172 LAY SERMONS, ADDRESSES, AND REVIEWS. [vm. 



shows itself in that work, not only in the ways I 

 have already mentioned, but, notably, in the attack 

 on liberty of conscience which breaks out in the fourth 

 volume : — 



"II n'y a point de liberfce de conscience en astronomie, en physique, 

 en chimie, en physiologie merne, en ce sens que chacun trouveraifc 

 absurde de ne pas croire de contiance aux principes etaLlis dans les 

 sciences par les homines competents." 



" Nothing in ultramontane Catholicism " can, in my 

 judgment, be more completely sacerdotal, more entirely 

 •anti-scientific, than this dictum. All the great steps in 

 the advancement of science have been made by just 

 those men who have not hesitated to doubt the " prin- 

 ciples established in the sciences by competent persons ; K 

 and the great teaching of science — the great use of it as 

 an instrument of mental discipline — is its constant incul- 

 cation of the maxim, that the sole ground on which any 

 statement has a right to be believed is the impossibility 

 of refuting it. 



Thus, without travelling beyond the limits of the 

 " Philosophic Positive," we find its author contempla- 

 ting the establishment of a system of society, in which 

 an organized spiritual power shall over-ride and direct 

 the temporal power, as completely as the Innocents and 

 Gregorys tried to govern Europe in the middle ages ; and 

 repudiating the exercise of liberty of conscience against 

 the " homines competents," of whom, by the assump- 

 tion, the new priesthood would be composed. Was 

 Mr. Congreve as forgetful of this, as he seems to have 

 been of some other parts of the " Philosophic Positive," 

 when he wrote, that "in any limited, careful use of 

 the term, no. candid man could say that the Positive 

 Philosophy contained a great deal as thoroughly anta- 



