nge and Czerski, bursting forth from
the bosom of the Roman Church, awake no misgiving? Fearful, when viewed by
Scripture and antiquity, as the state of England is, (an argument which is
now being used against our communion with such effect on tender and loving
minds,) he must be bold who would venture to say that the relation of the
French Church to the French nation in the last century, or its relation
even now, greatly as the present French Church is to be admired and
sympathised with, does not offer as much ground for fearful apprehension,
as much reason to dread, lest the terms on which victory is promised to the
Church over the world have been essentially broken. I fear there is no
doubt that two-thirds of the French capital are not _Christian_, in any
sense of the word; and probably the proportion is as great in the larger
towns. How did this state of things arise? How has nearly the whole
intellect of that country become infidel? From the French Revolution, it
will be answered. But how could that great Satanical outburst have ever
taken place, had the Church of Christ, free from corruption, as those who
have left us believe, and throned in the possession of sixteen hundred
years, with its numberless religious houses, its unmarried clergy, and
great episcopate, been discharging its functions, I do not say aright, but
with any moderate efficiency? Surely the acts of the States General were as
bad as those of Henry the Eighth; yet its members were Catholics, in full
communion with the Roman See. Surely the ecclesiastical legislation of
Napoleon was as uncatholic as that of a House of Commons; yet it was
sanctioned by Concordat with the Pope. But if manifold corruptions did not
unchurch the Gallican communion in the last century,--if the mass of a
great nation, which the Church once completely possessed, but has now
surrendered to active unbelief, does not invalidate her claim to be a pure
communion at present, why are such things alleged as so fatal a mark
against us? God forbid that one should mention such things without the
deepest sorrow; but when our troubles, and difficulties, and relations with
the state, and the alienated hearts of our people, and the absence of
external discipline and inward guidance, and the misery of our divisions,
are alleged to prove that we are out of the pale of the Church, these
things ought to be weighed on the other side. There ought not to be
different measures on different sides of