in themselves, partly to the usages which naturally and necessarily grow up out of them. The plan which we have thus been obliged to follow, has deprived us of the pleasure of transferring to our pages many a glowing testimony to the wisdom and beauty of the Catholic religion, with which the Theological System literally teems. But, much as the extracts already made have trenched upon our limits, we cannot refrain from adding one other noble passage, on the monastic institutions, contemplative as well as active, which occupy so striking a place in the external and disciplinary constitution of the Church. Numerous as are the tributes of admiration to these holy and venerable institutions from philanthropists of every class, we know none from any writer, whether Catholic or Protestant, more worthy of the sacred theme, breathing more of the spirit which it panegyrizes, than the following glowing paragraph :

“ But since the glory of God and the happiness of our fellowcreatures may be promoted by various means, by command or by example, according to the condition and disposition of each, the advantages of that institution are manifest, by which, besides those who are engaged in active and every day life, there are also found in the Church ascetic and contemplative men, who, the cares of life abandoned, and its pleasures trampled under foot, devote their whole being to the contemplation of the Deity, and the admiration of his works; or who, freed from personal concerns, apply themselves exclusively to watch and relieve the necessities of others, - some by instructing the ignorant or erring, some by assisting the needy and afflicted. Nor is it the least among those marks which commend to us that Church, which alone has preserved the name and the badges of Catholicily, that we see her alone produce and cherish these illustrious examples of the eminent virtue, and of the ascelic life.

“ Wherefore, I confess, that I have always ardently admired the religious orders, and the pious confraternities, and the other similar admirable institutions; for they are a sort of celestial soldiery upon earth, provided, corruptions and abuses being removed, they are governed according to the institutes of the founders, and regulated by the supreme Pontiff for the use of the universal Church. For what can be more glorious, than to carry the light of truth to distant nations, through seas, and fires, and swords,- to traffic in the salvation of souls alone,-to forego the allurements of pleasure, and even the enjoyment of conversation and of social intercourse, in order to pursue, undisturbed, the contemplation of abstruse truths and divine meditation,- to dedicate oneself to the education of youth in science and in virtue, to assist and console the wretched, the despairing, the lost, the captive, the condemned, the sick,-in squalor, in chains, in distant lands,—undeterred even by the fear of pestilence, from the lavish exercise of these heavenly offices of charity! The man who knows not or despises these things, has but a vulgar and plebeian conception of virtue ! he foolishly measures the obligations of men towards their God by the perfunctory discharge of ordinary duties, and by that frozen habit of life, devoid of zeal, and even of soul, which prevails commonly among men. For it is not a counsel, as some persuade themselves, but a strict precept, to labour with all the powers of soul and body, no matter in what condition of life we may be, for the attainment of Christian perfection (with which neither wedlock, nor children, nor public office, are incompatible, although they throw difficulties in the way*); but it is only a counsel to select that state of life which is more free from earthly obstacles, upon which selection our Lord congratulated Magdalen.”—pp. 86-90.

In the lengthened comparison which we have now brought to a close, each of the parties throws a certain light on the peculiarities of the other. It is a fond and favourite theory of the enthusiastic Reformers of Oxford, that their Church of to-day is the ancient Church of Christ in England, as reformed by herself; that “the bishops and clergy in England and Ireland remained the same as before separation; and that it was these, with the aid of the secular power, who delivered the Church of these kingdoms from the yoke of the papal tyranny and usurpation.” (Tracts, 15, p. 4.) We have already examined the historical truth of this assertion, and demonstrated, upon incontestable evidence, that the Reformation of the Church of England was a work purely of the civil power; that, far from having originated with the Church herself

, it was literally forced down her throat-weak and passive it is true, but certainly reluctant, and yielding in sullen and discontented, though silent, obedience to each successive innovation.t

Now upon this theory, paradoxical and untenable as it is, rests the whole frame-work of their system ; and to it may be traced its many incongruities. Fettered by the hasty and ill

. digested articles thus forced upon the Church, in her illstarred infancy, the more enlarged and Catholic spirit of her sons in modern Oxford is driven into a thousand straits. Hemmed in between the evidence of that Catholic antiquity to which they appeal upon the one hand, and the too Protestant articles of their Church upon the other, they are forced to stop short of conclusions which follow, by a direct and necessary consequence, from their premises. Let the belief of a doctrine,

a

* In the French translation the meaning of this passage, as indeed of several others, is completely lost.

+ See “Dublin Review," vol. viii. 334-73.

or the existence of a practice in the primitive Church, be never so evident, they must pause, " in respectful deference," "in till they have compared it with the modern standard which their Church has set up. They "must not see with their own eyes;" they may not pause, in sorrowful admiration of the majestic remains of sainted centuries, of which their modern Church preserves not the faintest trace, "to speculate how things might have been otherwise;" their sole duty is "to live up to them as they are.' Hence the perpetual efforts to compromise to combine the old and the new-to reconcile the fact with the theory-to cut down the primitive doctrines, in the fulness of their Catholic spirit, to the cold and soulless forms which were forced upon the English Church, by the open violence of Henry or the underhand intrigues of the partisans of Geneva.

