vention and cure." It will be published in quarterly numbers of 96 octavo pages, at the moderate charge of one dollar.

Works in Press. - James Munroe & Co. have in press a new volume by Rev. G. W. Burnap of Baltimore, entitled "Lectures on Unitarianism."They will also publish in a few days another volume of "Essays by R. W. Emerson."-They will shortly put to press, “Letters from a Landscape Painter. By Charles Lannian," Author of "Essays for Summer Hours."- Also "Notes on Cuba. By a Physician" at the South. Likewise a second volume of Chalmers's "History of the American Colonies" from the original manuscript of the author, recently received in this country, and never before published.

Normal Schools. The experiment which was commenced in this Commonwealth five years since, of educating teachers for our Common Schools, has been attended with all the success which its friends anticipated. In spite of the disadvantages incident to a novel enterprise, the distrust and prejudice of many of the people, and the secret or open hostility which was encountered from some quarters, the schools, established partly by means of appropriations from the Legislature and in part by the liberality of a single individual, have continued, from the time they went into operation, to gain favor, and by the results which they have furnished to the most suspicious observation have now secured a general acknowledgment of their value. The School at Barre was suspended after the death of Mr. Newman, its excellent teacher, and will now be resumed at Westfield. The School at Lexington will also close at that place, and be removed the next term to West Newton. The removal "is occasioned solely by the want of sufficiently ample accommodations at Lexington. The School has outgrown the building it has hitherto occupied. Not more than one half the pupils who have applied for admission within the last year, could be adequately accommodated with school-room." Rev. S. J. May, who has had charge of this School for the last two years, has resigned the office, to which Mr. Cyrus Pierce who was Principal of the School during the first three years of its existence, having recovered the health which he had lost in its service, has been re-appointed. The Westfield Normal School will be under the charge of Rev. Emerson Davis, who has for many years been at the head of the Westfield Academy. The School at Bridgewater remains under the care of Mr. Nicholas Tillinghast. "The school at West Newton is for females exclusively; those at Bridgewater and at Westfield for both sexes. All applicants for admission, if males, must have attained the age of seventeen years, and of sixteen years, if females. As a pre-requisite to admission, they must declare it to be their intention to qualify themselves to become school teachers. Tuition will be gratuitous to those who are inhabitants of the State and who declare it to be their intention to become teachers in the Public Schools of the State. Others will be charged a tuition fee-probably eight or ten dollars a term, each term consisting of fourteen weeks. The whole expense of board and washing need not exceed two dollars a week, at either of the Schools, and may be reduced much below this sum."

THE

CHRISTIAN EXAMINER

AND

RELIGIOUS MISCELLANY.

NOVEMBER, 1844.

ART. I.-PROTESTANTISM IN FRANCE.*

A MOMENTOUS period has arrived in the Roman Catholic Church. That Church is divided on this great question: shall the Catholic Church conform itself to the light, liberty and science of the nineteenth century; or shall the nineteenth century conform to the doctrines and rules of the Council of Trent? Germany, France, Belgium, and even Spain take the side of civil and religious liberty, against the Church; while Austria and Italy advocate the continued despotism of the Pope. This controversy is having a prodigious influence on Protestantism in Europe. The Catholics who do battle for modern science and progressive civilization find themselves unawares among Protestants, wielding Protestant weapons. In the mean time the true and avowed Protestants welcome even such reluctant

* 1. Vues sur le Protestantisme en France: Par J. L. S. VINCENT, l'un des Pasteurs de l'Église Reformée de Nismes. Paris. 1829.

2. Lettre à M. Guizot, Membre du Consistoire de l'Église Reformée de Paris; sur son article de la Revue Française, intitulé: Du Catholicisme, du Protestantisme, et de la, Philosophie in France: Par ATHANASE COQUEREL, Ministre du Saint Évangile et l'un des Pasteurs de cette Eglise. Paris. 1838.

VOL. XXXVII. -4TH S. VOL. II. NO. III.

25

allies to their ranks; and this singular commingling of different parties makes it very difficult to give a well-defined idea of Protestantism in the Old World. By selecting France as the best illustration of all parts of the question, we propose in this article to consider briefly the state of Protestantism in that country.

