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self-abasement, depreciation of works as "filthy rags," and highflown claims of being a chosen vessel, and a particular favorite of the Lord.

The very last thing that would have occurred to such a one would have been to make the Duke renounce his crown, strip himself of all earthly goods, and go in poverty and penitence to hide his conversion in a holy community of monks.

But it is time for us to draw these remarks to a conclusion. There is much more evidence at hand to the same effect. Enough, however, has been adduced to justify a very strong prepossession in favor of the Catholic faith of Shakespeare. In conclusion, it may be added that in a thousand different ways, in casual expressions, seemingly indifferent incidents, and a multitude of ways too numerous to particularize, he displays the habit of thought of a Catholic. His lay characters "say their beads," "go to confession," receive "the last sacraments," "pray for the dead," "invoke the saints," speak with reverence of our Lady, and so on. He speaks of the blessing of the Church as being essential to an honest marriage. Addressing Friar Laurence, Romeo says:

"How hast thou heart,

Being a divine, a ghostly confessor,

A sin absolver."

In the play of Hamlet, the circumstance of the king's assassination, which the spirit of the slain father names to his son as the cruellest, and calling the loudest for vengeance, is, to quote his own words:

"Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,

Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd;

No reckoning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head."

The impartiality of criticism demands, before concluding, that we quote the only passage with which we are acquainted, which militates with any force against the supposition that Shakespeare was a believer in the Catholic faith. In "Romeo and Juliet," Juliet is represented saying to Friar Laurence:

"Are you at leisure, holy father, now;

Or shall I come to you at evening mass?'

This, it must be owned, is a puzzler, if Shakespeare wrote it. There is no Catholic, in these days, so ignorant as to talk of an evening mass. It seems to drive us to one of three conclusions,— that Shakespeare did not thus write it; that the ignorance of ordinary Catholics respecting the services of the Church in those days was dense; or that Shakespeare was not a Catholic.

We doubt if one of those who have done us the honor of perusing this article, will be likely to adopt the last conclusion, in face of the evidence we have adduced to the contrary. The complete knowledge which he everywhere displays of the doctrines and discipline of the Catholic Church make the second conclusion untenable. There remains but the first. As to that, every one must form his own opinion. For our own part, we could not allow a single expression to weigh against the overwhelming testimony to the contrary afforded by all his writings. Shakespeare wrote, we know, with great rapidity, and almost without corrections. The exigencies of his plot may have seemed to him for the moment to require an evening mass, and he may have let it pass without caring much for its exact accuracy.

This hypothesis is favored by the fact that one or two very gross anachronisms are to be met with in his plays. Great geniuses are seldom very careful about particulars.

Be this as it may, if our humble efforts should have met with so much success as, in the estimation of the dispassionate reader, to have rescued so illustrious an intellect from the heretical crowd, and to have shown it manifestly crowned with the diadem of faith, ours will have been a labor of love.

HOW HERESY DEALS WITH THE BIBLE.

The Holy Bible. According to the Authorized Version (A.D. 1611); with an Explanatory and Critical Commentary and a Revision of the Translation, by Bishops and other Clergy of the Anglican Church. Edited by F. C. Cook, M.A., Canon of Exeter, Preacher at Lincoln's Inn, Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen. New Testament, Vol. I.: St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1878. Royal 8vo.

F one could only swallow in good faith the boastful talk about the growth of Bible-knowledge, which has resounded through the world for the last three centuries, and which has gone on from year to year, widening its pretensions and increasing its braggart tone of self-laudation, he must needs acknowledge that this science has reached its highest point, or that it lacks very little of attaining to perfection. It is constantly dinned into our ears, in every place, from the nursery to the reading-desk and pulpit, through every channel, from the child's story-book or the daily newspaper to the learned controversial tome, that the Bible, after having been chained, hidden, suppressed, and wellnigh extinguished for over a thousand years, was at last, in an unfortunate hour for the Church of Rome, happily recovered and brought to the light of day by the monk of Wittemberg. To use Luther's own rough expression, he first "dragged it out from under the bench." Or, as Dean Stanley, in his late New York sermon, phrased it, in choicer terms, "Martin Luther first loosed the shackles of the old restraint and taught us what the Bible really was." It is not so easy to determine the sense and discover the truth of this bold assertion. If, by these words, are meant the nature and character of the Bible, it would be easy to show, by a thousand witnesses, that in every age of the Christian Church, from St. Peter down to Leo X., Luther's contemporary, the Bible was believed and acknowledged by all, clergy and laity, to be the inspired word of God, dictated by the Holy Ghost to faithful scribes for the benefit of mankind. Was Luther, then, the first to discover and disclose a truth which had been in the hearts and on the lips of all Christians, young and old, for fifteen centuries? It must be a bold, brazen face, indeed, that can, without blushing, repeat this before the Christian world; and forcibly recalls those who are denounced in Ezechiel as a domus exasperans, filii dura facie et indomabili corde."