It is easy to account, on the other hand, for the more consistent Catholicism of Leibnitz. Profoundly versed in the theological learning of all the forms of Christianity, he took up his pen to record his judgment on their conflicting claims, with perfect freedom from all bias of party-" as though he had been a neophyte from a new world." He had no preconceived theory to which he was bound to accommodate his facts; no system by which the ancient doctrines should be regulated; no Church "against which he might not admit an appeal;" no articles to which "it was unlawful to superadd." He was not forbidden "to see with his own eyes,' nor to "criticise a Church which it was not his to amend." If he read in St. Cyril, that, "as, at Cana of Galilee, Christ turned water into wine, so it is not incredible that he should have turned wine into blood" (Cat. xxii. 2), he had no twentyeighth article to fetter his assent. If he were assured that "what seems bread is not bread, though bread by taste, but the body of Christ, and what seems wine is not wine, though wine by taste, but the blood of Christ" (ibid. 9), he was not forced to shut his eyes to evidence, because transubstantiation "overturneth the nature of a sacrament;" and he was at full liberty to believe, that, "for those who had fallen asleep, they offered Christ sacrificed for their sins" (ibid. xxiii. 10), despite the terrors of that sweeping denunciation which reprobates the "doctrine of the Romanists on purgatory" as "a fond thing vainly invented." (Art. 22.)

notwithstanding, conclusions so diametrically opposed. Can any man, considering even human motives, hesitate to say, to which side the balance of credibility is to be placed ?

The work of Leibnitz, interesting to all, may seem especially designed for those who, from prejudice, or education, or habit, have been wont to regard the Catholic faith as a mass of debasing superstitions, unworthy of any philosophic mind. If such there be among our readers, let them remember that this extraordinary volume contains the calm and dispassionate decision of a man whose name as a philosopher, a divine, a historian, and a statesman, is among the proudest that adorn the literary annals of Europe. Let them remember the long and patient discussion by which he prepared himself for this solemn judgment, and the remarkable circumstances under which it was pronounced. It is not the fancy sketch of a stranger who has seen our Church but in passing, and whose imagination may, perchance, have been struck by the majesty of her form, and the beauty of her general outline. Far from it. It is the matured report of one, who has examined every point, from the foundation to the highest top of the edifice--inspected with a scrutinizing and jealous eyesought out and canvassed every defect-probed to the bottom every fancied unsoundness--not grounded on a hasty view of a few isolated principles of doctrine or a few striking points of practice, nor on the majesty of our imposing ceremonial, nor the beautiful spirit which pervades our pious institutions ; but the result of a minute scrutiny into the most hidden details, seeking out the weakest and most suspicious points, looking all the imputed superstitions full in the face, and striking with rigid, and perhaps niggard, justice, the balance of apparent good and evil in the entire system. Nor should we forget-what places the sincerity of the writer beyond the possibility of question—that the Systema Theologicum is a posthumous work, committed to paper without any view to publication, in the silence and privacy of the closet, where There was no earthly feeling to bias, no love of paradox to seduce, no external influence to sway-where all was between the writer and his God; nor to be given to the public eye till the cold grave should have closed over himself, and over every human motive which its composition could subserve.

In conclusion, we earnestly reiterate our warmest recommendation of the Theoloyical System to the serious consideration of all readers who are not members of our Church; and, specially, of those in whose regard a tardy, but we trust extending, acquaintance with the usages of the primitive times is daily narrowing the line which separates them from our communion. Let not the circumstance of Leibnitz not having openly professed what his book evidently proves him to have believed, detract, in the eyes of any, from the value of his testimony. However we deplore this unhappy circumstance, as a stain upon his sincerity and a blot upon his illustrious name, we believe that it increases, rather than diminishes, the authority of his opinions; because it removes altogether the suspicion of impulse, or precipitation, and specially of prejudice, which might otherwise attach to his judgınent. The most interesting evidence of the spotless morals of early Christianity, is the report of the pagan Pliny; the most convincing proof of the heavenly beauty of her system, is the extorted admiration of her modern philosophical assailants. It may well be doubted whether the cause of Catholicity draws more of popular evidence from the arguments of a Bellarmine, or from the concessions of a Grotius or Fabricius; and we believe, and fervently do we trust, that numbers, on whose ears the most eloquent appeal of Bossuet might have fallen in vain, may perchance open their ears, and their hearts too, to the calm, but irresistible, representations of LEIBNITZ.

VI.-The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore, collected by

himself. London: 1841. Vols. I to VII. OME of the sweetest recollections of our young days are

stirrings of patriotism and of poetry were awakened within us by the Irish Melodies : and the reperusal of them, in this new edition, has brought back to our imagination, feelings, and scenes, and persons long since forgotten,-the fairy land of early home again presented to us; for the home of childhood is the fairy land of riper years--the voices we may never more hear falling again on our ears,—the indignation and defiance that swelled our bosom, while first listening to the charmed tale of Ireland's glory and Ireland's sufferings, again warming our hearts,

“ The smiles, the tears,

Of boyhood's years,
The words of joy' then spoken;

The eyes that shone,

Now dimmed and gone,
The cheerful hearts now broken ! "