If one asks, what position France occupies; we answer, Germany invents, France proclaims, and England practises. France loves nothing so much as to diffuse herself. She is the declarative nation of Europe; and Protestantism has advocates there whose voices of power are heard from one end of the continent to the other. One cannot listen long to the debates of the Chamber of Deputies without hearing from the Tribune some sentiment like this, 'The world looks to France to take this first step in an advancing civilization.' In a country where such a spirit reigns the world may look for high and noble efforts, though peradventure mingled with obtrusive vanity and startling error. The French Protestants believe that they are now leaders of the van in the new conflict which the nineteenth century is beginning to wage with the Roman See; and in this they are correct; and they will not rest until they have carried their banners to the walls of the Vatican. If we could presume to condense into a single phrase what hundreds of volumes say on this subject, it would be this: - The Protestants maintain, that the central life and true essence of Romanism is authority, positive, uncompromising authority; while Protestantism is the exact opposite of this, viz. liberty, well-defined, practicable liberty. The Romish Church never asks; it always commands. The question therefore is, whether the nineteenth century is ready to bow down its neck to positive, uncompromising authority, in preference to exercising a well-defined, practicable liberty? We think that a very large majority of the intelligent and pious in France believe that the nineteenth century has passed the day of Romish authority in matters of faith, and that freemen can never return to servitude.

The tendency of public sentiment in almost every part of Europe is towards liberty in opinion; and we think that one hundred years from this day will see the distinctive authority of the Romish Church reduced to a name. Its forms will doubtless remain; but, we repeat, its distinctive

authority must cease. And we venture further to predict that that Church will see the policy of walking even with the present age, and will gradually conform to the new developements of civilization, and thus in time lose itself, like a Gulf Stream, in the surrounding sea of civil and religious freedom.

We wish we had space for proofs; but we will select one or two only as examples.

The Roman Apostolic Constitutions" maintain the principle, that the spiritual power is as superior to the temporal as the heaven is superior to the earth, the soul to the body, and the spirit to matter. They maintain that the Church possesses the ultimate power in things pertaining to salvation. There is not an example of Papal amnesty in history. Romanism is infallibility; and infallibility does not ask for faith, it demands submission, and is never satisfied until reason abdicates in favor of its sovereignty. From its very nature infallibility is fixed, inexorable and deaf. It can have no conditions, no degrees. It holds itself to be unvaried, eternal truth. It cannot retreat, or waver, or sympathise. It binds the human mind in destiny's chain, forbidding liberty of opinion, conscience, and speech. Hence out of this Church there cannot be salvation. (Acts of Council of Trent.) Even so late as May 27, 1832, it is asserted in a Papal bull to the Bishops of Bavaria, that "there is no salvation out of the Roman Catholic Church ;" and on the 25th of June, 1834, the Pope publicly condemned "unlimited liberty of opinion, of conscience and of speech;" and he has recently condemned Bible Societies, Tract Societies and Protestant Missionary Societies. The Emperor of Austria in a late decree has forbidden his subjects to embrace Protestantism without his permission! This provident imperial edict is adroitly directed against advancing Christian liberty; such liberty being now pressed around Austria like water round a diving-bell. The wary advisor of the Court has given us in this decree a remarkably fair specimen of the true Roman Catholic policy; a continuation of the spiritual reign of terror. Many of the elder members of the Catholic clergy still hold strongly to the ancient ideas, and they wish the Church should say to legislators, "Conform your laws to the Church or we will absolve your citizens from their allegiance." The younger

Catholic clergy say, that this spirit is adverse to the established forces of society, adverse to the French Charter, and subversive of the independence of the Tribune; and that France will not let any one religion absorb the civil law. But what are the facts? Have meliorations come? Certainly the changes have been great. In France, at the present time, science, philosophy, literature, social manners and prevalent maxims are mainly Protestant. They are all based on freedom as opposed to infallibility and dictation. The old, ready and quiet reliance on the ipse dixit of the confessor is now fatally weakened, if not finally broken; and if there be much Catholicism yet lurking in the minds of the young and intelligent, it is an artistic Catholicism, which regrets that Luther did not protect the fine arts like Leo X, or build a Protestant basilica to equal St. Peter's. These Catholics go into ecstasies of faith before the beautiful devils and winged angels of the Benita, and are wrapt in poetic devotion before the graceful groups on the antique cathedral windows; they are irresistibly impelled to worship God because they are enamored with Gothic architecture, and to worship the Virgin because she has had a Raphael. To ask such if they feel bound to go to mass, or if they believe in the real presence, or in the infallibility of the Church, or in there being no salvation out of it, or that unbaptized infants are damned, or that auricular confession is indispensable, or the celibacy of the clergy a divine injunction, or the establishment of monks and nuns judicious, or that plenary indulgence can be given by a man, -to ask them thus, would be, in their estimation, about the same thing as to ask them if they had lost their senses.

Further confirmation of these views we constantly found in France, whenever we talked with young Peers, young members of the Institute, young lawyers, young Deputies, and especially with young Professors in the University. Even among the selected orators, reserved to preach at Notre Dame during Lent, the like impressions obtained. Their subjects were not the errors of Protestantism, or the real presence, or plenary indulgence, or anathemas against the Heathen, or Romish infallibility, or the uncertainty of the ages of purgatory; but their sermons were exhortations to a holy life, recommendations of Christian faith and fidelity to the Church; sermons against materialism, against