Ezech. ii. 5, 4. "The provoking generation, the hard-faced, stiff-hearted race." There was no necessity for Dr. Challoner's changing into "obstinate " the "heart that cannot be tamed " of the old Douay, which is the correct rendering of St. Jerome's "indomabili corde." His changes are seldom improvements on the old version.

If, on the other hand, not the character of the Bible, but its true sense and meaning were intended by the speaker, it would be a sufficient answer that the Catholic Church did not learn, and needed not to learn from Luther; and it is simply absurd to represent her as either asking or receiving at his hands a key to the knowledge that she already possessed, and that she had been dispensing to the world for so many centuries. Luther taught no knowledge of the Bible to the Catholic Church, and the greater part of the Christian world-the fact must not be lost sight of-belongs to her communion.

But "he taught us," says Dean Stanley, "what the Bible really was." And pray, who are "WE?" Surely, he does not mean the great common crowd, especially the unlearned, who go under the name of Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, etc. For these, in spite of their varying names and common theory, respect the fundamental tenets of Christianity, and, above all, cling in practice (whatever they may say or imagine to the contrary) to the great Catholic principle of authority, believing the Scriptures to be the Word of God only because they have so learnt from parental and Sunday-school teaching, and having their minds fully made up (even though they fancy otherwise) to understand the Bible when they read it only in the sense which their minister directly enforces, or indirectly suggests; and all this, because, in their innocent simplicity, they believe him to be an authorized interpreter of Divine truth. No; the Anglican divine never once thought or spoke in the name of these men, though they form the great bulk of that non-Catholic world which yet preserves something more than the empty name of Christianity. But, in his eyes, they are of no account; they are mere laymen, professionally speaking. Nay, perhaps, he counts them little better than "lewd fellows of the baser sort," to use the language of his own cherished Anglican version. While addressing the New York congregation, with mild amiable egotism he was thinking, not of the great Protestant world that has yet its remnant of Christian faith, but of the advanced biblical students of Germany and England, who have taken Luther's principles to heart, and are not ashamed to carry out to the end their logical consequences. These are they whose biblical knowledge is daily progressing in subtle doubt and bold denial, the champions of what they call by the high-sounding name of Liberal or Rational Christianity.

Amongst them Dean Stanley ranks foremost, and if he had spoken out his true sentiments on that occasion, instead of the vague, unmeaning phrase which he gave out, he would have said something to this effect: "Luther taught us something new, indeed, about the Bible, something unheard of in all Christian gen

erations, when he taught that its dead letter was a rule of faith, which every one was at liberty to interpret. This was, indeed, a valuable discovery, for its direct tendency was to emancipate reason from the shackles of faith, and its importance will only be fully understood in the age for which we are preparing the way, when faith shall not only be dethroned but extinct, and reason shall be sole mistress of the world. But Luther likewise taught us many things about the Bible which we have unlearned long since, and put away from us as fit only for children and pious idiots, whether they be silly laymen or pretentious churchmen. Even that great man, Paul, had his lot fallen in our enlightened day, would as he says himself (1 Cor. xiii. 11), put them away from him as childish things. We hold, with Luther, that the Bible is a very nice, very interesting book, but we have only a smile of pity for the delusion that holds it to be divinely inspired. Besides, Luther's Christology was very imperfect. It could not well be otherwise, as he drew from unenlightened sources. He had imbibed all the quibbles of the Nicene theologians, all the subtleties of the monkish schoolmen. But we may pardon Luther, for the very apostles seem to have been full of lofty Messianic theories, imported into the Church from Judaism, or rather Rabbinism. We now know, what Luther unfortunately did not, that Christ was nothing more than one of the great Teachers and Apostles of humanity, and, it may be granted, superior to Zoroaster, Confucius, Mahomet, and many others who went before or came after him." If Dean Stanley had spoken thus, he would have uttered the real sentiments of the school he represents. But it would be disclosing too much. The Catholic Church, it would seem, is not the only one that strives to hoodwink her hearers and disciples, and keep them from knowing. too much. But all this is a digression from our main purpose.

We are further perpetually reminded, lest we should forget it, by these self-constituted advisers, that while biblical science has been progressing among the sects and other outsiders, Catholics have remained in ignorance. They are fettered by the chains of Church authority. If they would only make bold to unshackle themselves, to exercise their own judgment in rejecting or adopting this or that book, in deciding on the sense of this or that passage, they would possess the key of knowledge, and soon become masters in the science of Scriptural exegesis. All this may sound very well, and those who utter it so pompously pride themselves, perhaps, on their originality. But the Church has a life of eighteen centuries or more, and her memory is yet fresh and unimpaired, as it was in the days of her youth. She remembers well how this. same language has resounded in her ears almost from the earliest period of her existence. The heretics whom she cast out of her

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