given is immutable. But while the one simply believes, the theologian seeks to give a reason for his faith, to penetrate and comprehend the revealed doctrines, and to explain the conduct of God in the spiritual government of the world. "He will

expound the creation of God, and the dispensation which He made for the salvation of mankind, and will explain how with long patience He bore the fall, the rebel angels, and the disobedience of man; he will investigate the cause why the one God created things so different .... he will trace the reason why God included all in unbelief, that He might have mercy upon all."

The school of Alexandria taught the same thing. Commenting on a text which afterwards became quite classic, “ Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis,”—unless you believe, you shall not understand, they, like St. Irenæus, divided Christian knowledge into two kinds: the first the knowledge and belief of the doctrines of revelation, and the second the scientific understanding of them. The first of these is the only base of the second, without faith there is no Christian science; but with faith, it is the noblest exercise of the human intellect " to inquire into the reason of the apostolic teaching."

We must pass over like testimonies from St. Athanasius, St. Basil, and the Gregories of Nyssa and Nazianzum, to come to the great St. Augustine, who demands a full and entire faith in the doctrine taught by the Church, as the indispensable condition for all scientific research into theology. But the thoughtful Christian, he says, does not stop at faith; he is not content with mere belief; he tries to understand the data of revelation: the theologian must labour incessantly to understand the things which at first he simply believed. "Unless faith differed from science, and unless it was necessary first to believe the great and divine doctrine which we wish to understand, the prophet would never have said, 'Unless ye believe, ye shall not understand.' Our Lord Himself, too, first of all exhorted those whom He called to believe; but afterwards, speaking of the gift which He would give to believers, He said—not this is eternal life, to believe,' but this is eternal life, to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He sent.' Then He said to those who already believed, 'Seek, and ye shall find;' for that which is unknown is unfound; nor is any one able to come to know God, unless he first believes that which he is afterwards to know. Let us, then, obey our Lord's commands, and seek diligently." (St. Aug. de lib. Arb. ii. c. 2, n. 6.)

After St. Augustine, Dr. Laforet traces the course of dogmatic theology to the close of the patristic period in the person

of St. John of Damascus; and he thus sums up the results of his inquiry:

"Theology being the product of the human mind employed upon the data of revelation, could not be perfect from its commencement; but at any rate it was not slow to investigate its own nature, and to understand what it was one day to become. All the Fathers agree in declaring that the revealed faith is the starting-point, the foundation, the object, and the inflexible rule of theology. Without faith, no understanding, no science; that which is contrary to the faith is but illusion and falsehood. But the divine should not stop after simply determining what is of faith; theology does not come into being as long as the teacher confines himself to inquiring whether such or such a doctrine is revealed by God. St. Irenæus, Clement, Origen, Athanasius, St. Gregory of Ñazianzum, St. Augustine, Vincent of Lerins, are clear on this point. To go no further is, in their eyes, to remain in the order of faith, and to be entirely excluded from the domain of theological science. Science begins to exist when man attempts to penetrate the meaning of revealed truth. This is what all the Fathers mean by theology; the attempt to explain and understand the dogmas is the great business which they assign to the theologian."

Dr. Laforet then goes on to say, that of the two things requisite for theology, the investigation of the meaning of doctrines, and their methodical and systematical arrangement, the Fathers have exhausted the first. They have prepared all the materials, and have reduced to form, developed, and explained all the different single doctrines. In this view they are an inexhaustible mine. They have prepared and sketched out every thing. The most beautiful speculations of the doctors of the middle ages are there indicated and planned out. All the works of the scholastics were founded on the labours of the Fathers.

For ourselves, we doubt if this be not going a little too far. As Dr. Laforet says, after so many of the Fathers, it is the discussion raised by heretics that clears the Christian doctrine on the point controverted. Unless heresy has exhausted itself, unless there is no new phase left for error, unless there is no Christian doctrine or principle left that has not been the chief point of some sect's attacks, there surely will be a new deveÎopment, a new explanation, a new application of some old truth to meet the new contradiction. That in this new development the method and the principles of the Fathers will be the guide of theologians, it is impossible to doubt;, but it is as difficult to believe that the wise steward will not, with the old things, bring out also new things from his stores. Forms

of error which the Fathers never controverted must be refuted by arguments which they never used.

