mercy or of pity would have been found at the invasion of Italy; and thus the experience of the whole period, from the records of Moses down to Justinian, would be now a guess field or a blank. That human nature would have created its work anew, we doubt not; but the difference to us this day had been immeasurable."-McCullagh, On the Use and Study of History, pp. 288-292. In the above passage, the eloquent lecturer regards the Church merely as surviving the downfall of the empire; but this is not an adequate view of the event. It was the Church, or kingdom of Jesus Christ, that crushed the power of Rome the barbarians were only the ministers of God's vengeance, which the blood of the saints, slain by that guilty power, had at length provoked. This was that irrepressible impulse which Attila felt, and which urged him. forward, almost against his will, to the destruction of the imperial city. was The rapid diffusion and universal extent of the Catholic Church is an obvious fulfilment of that part of the prophecy, in which the little "stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth;" while the continuance of that Church is as clear an accomplishment of the prediction, that the kingdom which God himself set up was never to be destroyed never to be delivered up to another people: and while it should consume all opposing powers, itself should stand for ever. Will any one pretend to deny that the history of the past, as well as the experience of the present, does not shew that such is the Catholic Church? At all times, we love to cite the testimony of protestant writers in support of the principles we maintain, or the assertions we may have to make; but we do this with greater pleasure, when, as in the quotation just made, and in that we are about to give, the force of argument is accompanied by all the graces of cultivated genius. Listen, then, to one of the first English writers of the day - Thomas Babington Macauley-whose words, although often cited, are here so peculiarly appropriate, that we cannot withhold them. "There is not, and there never was, on this earth, a work so well deserving of examination as the Roman Catholic Church. The history of that Church joins together the two great ages of human civilization. No other institution is left standing which carries the mind back to the times when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon; and when cameleopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre. The proudest royal houses are but of yesterday, when compared with the line of the Supreme Pontiffs. The line we trace back, in an unbroken series, from the Pope who crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century, to the Pope who crowned Pepin in the eighth; and far beyond the time of Pepin the august dynasty extends, until its origin is lost in the twilight of fable. [This is tantamount to saying, what the prejudices of the writer prevented him from explicitly acknowledging, that at no time subsequent to the age of the Apostles, is there wanting evidence to prove the existence of the Papal power.-ED. CATH. CAB.] The republic of Venice came next in antiquity. But the republic of Venice was modern when compared with the Papacy; and the republic of Venice is gone, and the Papacy remains. The Papacy remains, not in decay, nor a mere antique, but full of life and youthful vigour. The Catholic Church is still sending forth, to the furthest ends of the world, missionaries as zealous as those who landed in Kent with Augustin; and still confronting hostile kings with the same spirit with which she confronted Attila. The number of her children is greater than in any former age. Her acquisitions in the New World have more than compensated her for what she has lost in the Old. Her spiritual ascendancy extends over the vast countries which lie between the plains of the Missouri and Cape Horn countries which, a century hence, may not improbably contain a population as large as that which now inhabits Europe. The members of her communion are certainly not fewer than a hundred and fifty millions; and it will be difficult to show, that all the other Christian sects united, amount to a hundred and twenty millions. Nor do we see any sign which indicates that the term of her long dominion is approaching. She saw the commencement of all the governments, and of all the ecclesiastical establishments, that now exist in the world; and we feel no assurance that she is not destined to see the end of them all. She was great and respected before the Saxon had set foot on Britain - before the Frank had passed the Rhine - when Grecian eloquence still flourished at Antioch- when idols were still worshipped in the temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigour, when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge, to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's. "We often hear it said, that the world is constantly becoming more and more enlightened; and that this enlightening must be favorable to Protestantism, and unfavorable to Catholicism. We wish that we could think so. But we see great reason to doubt whether this be a well-founded expectation. We see that during the last two hundred and fifty years, the human mind has been in the highest degree active - that it has made great advances in every branch of natural philosphy -that it has produced innumerable inventions tending to promote the convenience of life that medicine, surgery, chemistry, engineering, have been very greatly improved-that government, police, and law, have been improved, though not quite to the same extent. Yet we see that during these two hundred and fifty years, Protestantism has made no conquests worth speaking of. Nay, we believe that as far as there has been a change, that change has been in favor of the Church of Rome. We cannot, therefore, feel confident that the progress of knowledge will necessarily be fatal to a system which has, to say the least, stood its ground in spite of the immense progress which knowledge has made since the days of Queen Elizabeth. 'bleibt stets von gleichem Schlag, Und its so wunderlich als wie am ersten Tag.'