Luther did not confine his lording it over Scripture to the books of James and John, nor, indeed, to the New Testament. Of St. Jude he says: "No one can deny that his epistle is an extract or copy of St. Peter's Second Epistle. . . . . He alleges sayings and facts that are nowhere found in Scripture." He adds that it is an unnecessary epistle. (Ibid. p. 158.) According to Luther, the Epistle to the Hebrews is not of St. Paul nor of any apostle. It has knotty points in it that can scarcely be explained away. It has its mixture of wood, straw, and stubble. (Ibid. pp. 154, 155.) The Books of Kings are only Jewish Calendars, yet they are more trustworthy than the Chronicles! ("Darumb ist den Büchern der Könige mehr zu glauben, denn der Cronicken." Tischreden, Frankfort, 1567, fol. 495.) The Book of Esther deserves more than any other to be put out of the canon. It Judaizes and contains a great deal of heathenish naughtiness. (Tischreden, fol. 494, verso, and Latin Works, Ed. of Erlangen, vol. vii. 195.) Job, Jonah, the Canticle, Isaiah, and the Prophets, did not escape his critical rod. But why continue the enumeration? Enough has been said to prove the utter want of reverence with which Luther felt himself privileged to speak and write of God's revealed Word. The work begun by the Reformer of Wittemberg was taken up and pursued with ardor by his followers. The consequence is that scarcely one single book of the New Testament has escaped their destroying hands. Sieffert, Schultze, Schott, Fischer, De Wette, and Schneckenburger deny the authenticity of St. Matthew. Michaelis will not allow the canonicity of St. Mark and St. Luke. Schleiermacher thinks the Gospel of St. Luke to be the work of four different authors. Vogel, Horst, and Ballenstedt reject the Gospel of St. John. Baur denies the credibility of the Acts, and De Wette, bolder still, maintains that it betrays ignorance of Jewish manners, contains errors, and narrates miracles partly irrational, partly immoral. Semler and Eichhorn doubt the genuiness of the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of the Epistle to the Romans. Mayerhoff pronounces spurious that to the Colossians. Schmidt and Kern have their doubts about the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians. The three epistles to Timothy and Titus are repudiated by Schleiermacher, Schott, Baur, Mayerhoff and Schrader. Credner and Neudecker have spared the Epistle to Titus, but give up, as not genuine, the two addressed to Timothy.

The Catholic Epistles have fared worse and have been sacrificed each in its turn. Luther condemned that of St. James as "an epistle of straw," but his early followers restored it to the canon. Kern and De Wette have again displaced it. The First Epistle of St. Peter is rejected by Cludius, the Second by Semler, Schott, Guerrike, and others. The Second and Third Epistles of St. John

are condemned by Fritzche, Paulus, and Credner; and all three by Lange, Cludius and Bretschneider. The "unnecessary" Epistle of St. Jude is denied by Bolten, Dahl, and Bergen. Finally, the Apocalypse, in spite of all its good service against the Roman Antichrist, has been thrust aside, not only by Luther and Calvin, but also by some of their latest disciples,-Semler, Michaelis, De Wette, Bretschneider, and many others.1

The book at the head of this paper calls attention to another way in which heresy is wont to domineer over the Word of God, and irreverently trample it under foot. It is the way of translation; we mean wicked, deliberately unfaithful translation. is one of the most artful ways of teaching religious error in God's name. It is more insidious and more fatal than mere comment for the unlettered and the unwary. The simple reader is ordinarily fonder of his privilege than the student; he uses no note or comment. But the comment is there unseen and does its work. It has been foisted adroitly into the text and makes a portion of it. This branch of our subject is too ample for the small space at our command. We shall return to it and point out some, not of the unimportant minutia that need revision, but of the glaring errors of doctrinal sense introduced into the text under the cover of translation. Will these be corrected by the Committee of Revision? We have very little hope of it.

1 See Rev. Mr. Dewar's German Protestantism: Oxford, 1844. To its pages we are principally indebted for the above catalogue of Lutheran theologians who study the Bible in order to overthrow its books, one by one. (See pp. 122, 133.)

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES IN THE RECENT TRANSLATION OF ALZOG.

Manual of Church History. By the Rev. Dr. John Alzog, Professor of Theology at the University of Freiberg. Translated, with additions, by F. J. Pabisch, D.D., President of the Provincial Seminary of Mt. St. Mary's of the West, and Rev. Thos. Byrne. In three volumes. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co., 1878.

THE

HE translation of Dr. Alzog's Manual of Church History is an important labor, giving, especially to the students in our ecclesiastical seminaries, a learned summary of ecclesiastical history, such as has not hitherto been accessible to English readers. The additions of the learned translators to the references of the author increase its value, as Dr. Alzog cites constantly articles in German periodicals that cannot easily be obtained in this country, and would be unreadable to many students. A reluctance to overload the work has, perhaps, prevented their carrying this out sufficiently, and references to sources more at the command of Englishspeaking students would greatly enhance the value of the work for practical purposes.

Leaving, however, this point to more competent critics, we must. express surprise and regret at the portion devoted to the Catholic Church in the United States. To cite as authority an author like O'Kane Murray, who made no original research, and to whom a newspaper hoax or a magazine story is as authentic material for history as a missionary report to the Propaganda or the acts of a council, prepares the reader's mind for some strange results.