The second part of Dr. Laforet's work gives a rapid review of the principal theological works of the medieval schools, in their three classes: positive theology, or the mere proof that certain doctrines are contained in Scripture; contemplative and mystic theology, such as that of Thomas à Kempis; and the theology that is strictly called scholastic, which introduced the most subtle dialectical discussions concerning the reasons of revealed doctrines. The great work of these doctors was the arrangement of theology, though they also developed the meaning and internal connection of its ideas. We need not enter into this section of Dr. Laforet's work, as it was mainly to establish the great principle of Christian science, namely, the right and even the duty of investigation and search upon the foundation of the faith, that we brought it under the notice of our readers.

Short Notices.

THEOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY, &c.

Sabbath Evening Readings on St. John. By Dr. Cumming. (London, Hall, Virtue, and Co.) No one can deny to Dr. Cumming great rhetorical, if not dialectical art, and considerable fluency. But his controversial honesty does not come up to the Old-Bailey standard, and his thorough recklessness of assertion is worthy of Russian mendacity. His popularity, however, is a fact which no one can deny; he has as many readers for his theology as Robert Montgomery for his poetry; and though both authors are equally foolish, yet Dr. Cumming is certainly looked at with more respect as a savan. He is the authority who settles, in a letter to the Times, any knotty point of Popery that may turn up. It is said that, on account of his wonderful acquaintance with the natural history and habits of "the Beast," he claimed admission into the Royal Society, though that respectable body declined the honour of his company. Be that as it may, Dr. Cumming is certainly the learned man from whose decisions as to the horn that had eyes, the locusts with stings in their tails, and similar monsters, there is, in this country, no appeal.

Out of curiosity, we procured the present volume of his multitudinous works; and a few random plunges into its pages have satisfied us that there never was a greater fulfilment of the prophet's words, "Unless you believe, you shall not understand.” Here is a man who, according to his own account, is always reading the Fathers, perusing Popish catechisms, buying up editions of Catholic prayer-books, and studying Romish sermons, who absolutely, with all his cleverness, does not understand the very first principles of Christianity. The first ragged little boy from any Catholic charity-school might put to shame his

"inconsavible ignorance." We will give a few examples: P. 104, Dr. Cumming is showing why the sixth chapter of St. John, where our Lord promises that He will (of course at some future time) give His flesh and blood for food, cannot refer to the Blessed Eucharist:

66 The first evidence that this cannot refer to that doctrine is a very simple one the Lord's Supper was not yet in existence; when these words were spoken no such institution was known, no such institution was expected. How could Jesus explain the nature of an ordinance that He had not defined or instituted? I think this alone must be conclusive."

If Dr. Cumming would apply his argument to the prophecies of the Old Testament, he would find just as good reason to deny that they could apply to our Lord. If nothing can be explained that has not been defined before, we do not see how any thing new could ever be explained.

Again, the chapter cannot apply, because, by the denial of the cup to the laity, the Catholic is not allowed to fulfil our Lord's precept. Now Dr. Cumming either knows, or does not know, the doctrine of concomitance: on the first supposition, he is a knave, for putting into the mouth of a Catholic an admission which he knows no Catholic would make; on the second, he is a fool, for being ignorant, after years of study, of a doctrine which, with us, all children who make their first communion know and understand.

Again, concerning relics. "They parted His garments; His coat was without seam, and they cast lots for it. How little like the relicgathering of modern times"-(as if in modern times, any more than in antiquity, it was the brutalised executioner who was expected to gather up and preserve the relics). "The garment of Jesus was parted into four shreds, the coat was cast lots for by the soldiers, probably sold to the nearest purchaser they could find; and then it disappears. There is here no canonisation of the taste or passion for sacred relics. And if we had these garments . . . the holiest treatment of them would be quietly to burn them."

Dr. Cumming, perhaps, hopes for heirs who will burn all records of him, and will spit upon his picture. Now for a little bit of scholarship: "You must have noticed, if you have travelled in Germany, that the expression for an inn is ghast haus (sic)—literally, 'ghost house' (!) that is, of a guest."

