to be set forth, and the vagueness of conjecture, where nothing but conjecture exists, should be distinctly set over against positive knowledge, where that exists. How to test the credible and distinguish its features, and what features mark any thing as incredible, is a point essentially belonging to the same connection.

For such purpose was geometry employed by the Greeks, and law by the Romans. Law, studied as a profession, is out of place in a college course; but law, to all the extent of inculcating the reality of the great principles of civil order, is one of the most valuable instruments at the disposal of liberal education.

A good college education may as properly be laid out upon a youth destined to be a merchant, or a farmer, or a tradesman, as upon one who has a view to a learned profession. The difference is only that the liberal professions demand, if not by rule, by the nature of the case, previous attainment in college studies, and other occupations do not so demand it. There can be little doubt, however, that all the respectable occupations of human life would be better conducted if in the hands of liberally educated men. But that implies a breadth of culture extending to all the studies prior to, and independent of, the particular professional training. Most industrial pursuits depend upon science. But an education. containing nothing but science is not a liberal one. It cultivates only a part of a man, and that the harder part, which it hardens. There can be no liberal culture without art: and the most available of all arts for the purpose is that of literature.

The work of Professor Porter, of Yale College, the name of which stands at the head of this article, is a defence, and a very able defence, of the system and methods pursued in the oldest and best American colleges. Commencing with an historical review of the rise and progress of the existing agitation on that subject, the author takes up the line of argument, as before the bar of the American public, and discusses the studies of the regular course, in comparison with those now recommended as better; the enforcement of fidelity in study, as compared with greater license; the evils of the college sys

tem, and their remedies; the common life of the college; the religious character of American colleges; the class system, and other kindred topics, in all of which he defends, in the main, the state of things as it is. With a clear and full admission that it is not without many faults, he maintains that the existing system has within itself better aptitudes for reform than are to be found in any of the novelties which are now by many persons proposed to take its place. His argument covers the whole ground, and is sustained in a lucid and animated style with the cogency which naturally grows from a full knowledge of the subject, and long experience in dealing with it in all its details.

ART. VIII.-The Invitation Heeded. Reasons for a Return to Catholic Unity. By JAMES KENT STONE, late President of Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio; and of Hobart College, Geneva, New York; and S. T. D. Fourth Edition. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1870.

How the Rev. Dr. Stone Bettered his Situation: An Examination of the Assurance of Salvation and Certainty of Belief to which we are affectionately invited by his Holiness the Pope. By LEONARD WOOLSEY BACON. Reprinted from the New Englander, July, 1870. New York: American and Foreign Christian Union, 27 Bible House.

Lecture on the Vatican Council. By ARCHBISHOP PURCELL.

THE author of the "Invitation Heeded" is a son of one of the most distinguished ministers of the Protestant Episcopal Church in this country-especially of the class known as Low Church. If we are not misinformed he is also descended. from that great jurist whose name he bears-the late Chancellor Kent, whose "Commentaries" are among the foremost standard authorities in American jurisprudence. We infer from this volume that he had for some time been investigating the great questions treated in it, before he was greeted with the late formal invitation extended by the Roman pontiff to all Protestants to put themselves under his jurisdiction. He

had already become eminent in his own communion. His book betrays an inquisitive, earnest, and impassioned mind, endowed with considerable learning, culture, and elegance, and master of a style of more than average force, beauty, and point. Dr. Stone's characteristics, surroundings, and antecedents, invest his conversion to Romanism with unusual interest, and render his book one of the most plausible and effective pleas for the church of his adoption which has issued from an American pen. But if such a writer fails as to the material issues involved, his plea only weakens what it aims to support.

Mr. Bacon's tract is not so much a direct sifting or refutation of the reasonings in this book, as a positive, derisive, and irrefutable demonstration of the impossibility of obtaining the assurance of salvation of which Dr. Stone is in quest, according to the institutions, dogmas, and methods of the Romish Church. It is a very apt and trenchant application of logic, humor, satire, to a case which well deserves this incisive and caustic treatment. The pivot on which Dr. Stone's plea turns is that of Papal infallibility. With this his whole argument stands or falls. If he is successful in establishing that, of course he proves it the duty of all to submit to the Roman pontiff. Failing of this, he fails altogether.

