the words of Balac although proceeding from the mouth of Balaam. The French clergy supply us with only too signal an illustration of this truth. From the hour in which (to use the emphatic expression of Innocent XI.) they betrayed the sacred cause of the liberties of the Church to Louis XIV., they forfeited not only the affection, but even the respect of their countrymen, to the incalculable loss of the French nation. They identified their cause with the cause of Cæsar. And they fell with Cæsar. Even now that identification subsists in the popular mind, and supplies the chief pretext for the attacks made upon the Church by the so-called Liberals of contemporary France-the true descendants of the Jacobins, whose liberty, as Burke discerned, was not liberal. But while the French Episcopate were perpetrating the semi-apostasy of the Four Articles, the Protestant Bishops of this country were animated by a very different spirit. Although the mere creatures of the civil ruler which (as Elizabeth had reminded one of their order) had made, and could uumake them, although committed by their servile doctrines of immediate divine right and passive obedience to abject submission to the royal will, they dared to stand up against the exercise of a power which they believed to be contrary to the laws and hostile to the religion of their country. "We have two duties to perform," Ken told the King, "our duty to God and our duty to your Majesty. We honour you, but we fear God." The words awoke an echo throughout the country. The inferior clergy followed the lead of the Prelates, and the people followed their pastors.

66

"Never had the Church been so dear to the nation," writes the historian, as on . . . . that day. The spirit of Dissent seemed to be extinct. Baxter, from his pulpit, pronounced an eulogium on the Bishops and parochial clergy. The Dutch minister . . . . wrote to inform the States General that the Anglican Priesthood had risen in the estimation of the public to an incredible degree. The universal cry of the Nonconformists, he said, was, that they would rather continue to lie under the penal statutes than separate their cause from that of the prelates.'

The effect of the trial of the seven Bishops was to identify the Established Church with the nation in a way in which it never had been identified since the change of religion under Henry VIII.; to present the Anglican clergy, for the first and last time, as the friends and defenders of English liberty, and to purchase for them a century of popularity. And the fact that, for many years after, the majority of them were in opposition to the new Government which they had in no small degree contributed to introduce, was far from injuring that popularity; for it was a manifest token of their independence. Their action might be illogical, but it

* Lord Macaulay's "History of England," vol. ii. p.

154.

possessed a persuasiveness beyond that of the finest syllogism. It appealed to the deepest feelings and truest instincts of Englishmen. Nor is it easy to over-estimate the advantage which accrued to the nation from this rehabilitation of its clergy in public esteem. The degradation of the spiritualty in the general estimate is invariably accompanied by the degradation of the creed which they represent. You cannot in practice separate between the cause of religion and the cause of the ministers of religion. They present themselves as "ambassadors for God." And contempt of the messengers surely leads to contempt of the message. The preservation and increase of the hold of religion and its ministers over the mind and affections of the English nation may then, as it seems to me, be undoubtedly reckoned among our gains by the Revolution of 1688. But this was not the only gain of the nation in the spiritual order. It was the overthrow of the Stuarts which made the great Methodist movement possible. It is only in a free country that such associations as those founded by John Wesley can be formed. Try to picture an analogous movement in the eighteenth century in France, where individual freedom lay crushed under monarchical despotism, and the spiritual life of the people was strangled by the Gallican liberties! And the importance of the work which has been done by Methodism for England, done not only directly, but also and still more, indirectly, cannot easily be over-estimated. I do not think it too much to say that we owe it mainly to Methodism that while France is at heart Voltairean, England is still at heart Christian, however maimed and imperfect its Christianity may be: "Methodism," writes a French critic of great name, not likely to be prejudiced in its favour, "Methodism has changed the face of England. Yes; England as we know it at this day, with its chaste and grave literature, its biblical language, its national piety, with its middle classes in whose exemplary morality lies the true strength of the country, this England is the work of Methodism."*

And now let me, in conclusion, say one word to meet an objection which may reasonably be urged against a Catholic writer who takes the view which I have put forward, of the Revolution of 1688. It may be said that, after all, James II. was a Catholic: that one of his objects undoubtedly was to advance the Catholic religion; and that the vast majority of English and Scotch Catholics, as well as the Catholic nation of Ireland, sympathized with his cause. All this must be admitted. But I do not see that it touches my argument. I have been considering the last of our Catholic kings, not from a religious, but from a political

* Scherer: "Mélanges d'Histoire Réligieuse," p. 207.

point of view. A man may be a very sincere Catholic and a very poor statesman. And can anyone who sets himself to consider the question in the light of the facts and analogies of history, suppose that had James II. succeeded in his machinations against English liberty, the Catholic cause would have been eventually the gainer? In his day the anti-Catholic tradition was deeply rooted in the English mind. And the time had passed when the religion of a nation could be changed by the will of a Sovereign. A few more converts might have been made of the calibre of most of those who followed him into Catholic communion: men whose honour was less than doubtful, and women whose reputation was more than cracked. But in the long run the result would inevitably have been that instead of " a revolution in due course of law"-to use the Duke of Wellington's phrase-we should have had a Revolution uncontrolled by law, for our laws would have perished a Revolution of which a general proscription of Papists would undoubtedly have been a marked feature. And so the last state of the Catholic religion in this country would have been worse than the first. Doubtless, we should all have been Jacobites had we lived in those days. It is as Clough asks— What do we see? Each man a space

Of some few yards before his face.