* "The history of Catholicism strikingly illustrates these observations. During the last seven centuries, the public mind of Europe has made constant progress in every department of secular knowledge. Four times since the authority of the Church of Rome was established in Western Christendom, has the human intellect risen up against her. Twice she remained completely victorious. Twice she came forth from the conflict bearing the marks of cruel wounds, but with the principle of life still strong within her. When we reflect on the tremendous assaults which she has survived, we find it difficult to conceive in what way she is to perish.". We need scarcely notice the almost inconceivable delusion of regarding, with Macauley, the phenomenon of Catholicism as being a master-piece of human genius. Is error more durable than truth? or has the enemy of our race provided more effectually for the preservation of falsehood, than God has for the perpetuation of truth? But we shall not run the risk of detracting from the force which this view of the Church must be felt to have, by a single observation. This illustrious society bears on its very front the impress of the Divine Hand by which it has been formed; and in its enduring existence "It remains the same as when first created, and is as wonderful as when it first appeared." a proof, which no sophistry can elude, that, however weak and lowly are the elements whereof it is composed, God has breathed into it a breath of life, which no internal corruption can expel, no external violence extinguish. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN RUSSIA. Ir is the lot of Christ's Church to be ever an object of persecution; and kings and emperors, who should of right be its foster-fathers and guardians, are too often, if not generally, the authors of such trials. These persecutions vary in character and in instruments. There is a persecution of violence, and a persecution of cunning; there is a persecution which attempts to crush, and one which seeks to extinguish; there is a persecution en masse, and there is a persecution in detail; there is a persecution which breaks and bruises, and one which wearies and sickens to death; there is, in fine, a persecution which destroys the body, and there is one which strives to weary, to pervert, and to kill the soul. Which is the worse? Surely not that in which the mask is thrown off, and the sword unsheathed, and the poison poured out from a labelled phial: better, far better, is this than the covert, artful, and disguised hatred, which strikes with the sceptre instead-yea, with the golden sceptre of affected clemency and dribbles out its hemlock under the name of medicine. The first of these was the persecution of those sad blunderers at their work, the Roman emperors. They put a bold face upon their cruel designs; they openly avowed their intention of extinguishing the Christian name throughout their empire; they issued decrees to that effect; and they most injudiciously displayed their racks and cauldrons in the public squares. An open enemy can be boldly met. Thousands of generous champions came forward; their numbers wearied persecutions edge; their blood, which flew round from the tormentor's or executioner's stroke, was of a baptismal efficacy — whom it touched it seemed to cleanse; and it was found that the axe was the best pruning-knife of the Lord's vineyard, and disciples' blood its most fruitful seed. Experience taught worldly, or rather worse than worldly wisdom. The apostate Julian was the first scholar in this evil discipline, and the Arian persecutors followed it to advantage. To sap and undermine, to wear and to weary, to remove, under specious pleas, strong-minded and conscientious adversaries; to send not to the scaffold, oh no! but to the gentle labours of the Chersonesan mines (the Siberia of the empire), or to the wild seclusion of the Pontian island, such refractory bishops as dared to despise imperial edicts, and to place weak and timid, or ambitious and servile, minds in their place; to make ecclesiastical matters the subject of cold-blooded, meddling, and arbitrary state enactments; such was the policy which, too successfully tried by ancient autocrats, has given the rule and the ready plan to heretical despots of succeeding ages, who wish to destroy the Church of God, with all the air of kind and conscientious protectors. Into the Grecian character, of old so stamped with double dealing and breach of faith, the perfidy of the intriguing and worthless Photius seems to have kneaded a still more bitter leaven that of religious cunning and duplicity, wherever the interests of his unhappy schism came into contact with the claims, however just, of the true spouse of Christ. Even the favour of Turk or infidel has been basely courted, to oppress the Catholics of the east; money has been lavished to purchase persecution on the poor Armenians or United Greeks at Constantinople; Mahound and Termagaunt have seemed worthy of worship, if they would only help to crush the pope and his adherents. There wanted only one ingredient more to give these unenviable attributes full play power and strength to second the designs of religious animosity. What a noble field for the dark and subtle arts of him who entertains it, would an empire be one, too, in which scarce a limit is placed to the arbitrariness of tyranny, and where national feelings could be brought to conspire with religious ones, in reconciling the majority of the population to the grinding, crushing oppression of a helpless minority-where political antipathies could be worked in alliance with ecclesiastical estrangement! The vast, overgrown, heterogeneous combination of various races, tribes, and hordes, which Providence has been pleased to permit in modern times, under the name of the Russian Empire, has unhappily been able to make the tremendous experiment. It is the manner in which it has been conducted, from its commencement till the present period, that will occupy us in this paper. For, unfortunately, too many imagine that Russian oppression has been confined to generous, but fallen Poland, or that it has arisen under the iron sway of the thoroughly Russianhearted Nicholas. In other words, the persecution which has been avowedly carried on against Catholics in that empire, has been looked on as one of a political, rather than of a religious character; and