126 REV. CHANCELLOE LIAS, M.A., ON 



prevailing practices of her confessors and directors, in the 

 liturgical biographies of her canonized saints, in the principles 

 of her government and in her methods of education ; much that 

 revolts the very same moral and religious sense to which in the 

 hrst instance her claims to our submission must appeal."* This, 

 passage demands the very closest attention. Every portion of 

 it is as formidable an indictment of the working of the Eoman 

 system as .the most uncompromising of its opponents could have 

 framed ; and the most formidable of its features is that it comes 

 not from those ignorant Protestants who, as the lioman contro- 

 versialists are so fond of telling us, never did and never will 

 understand the system of the infallible Church, because they have 

 never viewed it from the inside, but from a man than whom no 

 one better understands the Koman system and its working, 

 liaving viewed it from the standpoint of the Order which above 

 all others has proved itself indispensable to the Papacy, and is 

 understood to hold the Infallible Pope himself in the hollow of 

 its hand. Nor does Dr. Tyrrell flinch when confronted with 

 expulsion from the Jesuit Order and from the Jioman Church. 

 He returns to the charge in his Throiujli Scylla and CharyhdiSy 

 and boldly arraigns Medifevalism in a sul)sequent work with 

 that title. He does not scruple to speak of " the long and sordid 

 record of clerical scandal that we find in Church history " (of 

 course he confines this phrase to the history of the Church to 

 which he belongs), " the persistent recrudescences of avarice, 

 ambition and licentiousness in the ministers of the sanctuary " 

 (p. 49). And though he tries to shelter himself under the plea 

 that this admission " can prove no more against Catholicism " (by 

 which he means Eomanism) " than the like phenomena in the 

 ministers of law and religion can prove against law and govern- 

 ment," he forgets that human societies do not claim to be under 



* The apologists of Rome will also do well to notice the admissions of 

 Cardinal Mercier in regard to Belgium, the country in which the Roman 

 Church has perhaps a firmer hold on the people than in any other counti y 

 in the world. He says (see Tyrrell, Medicevallsm, p. 16) that while eveiy 

 young man "as he grows up takes a pride in developing his bodily 

 strength, in adding to the amount of his knowledge, in forming his 

 judgment, in deepening his experience, in improving his speech, in 

 lefining his style, in mastering the ways of the world, in keeping in 

 touch with the coui'se of events . . . many a Catholic of twenty, 

 thirty, or forty yeai's of age would, if asked, be forced to confess that 

 since his first communion he had learned nothing, and perhaps forgotten 

 a good deal of his religion." Extremes, it seems to me, meet on this 

 matter. Our liahit of allowing everything to be (|uestioned is becoming 

 as fatal to religious research or reflection among our laity as is that of 

 he Roman Church in forbidding all inquiry. 



