolas's more detailed discussion of the subject. The exercise of liberty, as of all other powers and faculties, supposes some matter for this exercise. Now truth presented by authority forms this matter. Truth presented to the intellect of man is the proper food and nourishment of his intellect. By this means he sees what is good, which is synonymous with what is true, and exercises his freedom in choosing it. We have an analogous instance in the case of the material creation, what we are in the habit of calling nature. It is spread out before man, distinct from him and independent of him, having for its credentials the great authority of fact. Upon this field of nature man's intellect freely exercises itself in examining, comparing, investigating; using observation, not invention, as his instrument for the ascertaining of truth, to which, when thus verified, he submits his mind freely but implicitly. No one dreams of supposing that man's liberty of intellect is fettered by the fact, that the laws and properties of the material creation are independent of him, and imperiously command his assent when presented to him in the clear evidence of their actual existence. Now the supernatural order, not being like the natural, palpable to the senses, requires to be revealed in order to be known; but when once revealed, and possessing, as a divine revelation would necessarily possess, all the characters of moral certainty about it, and being brought within the reach and grasp of our mind by an authority of the same order, that is, supernatural also, imposes itself in the same manner on the assent of man's intellect, without in the least infringing its freedom. Were it otherwise, darkness would be the freest field for sight, because we could then imagine what we chose; and ignorance the widest domain for the intellect, because we could then think what we pleased. Every one, therefore, who talks of the infallible authority of the Catholic Church shackling man's intellect, unless he would go the length of impiously denying to God the Creator the power of revealing the truths of the supernatural order with certainty to man His creature, must simply mean to assert that the Church, as a matter of fact, cannot substantiate her claim to be the depository of this revelation. If he means any thing else, he talks unmistakeable nonsense. The Protestant, however, does not desire to confine the question to a matter of fact. He would have, in that case, to give up his favourite topic of the opposition between liberty and authority, as well as to forego his commonplaces and popular clap-traps of man's right to think what he pleases, and choose his own belief. We should be very glad, if it were possible, to bring him and

confine him to the mere question of fact, which is the true question; and we have a right, we think, to insist upon it in the name of common sense. We must own, however, that we see little prospect of succeeding in this, or indeed of inducing Protestants ever to meet the argument on sound and reasonable grounds, while they differ from us so widely on first principles. How is it possible to get a man to argue satisfactorily from facts, as long as he disbelieves in his heart in the possibility of possessing moral certainty of a supernatural fact, for this is at the bottom of all, though he does not dare openly to assert it,—and who at all times has the habit of placing moral certainty below mathematical, and the testimony of the senses,* never really considering it as any thing beyond

* It may be objected to us, that good Protestants believe the miracles recorded in the Bible. Without investigating too closely what is the real amount of this belief in the great body of Protestants, and whether this belief would bear the weight of much pressure, or would stand the test of strict examination if withdrawn from the respectable seclusion where it has remained, so to say, shelved in the mind, and if practically inert, at least unquestioned and undisturbed; we are quite willing to concede that sincerely religious Protestants do really believe the miracles of the New Testament, and are not very fond of probing too deeply the credit they give to all those related in the Old Testament, shewing thereby a desire to include them if possible. Still, we maintain that this is but a happy inconsistency. To retain any religion at all, a man must be content to assume something as a first principle; he must perforce accept something to form a basis to his creed; hence it is that the Protestant assumes the truth of the Bible. But this makes nothing against our assertion; in proof of which we have only to point to his attitude of mind as respects the best-attested supernatural facts not recorded in the Bible, and not only such as occurred at remote times, but such as have been witnessed, and are witnessed, by thousands at the present day. What do the ordinary run of even good Protestants feel, for instance, about the miracle of the liquefaction of St. Januarius's blood? Was any amount of human testimony considered sufficient to establish the fact of the movement of the eyes of the Madonna of Rimini ? Any other fact but a supernatural one would be considered as more than triumphantly established by the ocular testimony of thousands. We might multiply instances.

With respect to the habit we allude to, of classing moral certainty below mathematical certainty, and that certainty which we irresistibly feel of the objectivity of those things of which our senses take cognisance,—so far from denying it, many, we know, will be prepared to justify it. They will say that mathematical certainty is of a higher order, because it not only proves that a thing is, but that it must be. To this we reply first, that certainty is certainty; if a thing is proved to be, it is as certain as if it were proved to be necessarily. The testimony of the senses, or instance, cannot be proved to be trustworthy. We can give no reason why we are right in referring our sensations and perceptions to something externally existing; and yet persons are equally in the habit of placing this certainty above moral certainty. Secondly, we maintain that moral certainty is always based upon moral principles, which intrinsically are quite as irrefragable as those upon which mathematical truths rest. Both rest on first principles which must be assumed and are indemonstrable. The axioms on which the necessary truths of mathematics are grounded admit of no demonstration, any more than the first moral principles. We maintain that the divine authority of the Catholic Church is certain. The evidence in support of that authority is irrefragable; and the Catholic Church itself, as an existing fact, is inexplicable on any hypothesis that could be invented to explain away this evidence. All those moral principles upon

probability at the highest degree, a probability which is in the case of the supernatural easily outweighed by the, to him, inherent improbability of a supernatural fact, and the special improbability of any which might bear witness to the truth of the holy Catholic Church? But this by the way: let us return to our more immediate subject.

The modern world, previous to the rise of Protestantism, united in one common faith and submission to one common spiritual authority, was formed, constituted, and moulded, so to say, on the Church. Society and civilisation were not only influenced by her, but they were her work; they were, in a manner, herself. The distinction between the spiritual and temporal was not then made or conceived of, as it is now. Not only was the supremacy of the spiritual order confessed, but temporal government and the social relations were spiritualised in their aim and purport. We do not mean that practically they were so always; there was ever a conflict, of course, between the Church and the world; and besides, Europe had to be brought out of a state of barbarism. Kings and their abettors were also, as individuals, often most rebellious against the spiritual order, as they were very frequently also against the moral; but the idea of government, the light in which it was regarded, and the principles on which it was commonly conducted, were altogether Catholic and spiritual. Kings had a sacred character in the eyes of their people, because holy Church had poured her oil upon their heads; they were like her first-born and dearly cherished children: and the people, on the other hand, were in the sight of kings the family of Christ like themselves, their younger brethren, over whom they ruled under the eyes of the common Mother of all, the holy Roman Church. Such, at least, we maintain, were the which the judgments of men are founded must be set aside in order to resist this conclusion. The true explanation of the matter is this: moral certainty is not inferior to any other kind of certainty; but as the will is implicated where moral principles are concerned, it can be resisted. A Protestant is always confound. ing his own feeling of certainty with objective certainty. Not feeling as certain of the claims of the Catholic Church as he does that two and two make four, he thinks they are not as certain, and that he is irresponsible for not being satisfied with the proofs which establish them. His mistake consists in using feeling as the test at all in this case. It is owing to this same erroneous view that the Protestant is in the habit of considering divine faith only as inward persuasion and conviction, a something which enables you to gobble down what would other. wise stick in your throat,-in short, to believe certainly upon uncertain evidence. He does not see that faith is a divine gift, by which man is enabled to believe with a supernatural certainty what he before believed with a natural. Grace is above nature, but it is grounded on our nature. Since man is capable by grace of having divine faith, he must be capable by nature of having human faith, and he is responsible for not having the latter upon moral grounds. It is not that he cannot believe, but that he will not; or rather he cannot, because he will not.