thus, neither its extent ncr its duration neither its wide-spreading calamity nor its wearing length, has been duly appreciated. Again we have been left to pick up our acquaintance with this heavy and galling scourge, only through the chance notice of some of its cruel strokes by the periodical press; and we hardly know, at least so as to heed it, that it has been wielded for half a century with equal violence, excepting some intervals of peace. From the unwomanly reign of Catharine II. to that of the present emperor, it has worked, with the regularity of a machine, up and down-ascending to excite hopes, and falling down to crush them with unwearying perseverance of evil purpose. Cunning has raised it, that cruelty might better impel it down. In unfolding the sad history from the documents before us, our object is to excite sympathy, not hatred. In every conflict of the Church with her enemies, when they prevail for a season, a double object is presented to our feelings. "In cujus glorioso agone duo nobis præcipue consideranda sunt; indurata videlicit tortoris sævitia et martyris invicta patientia: sævitia tortoris ut eam detestemur; patientia martyris ut eam imitemur."* (S. Aug.) But if by our narrative we shall occasionally excite the more painful of these feelings, it is not for them that we write. We wish every Catholic heart to grieve, to admire, to excuse, by turns, our brethren so long worried, persecuted, and tormented; to strengthen that bond of charity which unites us to the Church, and forms, by its delicate fibres, that nerve through which the thrilling sensation of Catholic sympathy vibrates, from member to member of the mystical body of Christ. We must premise a few words respecting the works from which our materials will be derived. The first on our list is above either our praise or our censure. It is an authentic document emanating from the highest authority in the Church; its assertions have been carefully weighed; its expressions accurately measured; its tone and manner scrupulously regulated. Nothing is "In whose glorious conflict, two things are to be considered the cruelty of the torturer, and the unconquereble patience of the martyr: The cruelty of the torturer, that we may detest it; the patience of the martyr, that we may imitate it." advanced without its voucher, and no charge made which severe justice will not approve. It, however, confines itself chiefly to the later calamities of the Catholic Church in Russia; and valuable as its documentary evidence is, it does not enable us to survey the long annals of blood and crime which modern Russian Church history presents. The French work upon our list we must acknowledge to be, in some respects, a disappointing one. Not that it contains not enough to arouse our feelings, whether of sympathy or indignation, or documents sufficient to justify its heavy charges; but that its tone is sometimes more declamatory than we could have wished, and that far the greater portion of the volume is taken up with doctrinal arguments, and a history of the Greek schism, which is not what we expect on taking up the volume. But with all these imperfections, Catholics have reason to be grateful for the work, which has been very well received on the continent. The work of Father Theiner is the result of that great research which is to be found in all his works, and which becomes the continuator of Baronius and Raynaldus. It enters most minutely into details; gives the biography of the principal actors in the scenes which it describes; makes use of local memoirs and rare publications, as well as of official documents; and thus presents a full and comprehensive, as well as a painfully finished, view of the eventful history of religion in Russia. At the same time, he writes with an earnestness, a feeling, and a warmth, which engages the heart as well as the understanding of his readers, in the sacred cause of truth and virtue. We shall therefore follow him chiefly as our guide. It is not necessary for us to enter into any account of the earlier condition of religion in the Russian empire, before it obtained this title, and when it was. only an inferior principality, further than to contradict an idea which we believe to be very prevalent that the Church of Russia is an offspring of the schismatical Greek Church of Constantinople, and has been, ever since its origin, separated from the communion of the apostolic see. This is an error. The holy patriarch, St. Ignatius, was the first whom the Russians recognized. From his time (A. D. 867) till about 1120, no trace is discoverable of any breach of communion between the Russian Church and the holy see; although attempts have been made, by means of documents bearing on them the clear stamp of modern Greek forgery, to prove an earlier alienation. About that time, the metropolitan Nicephorus I, a Greek from Constantinople, composed a treatise against Rome. But it produced no effect: neither clergy nor laity took part with him in his views. Latin priests came freely into the country to assist in the labours of the Church; and the Russian communion to this day commemorates, on the 6th of August, the virtues of Abbot Anthony, the Roman, who, coming from Lubeck to Novogorod, established, two wersts from the city, the convent which bears his name. In fine, with occasional and temporary interruptions, such as happened even in the western countries of Europe during the middle ages, Russia continued in communion with Rome till the fifteenth century: so that its defection may, with historical accuracy, be thrown into the mass of schism which, about and after that period, was allowed, in the unsearchable judgments of God, to detach itself from the Rock of Peter. We need not enter into particulars; it can hardly be necessary to say, that when the miserable event did occur, craft, ambition, avarice, haughtiness, and every other vice, were the qualities displayed by those who caused and forwarded it. In 1415 a division took place in the heart of the Russian Church. In consequence of the deposition, by the bishops of a part of Russia, of the worthless patriarch Photias, and the election in his place of Gregory Zamblak, the Church became divided into two parts, or rather two patriarchates, that of Moscow |