The broader and truer view of political struggles is, as a general rule, hidden from the generation engaged in them, and revealed only to posterity. But there is one notable exception to the rule. It is mere matter of fact that in "the princely line of the Roman Pontiffs" a larger and more prescient mind has ruled than can be traced in any secular dynasty; in any school of statesmen wise merely with the wisdom of this world. As Cardinal Newman has happily said:" If ever there was a power on earth who had an eye for the times, who has confined himself to the practicable, and has been happy in his anticipations, whose words have been facts, and whose commands prophecies, such is he, in the history of ages, who sits from generation to generation in the chair of the Apostles, as the Vicar of Christ and the Doctor of His Church." And so at the momentous period of our national history of which I am speaking, we find the illustrious Pontiff who then sustained the care of all the Churches-surely one of the greatest figures in the annals of the Papacy-we find Innocent XI. disapproving strongly of the policy of James II., and sustaining with all his influence the cause of William for the rescue of our perishing liberties.† It is, of

* "Idea of a University," p. 13.

+ Perhaps I may be allowed to repeat here the following note appended to Part I. of this Essay :-" Much exceedingly valuable information on this subject will be found in the seventh volume of Droysen's Geschichte der Prussische Politik.' It has long been known that Innocent saw with

course, extremely improbable that Innocent was actuated by any special regard for our constitutional rights, or indeed, that he possessed much information about them. It was that " eye for the times," of which Cardinal Newman speaks, that guided himthat prophetical presage, too amply justified by the event, as to the ultimate issue of the system of monarchical absolutism which found its type in Louis XIV. His policy, as we know, was openly blamed then by many of his spiritual children, and secretly wondered at by many more. But now, surely, we may confess its wisdom: now, when England stands out as well nigh the only country in Europe in which the framework of society still rests upon the foundations-never overthrown in this nation-of Christianity and freedom, in which "civil and religious liberty " is not an empty phrase but a solid fact.

Now, if ever [wrote Lord Macaulay in 1848, and his words come to us with no less weight at the present time], we ought to be able to appreciate the whole importance of the stand which was made by our forefathers against the House of Stuart. All around us the world is convulsed by the agonies of great nations. Governments, which lately seemed likely to stand during ages, have been on a sudden shaken and overthrown. The proudest capitals of Western Europe have streamed with civil blood. All evil passions, the thirst of gain and the thirst of vengeance, the antipathy of class to class, the antipathy of race to race, have broken loose from the control of divine and human laws. Fear and anxiety have clouded the faces and depressed the hearts of millions. Trade has been suspended, and industry paralyzed. The rich have become poor; and the poor have become poorer. Doctrines hostile to all sciences, to all arts, to all industry, to all domestic charities, doctrines which, if carried into effect, would in thirty years undo all that thirty centuries have done for mankind, and would make the fairest provinces of France and Germany as savage as Congo or Patagonia, have been avowed from the tribune and defended by the sword. Europe has been threatened with subjugation by barbarians compared with whom the barbarians who marched under Attila and Alboin were enlightened and humane. The truest friends of the people have with deep sorrow owned that interests more precious than any political privileges were in jeopardy, and that it might be necessary to sacrifice even liberty in order to save civilization. Meanwhile in our island the regular course of government has never been for a day interrupted. The few bad men who longed for license and plunder have not had the courage to confront for one moment the strength of a loyal nation, rallied in firm array round a parental throne. And if it be asked what has made us to differ from others, the answer is that we never lost what others are wildly and blindly seeking to regain. It is because we had a preserving revolution in the seventeenth century that we have not had a destroying revolution pleasure the downfall of James. But Professor Droysen's researches have thrown a flood of light upon the Pontiff's share in bringing about that event."

in the nineteenth. It is because we had freedom in the midst of servitude that we have order in the midst of anarchy. For the authority of law, for the security of property, for the peace of our streets, for the happiness of our homes, our gratitude is due, under Him who raises and pulls down nations at his pleasure, to the Long Parliament, to the Convention, and to William of Orange.*

*

W. S. LILLY.

ART. II. THE CHRISTIAN EMPERORS AND THE PAGAN TEMPLES.

1. L'Art Païen sous les Empereurs Chrétiens. Par PAUL ALLARD. Paris: Didier et Cie. 1879.

2. Histoire de la Destruction du Paganisme en Occident. Par A. BEUGNOT. Deux tomes. Paris: Firmin-Didot. 1835. 3. Bullettino di Archeologia Cristiana, 1867, 1868. Del Com. mendatore GIOV. B. DE ROSSI. Roma.

M.

PAUL ALLARD has done great service to the Church by bringing out in sharp relief the benefits which the human race owes to the action of Christian principles. He did this very effectively in the case of slavery, and in his last work he has vindicated the Church from the charge of fanaticism with regard to the monuments of Pagan art. He thus contrasts favourably with Beugnot, whose work, full as it is of most valuable information, is disfigured by his evident inclination to credit any story which tells to the disadvantage of Christian prelates, and his sympathies with Paganism rather than with Christianity. The same spirit may be traced in our own Dean Milman, and of course in Gibbon. We could wish that M. Allard would undertake to re-write the "History of the Destruction of Paganism." He has the advantage of all the sources of information of which M. Beugnot has made such use, while he has also at hand the vast additional matter which the scientific labours of De Rossi have brought within the reach of all students of Christian Archæology. His work on Pagan Art shows how well he is able to apply these varied materials, and the admirable Christian spirit with which he writes wins our confidence and respect.

In the present article we propose to deal with only a portion of the great subject of the Christian treatment of Pagan art. Far from attempting to epitomize the volumes of Beugnot, we

"History of England," vol. ii. p. 397.