iving and oppressing mankind, it occupies the highest place. The
stronger our conviction that reason and Scripture were decidedly on the
side of Protestantism, the greater is the reluctant admiration with
which we regard that system of tactics against which reason and
Scripture were employed in vain.

If we went at large into this most interesting subject we should fill
volumes. We will, therefore, at present, advert to only one important
part of the policy of the Church of Rome. She thoroughly understands,
what no other church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts.
In some sects, particularly in infant sects, enthusiasm is suffered to
be rampant. In other sects, particularly in sects long established and
richly endowed, it is regarded with aversion. The Catholic Church
neither submits to enthusiasm nor proscribes it, but uses it. She
considers it as a great moving force which in itself, like the muscular
powers of a fine horse, is neither good nor evil, but which may be so
directed as to produce great good or great evil; and she assumes the
direction to herself. It would be absurd to run down a horse like a
wolf. It would be still more absurd to let him run wild, breaking fences
and trampling down passengers. The rational course is to subjugate his
will without impairing his vigor, to teach him to obey the rein, and
then to urge him to full speed. When once he knows his master, he is
valuable in proportion to his strength and spirit. Just such has been
the system of the Church of Rome with regard to enthusiasts. She knows
that, when religious feelings have obtained the complete empire of the
mind, they impart a strange energy, that they raise men above the
dominion of pain and pleasure, that obloquy becomes glory, that death
itself is contemplated only as the beginning of a higher and happier
life. She knows that a person in this state is no object of contempt. He
may be vulgar, ignorant, visionary, extravagant; but he will do and
suffer things which it is for her interest that somebody should do and
suffer, yet from which calm and sober-minded men would shrink. She
accordingly enlists him in her service, assigns to him some forlorn
hope, in which intrepidity and impetuosity are more wanted than judgment
and self-command, and sends him forth with her benedictions and her
applause.

In England it not unfrequently happens that a tinker or coal heaver
hears a sermon or falls in with a tract which alarms him a