Behold, Exeter Hall, your prophet and your king! To us this unhappy man is only an example of the successful charlatan, trading on the ignorance and prejudices of well-meaning old women. His ignorance of Catholic doctrines is like a judicial blindness; while his coldblooded application of infidel arguments and heartless Pagan principles to the dearest doctrines and most consoling practices of our religion shows that his heart is in no better a condition than his head. A man who would burn our Lord's sacred garments, who hates the Cross, and has no more reverence for it than for the gallows or the guillotine, and who takes every opportunity to reduce the Mother of God to the level of any ordinary woman, only increases the loathing with which we regard him by his hypocritical professions of a zeal for God. And this compound of twaddle and blasphemy provides their only spiritual food for thousands of our countrymen!

The Phasis of Matter; being an Outline of the Discoveries and Applications of common Chemistry. By T. L. Kemp, M.D. 2 vols. (London, Longmans.) Dr. Kemp fears that it may be said that there was no need of his book; and that if such a book were wanting, it should be

written by a professed chemist. We are disposed to agree with the imaginary objector; Dr. Kemp's book is neither new, scientific, nor popular: he has no fresh discoveries to bring forward; he is singularly shallow when he attempts to fathom the reasons of things; and his book is quite as much obscured with the quasi-algebraical formulæ, which look so strange in Gregory or Liebig, as if it was a professional treatise on the subject. The man is yet to come who is to give a romantic interest to chemistry; who is to celebrate the nuptials of alkalis and acids, and the intrigues of unstable salts, with the dramatic power of a Scott, or the fanciful originality of a Shelley.

Catholic Nations and Protestant Nations compared, in their threefold relation to Wealth, Knowledge, and Morality. By Napoleon Roussel. (London, Ward and Co.) This work seems to be intended for a counterpart to Balmez' Catholicity and Civilisation; but in place of a philosophical discussion of principles and a judicious investigation of facts, M. Roussel begins with an assumption which no real Christian will tolerate, and then proves it by a blind hap-hazard use of confused statistics, intended to prove the acknowledged fact, that at present, and for the last century, certain populations, the majority of whom are Protestants, have been more prosperous and better governed than certain populations where the majority has been Catholic.

M. Roussel's assumption is that the true and the good are but one." That" the good" is knowledge, wealth, and morality. That these are measured by the statistics of schools, of exports and imports, and of assassinations and illegitimate births. The population where these statistics are most favourable holds the truth in godliness; that where they are unfavourable is cursed with a false religion.

Just apply the same arguments to the Jews of the time of Augustus; a dirty, degraded, hoarding, cheating, superstitious race, they were the objects of contempt and derision to the prosperous Roman, who was maddened into fury at the impertinence of their claim to be the depositories of the sole true religion, as afterwards Tacitus despised the "execrable superstition" which was then springing from its loins. Then God's truth, as even M. Roussel must own, had taken up its abode in what the civilised, and wealthy, and respectable Roman pleased to call the most demoralised people on the face of the earth. Even if it were the same now, it would only be in accordance with an analogy of Providence. But in spite of M. Roussel's cooked statistics, it is not so, as any one who has lived in a Catholic country very well knows. England and America are no more the model-people of Christendom than Tyre and Sidon were the élite of patriarchal times.

The whole Evidence against the Claims of the Roman Church. By Sanderson Robins, M.A. (London, Longmans.) Mr. Robins isolates the doctrine of the Papal supremacy from all its correlative dogmas of the unity and infallibility of the Church, and then endeavours to show that we have not in Scripture or tradition any clear document which erects such a personal power in the world as the infallible Pontificate.

His book is divided into eight chapters. In the first he "sifts as wheat" the texts which controversialists quote in support of the privileges of St. Peter and his successors; and by the same process whereby Mr. Maurice eliminates hell, the Jews the mission of our Lord, and the Unitarians the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, he eliminates the prerogatives of St. Peter from scriptural doctrines. Quite forgetting that the Church existed before the Gospels, and that the Gospels and Epistles were not the Acts of Parliament which erected the Church, but merely com