The subject of the Church in this country is not treated in any philosophical, systematic manner, so as to give the student a clear idea of the origin of the Church in the different parts of our territory, initiated under different national guidance, implanting the ecclesiastical law, ceremonies, festivals of several nations on our soil, to be blended at last into the Church as it is in our day.

In the Spanish portion we find the silly fable of Friar Juan Xuarez having been Bishop of Florida given as a fact, and the assertion made that he and his companions were the first missionaries to set foot on our territory. That Xuarez was a bishop is contradicted by every contemporaneous document, by the silence of all the Spanish writers, and by intrinsic facts. Under the bull of Pope Julius II., the Catholic king nominated bishops in the Indies, and, by Spanish regulations, those nominated wore some of the insignia of bishops, and enjoyed certain powers and privileges. They were constantly spoken of as bishops. But neither

Cabeza de Vaca, the historian of the expedition, nor any of the documents of the time, speak of Father Xuarez as any more than a commissary, and his portrait, preserved with those of the rest of the twelve pioneer Franciscans, gives him no attributes of the episcopal state. Barcia, historian of the Indies, who prepared his Ensayo Cronologico on Florida, under the name of Cardenas, giving ecclesiastical affairs careful notice, had evidently found no allusion to such a bishop or bishopric.

The pretended See would not be in Florida, but in Mexico, and, if it had been erected, would appear in the lists of Mexican Sees in the councils and elsewhere, but there is no trace of any such See. None of those who wrote of the bishops in Spanish America, like Gil Gonzales Davila, though they gathered up much that needed scrutiny, found any trace of such a See. Had the See been erected with jurisdiction over Florida, the ecclesiastical jurisdiction there would have naturally connected Florida with Mexico. Yet, in the voluminous controversy between the Franciscans of Florida and Juan Ferro Machado, the priest sent as his delegate by the Bishop of Santiago de Cuba, in which the very jurisdiction of the bishop is questioned, Father Ayeta never refers to any such Bishop of Florida, although the fact would have been a strong one in his favor if Florida had ever been formed into a distinct diocese; and this Father, examining all the records of his Order, would not be likely to overlook the argument that a son of St. Francis had actually been appointed.

The reference made to a modern French writer, who compiled without accurate guides, was the only authority for the fable, and so stated guardedly when first mentioned. The slightest examination would have shown those who have built on sand how worthless it was.

The origin of the Church in the Spanish portion is thus erroneous, and the noble Dominican, the first whose voice was raised in the Western World in the cause of human freedom, is denied his just honor of having been the first to rear a chapel on our soil for white and Indian.

For the French portion it is equally misleading. The See of Quebec is said to have been established in 1675, through the influence of Louis XIV. The influence was rather against it. The Archbishop of Rouen, who had exercised jurisdiction in this country, wished the new bishop to be one of his suffragans, and the King, anxious to make another court bishop of the stamp of the Four Articles, delayed the matter for years, so that Clement X. was surely not strongly influenced by Louis XIV., when he made Quebec an Episcopal See by his bull of October 1st, 1674, dependent immediately on the Holy See, putting an end to the influence

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of the Archbishop of Rouen, and all hope of planting Gallicanism in Canada.

The position of the Catholics in the English colonies is more important, as out of their feeble Church grew in time the See of Baltimore, and the many of which it has been the fruitful parent.

We are astonished to be told of these colonial Catholics that, "during the war of Independence they were placed under the jurisdiction of the Apostolic Vicariate of London." This leaves the Catholics from the time of the settlement of Maryland to the American Revolution under no episcopal supervision. Yet it is very certain that the Vicar Apostolic, the Chapter during the vacancy, and finally the Vicars Apostolic of London, from the time of James II., did exercise authority over the Maryland Catholics. The ordinance of Bishop Bonaventure Gifford, regulating the holidays of obligation in this country, would alone suffice to show that their authority was recognized and was exercised. The missionaries (except during a brief period of a secular mission under the authority of the Propaganda) were English Jesuits and Franciscans; and as all regulars in England, by the decision of the Holy See, had to obtain faculties from the Vicars Apostolic, those who came over, came with such faculties, and were subject to a Vicar-General in this country. So far from it being a fact that the Revolution was the time when the Catholics in the colonies were placed under the care of the Vicar Apostolic of London, it was just the time when the intercourse, a century old, was broken off. "There was but little communication between the Catholics of America," says Bishop Carroll, “and their bishop, the Vicar Apostolic of the district of London, on whose spiritual jurisdiction they were dependent. But whether he did not wish to have any relation to a people whom he regarded in the light of rebels, or whether it was owing, says my old MS., to the natural apathy of his disposition, it is certain that he had hardly any communication either with the priests or the laity on this side of the Atlantic. Anterior to the Declaration of Independence he had appointed the Rev. Dr. Lewis his vicar; and it was this gentleman who governed the mission of America during the time that the bishop remained inactive."

We are next told that Pius VII., by brief of April 8th, 1808, made New Orleans a suffragan of Baltimore. New Orleans was not even a See. The diocese of Louisiana, established in 1793, embraced the portion of the old diocese of Santiago de Cuba, which was on the mainland, and had been directed by an auxiliar. Like Santiago and its other division, San Cristobal, it was a suffragan of Saint Domingo. When Baltimore was made a metropolitan See, four new Sees, erected within the limits of the old diocese of Baltimore, were made suffragans, but there is no allusion to Louisiana. That bishopric was va