A MAN with the peculiar turn of Dr. Temple for finding results of the past in the present, might perhaps be inclined to trace the time-honored cry of the English Protestants, "No popery!" to the temper of Henry VIII., who retained the whole of the Catholic doctrine in his creed except the supremacy of the pope. A Catholic will with good reason

Now Bishop of Exeter. He was the author of an ingenious but whimsical essay, styled, "The Edu

cation of the World," in Essays and Reviews, where

he parcelled out the elements of our present civilization among different nations of antiquity. He almost

seems to have thought that Turner owed his know

ledge of painting, in some vague way, to Zeuxis and Parrhasius.

see in it a testimony from enemies to the unity of the church through the successor of St. Peter. The historian will point to the fact that Protestants have from the beginning agreed only in one thing, hostility to the church. The Protest of 1529, from which they take their name, is the first example we have in history of a thing with which modern times are familiar-an arrangement on the part of those who, as the phrase goes, "agree in essentials," to act together for a time in order to accomplish some common end. In a similar way we saw Dr. Pusey take

part in 1865 with the liberals, in order to promote the election of Mr. Gladstone as member for the University of Oxford. He afterward coquetted unsuccessfully with the Methodists. And last year he offered to join with the evangelicals in a protest against the elevation of Dr. Temple to the see of Exeter. Yet whatever may have been the case in times past, we should have supposed that the futility of such coalitions in these days had been long sufficiently evident. Dr. Pusey, we imagine, now feels little pleasure at having Mr. Gladstone at the head of affairs; and if the evangelicals had accepted his offer instead of rejecting it, he would have found out in the end that he had paid much for their help, and got very little by it.

By looking back to the circumstances in which Protestantism began, we find an explanation of its marked features the variety of its differences, the fact that these find some common ground in the cry, "No popery!" and the inevitably logical tendency of Protestantism to dissolve into latitudinarianism. Of these the first two scarcely require to be illustrated; yet we may notice one singular illusion which has done more than any thing else to give a fictitious unity to the Protestant sects, and to invest their protest with a certain air of virtuous indignation; we refer to the common belief that the Bible is in some sense their peculiar possession, which springs from the doctrine that, so long as a man professes to get his creed out of the Bible, and the Bible only, it matters little of what articles his creed consists. This fiction has done good service in its day; but the Protestants are now likely to be worried by the fiend with which they used to conjure. They received the Bible from the church, and they turned it against the church. Now they find it in the

hands of the modern critical school turned against themselves.

That the Protestants who separated from the church should have been able to accept Scripture as binding upon them, is not strange; although to a philosophical mind at the present day, the Protestant theory must present insurmountable difficulties. When men break off from a system in which they were born and bred, they cannot, if they would, make of their minds a tabula rasa, freed from all prejudices and associations, ready to receive whatever can be proved purely a pri ori. To attempt this would be to attempt to move the world without a fulcrum. The question, What can be proved a priori? is one which requires the course of many generations only for its statement; as for its solution, that may be said to have proved itself impossible. Men are obliged, when they change their opinions in some respects, to allow their conduct to be influenced by those opinions which they do not change; and in some cases it happens that it is impossible, upon any a priori ground whatever, to draw the line between what they keep and what they reject. So it was at the foundation of Protestantism; and the effects of the modern "universal solvent" are due to what we have just stated, that, taking what a priori ground you will, there is none which will support the Protestant without landing him at last in contradiction or absurdity. Thus, men in the sixteenth century could easily accept theories of Scripture interpretation which are now found to be untenable; and the result is fatal to those who are so deeply committed to the untenable theories that the loss of them involves the loss of their whole intellectual groundwork.

For the Protestants cannot, as the Catholic can, point to the striking fact of a general agreement extending

over many centuries. We know that the Protestant critics profess to pick holes in the Catholic claim to general agreement; but what a beggarly appearance these attempts present when they are contrasted with the whole extent of the subject! What is the value of the few specks they point out in the vast current of ecclesiastical history? They find so little to say, that what they say is proved to be the exception and not the rule. But if we turn to their own case, what a difference do we find! There we have no question of pointing out flaws here and there; it is all one mass of flaws. Protestants may attack the claim of the church; but they themselves are not able so much as to put forward a claim. Nor do they venture to claim unity; some even avow their preference for diversity. Yet in practice we find them all acting as though each thought himself infallible.

This is the result of a very common human weakness. Just as the founders of Protestantism could quietly acquiesce in many things which they had imbibed from the Catholic world in which they were educated, so their successors quietly acquiesce in what comes to them from their fathers; and in both cases there is much which cannot be systematically exhibited without contradiction. But very few men care to set about the systematic exhibition of all that they profess to believe or to act upon. If it were otherwise, the Protestant theories of Scripture would never have been set up; and they are now falling before the exertions of men who insist upon having a clear view of what they are called upon to believe. When the reformers made their appeal to Scripture, it was impossible for men of different tempers, habits, and associations to agree upon matters of interpreta

tion, even if the appeal had been made in good faith. As it was, the appeal was made subject to certain foregone conclusions, none of which, perhaps, could have been deduced from the mere text by any scientific process of exegesis. Servetus could not find the doctrine of the Holy Trinity in the Bible; and though he was little if at all to blame, according to Protestant prinples, Calvin though this failure worthy of death. Luther found in the Epistle of St. James much more than he wanted, and therefore he ejected it from the canon. Thus the appearance of an appeal to a common standard is an appearance only. It has been found to cover the widest variations both of doctrine and ritual. The only result of professing to be bound by the Bible is, that the text is wrested to mean any thing. No single system of exegesis, strictly applied throughout and deprived of all external suggestion or comment, will elicit a consistent whole from the declarations of Scripture. All sects can produce some texts in their favor, and all find some texts which they are obliged to explain away. Inquirers are supposed to bring to the task of examination a previous reservation in favor of the doctrines of their peculiar sect. If they do not, they are denounced as traitors and unbelievers, in spite of the ostentatious demand for a free inquiry. When Mr. Jowett proposed to use for the elucidation of Scripture those aids and methods which scholars have applied with great success to the profane classics, he was met with something more than outcry; he was actually persecuted. Yet his persecutors, who kept his salary as professor of Greek down to forty pounds per annum when the other similar professorships were raised in value to four hundred pounds, had nothing to offer by way of reason against his