The Papist and Protestant agree that we need an infallible guide. in religion. But the latter insists that God's Word, the former, that the church, through its hierarchy or some.order or council or person thereof, is this infallible guide. Dr. Stone, the Vatican Council, and all ultramontanes maintain that this infallibility vests in the Pope primarily and exclusively, as the head of the church. We hold that all members of the true church, which is Christ's body, i. e., all real Christians and saints know infallibly all truths essential to salvation, because they find them asserted in the Scriptures, upon the authority of God. His voice they hear, and will not follow a stranger. This results from their being guided by the Holy Spirit whose anointing makes them to know all things essential to salvation; that they are the truth and no lie, and that no lie is of the truth. 1 John ii. 20-27.

But how do we know the Scriptures to be the word of God?

What ground of certainty can we have that it speaks to us in the name and by the authority of God? Romish theologians, Dr. Stone included, deem these crucial and stunning questions. They think the sole possible answer is, that we can know it only by the testimony of the church. This testimony they maintain is that of the Romish hierarchy, and not only so, but ultramontanes, such as Dr. Stone and the Vatican Council, hold that it must be given by the Pope as the only original and primal repository of infallibility.

But the fallacy of such assumptions and paralogisms is readily apparent. How do we know the heavens, the earth, our own fearfully and wonderfully made frames, to be the work of God, to declare his glory, and evince his eternal power and Godhead? Do they beam upon us a self-evidence of infallible certainty to every candid mind? And as surely as they are self-evidently the work of God, are not the Holy Scriptures self-evidently the word of God, the utterance of one who spake as never man spake?

It is vain for Papists to impugn the sufficiency of such evidence. They are now wont to appeal to it as the evidence of the divine origin and prerogatives of their own body and the infallibility of its primate. Although Dr. Stoue, like the Pope and Vatican Council appeals at great length to the Scriptures to prove the primacy and infallibility of Peter and his alleged successors in the pontifical chair,* nevertheless he follows Archbishop Manning, and the drift of recent ultramontane theologians in appealing to this self-evidence as the main proof of the divinity, supremacy, and infallibility of the Romish Church in the person of its supreme head. Says Dr. Stone, "The Catholic believes in the Holy Catholic Church. But he does not so merely as a logical inference from the words of Scripture. He does not even need the Scriptures to know that the church is divine. There she stands and her existence is the evidence of her origin. She speaks; and her claims are her credentials. She acts; and her work is her vindication," p. 146. To this attitude the Vatican claim is driven by remorseless logic. The claim is that the Scriptures derive their authority solely from the testimony of the church, uttered by its infallible *See pp. 228 et seq.

head, the Pope. But if asked, on what evidence does the claim of the church and Pope to infallibility and spiritual supremacy rest? it will not do to say, upon the Scriptures. This is the old fallacy of the circle in proving the church by the Scriptures and the Scriptures by the church, which it is easier for our author to underrate than to escape. He, with other ultramontanes, is sagacious enough to see that, if testimony ever so conclusive for the Papacy could be obtained from the Scriptures, on their system, the whole fabric falls to the ground, unless they can rest it on other foundations. If the Scriptures rest on the church, how can the church rest on the Scriptures? On what then does the church rest? Whence the evidence of its divinity and infallibility? Clearly nowhere unless in itself. This being so, the appeal to Scripture in support of the Papacy so often made by their theologians, by Dr. Stone, and by the Vatican Council nullifies itself. It is an appeal to a witness they have already discredited.

The issue then is clear and simple. Which bears the strongest self-evidence of a divine inspiration, authority, and infallibility? The Word recorded in the Holy Scriptures, or the occupant of the Papal chair at Rome and his predecessors fulminating anathemas against all Christians, ministers, and ecumenical councils even, who dispute their infallibility? Is it necessary to argue this self-answering question? We shall soon see how Dr. Stone disposes of some of the noted and unquestionable historical illustrations of the fallibility of the Pope. Meanwhile we will notice some allegations or assumptions which are constantly appearing in his book against the infallibility, sufficiency, and authority of the Bible as a rule of faith, and which, if of any force, rebound with tenfold power against his favorite dogma.

He argues strenuously that a church, so far as divine, must be infallibly guided, and that such infallible guidance involves an infallible head. But who is that head? One is our Head even Christ; we know no other. The true church is his body, and its members, members of him, informed by his spirit, and having an unction from the Holy One, whereby they know all things necessary to salvation. This church of those "called to be saints" claims to know infallibly the essentials of the

VOL. XLII.—NO. IV.

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