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were formed in that century, and wrote in it, or at the opening of the third, were men of learning, ability, and some of them of vast attainments. These were all men of whom the Christian world even to-day might be proud. When we come down later to the last half of the third century and to the fourth we find the Christian writers were the great men in genius, in talent, in learning, in philosophy, and eloquence of their age, and of an age by no means sunk in gross ignorance and enveloped in thick darkness. Mr. Derby forgets that the Christian Church was founded in the most enlightened and cultivated epoch of antiquity, and was established in the most enlightened centres of the Roman empire, amidst the most violent opposition of the heathen world. If her first Apostles were chosen from the humbler classes of Judea, we must remember that they were supernaturally endowed, and not presume on their ignorance or that of the primitive believers. The Acts of the early martyrs and confessors betray no such ignorance or credulity as is often supposed. Numerous councils had been held by the Christians prior to Constantine, and we find that when the Bishops from all parts of the world assembled at Nice in the beginning of the fourth century, they were all well aware of the faith and discipline of the Church, and that the Church herself was as thoroughly organized, had as regular an order, whether as to her government, her liturgy, or her modes of conducting her affairs, as at any subsequent period. Never was there a theory invented less necessary to explain the phenomena of Church history than the Theory of Development.

Does Mr. Derby doubt that Luther performed as to the Reformation the part usually ascribed to him? Does he consider it uncertain whether Luther did or did not publish his theses at Wittenberg, in 1517, and that he burnt at the same place the Papal Bull condemning his heresies? Which was the greater event, the acts of Luther or the establishing of the Chair of Peter at Rome, the founding of the Church in the capital of heathenism? What was to prevent St. Cyprian, St. Chrysostom, or St. Ambrose from being as well informed of the latter as Mr. Derby is of the former? They were nearer in space and time to the event than he is to Luther. They lived in

one and the same empire, under one and the same government, and the means of communication of all parts of the empire with Rome, prior to the irruption of the Barbarians, were neither few nor difficult, nor even dilatory. Just suppose, what is very supposable, that the early Christians of the empire took a deep interest in their religion, and that they knew as well what they were about as Mr. Derby knows what he is about, and the tradition that the See of Rome was Peter's See becomes conclusive, and can be questioned by no honest man capable of reasoning on such subjects.

Mr. Derby concludes that St. Peter did not, and that St. Paul did, plant the Church of Rome. But he adduces no evidence that St. Paul was ever Bishop of Rome, or that St. Peter was not the first Bishop, and therefore the founder of the See. To establish the claims of Peter it is not necessary to suppose that he was the first who proclaimed the Gospel in the city of Rome, or that when he transferred his chair from Antioch to Rome, there were no Christian converts there. It is only necessary to prove that he established his See there. Certain it is that St. Paul was not the first to plant the Christian faith in the Eternal City; for we learn from his Epistle to the Romans, written before he had visited Rome, that there were Christians and converts both from the Jews and Gentiles there, whose faith was spoken of in all the world. St. Paul, indeed, resided some time at Rome, and labored as an Apostle there, but that does not prove that he was or that St. Peter was not the Bishop, any more than the labors of Archbishop Bedini as Secretary of the Propaganda prove that he is and that Pius the Ninth is not the Supreme Pontiff. St. Paul was the Apostle of the Gentiles, but that does not make him the Primate of the Church, or make it not true that our Lord committed to Peter the care of the whole flock, both Jews and Gentiles. That he labored with Peter in founding the Church of Rome we do not deny, and therefore to this day Rome honors him as one of the patrons of her See, and the Popes in their official documents invoke him along with St. Peter.

That St. Peter was guilty of "tergiversation" at Antioch and that St. Paul withstood him to the face is not

certain, and till its certainty is established we cannot be called upon to respond to the allegation. It is not certain that the Cephas spoken of in the text was Peter the Apostle, and if he was, it does not follow that Paul reprehended him otherwise than as an inferior may reprehend a superior. We know elsewhere that St. Peter and St. Paul agreed as to the binding nature of the Jewish law, and the dispute between them at Antioch, if dispute there was, did not concern doctrine, but the propriety or impropriety of Peter's avoiding, in the presence of the Jews, eating with the Gentiles. The very worst that can be said is that the conduct of Cephas was reprehensible. Even if this Cephas was Peter the Apostle, it proves nothing against his infallibility, and at most would only prove that he was not impeccable. Now no man, however strongly he asserts the infallibility of the Pope in teaching, maintains that he is impeccable in his personal conduct. Popes go to confession, and to simple priests, as the rest of us. But Mr. Derby forgets that St. Peter was an inspired Apostle, and that therefore his teaching was infallible, even on Protestant principles. If he believes the Apostles were inspired by the Holy Ghost and divinely assisted to teach, he must take care how he impugns Peter's infallibility.

But enough for the present. We have dwelt at great length upon the second letter of Mr. Derby, because we have wished to meet fairly and to the advantage of our readers the points he has made. Nearly all the important matter of his whole book he touches upon in this Letter. We shall pass more lightly and more rapidly over the rest. But our readers must have patience with us, for we write not solely for Mr. Derby's special benefit, or for the sole purpose of refuting his assertions in the respect that they are his. In refuting him, we refute the whole class of popular anti-Popery writers, and perform a disagreeable, though perhaps not a useless task.

ART. III.—Philosophie et Religion. Dignité de la Raison humaine et Necessité de la Revelation Divine. Par H. L. C. MARET. Paris: Leroux et Jouby. 1856. 8vo., pp. 554.

M. MARET is dean of the Theological Faculty of Paris and a professor of the Sorbonne. He is favorably known as the author of an Essay on Pantheism in Modern Society, published in 1840, and a more recent work, entitled Theodicée Chrétienne, a work, however, which we have not seen. The volume before us, briefly noticed in this Review for last October, is the first volume of a great work on Philosophy and Religion, intended to be completed in six volumes. It is in the form of lectures, and occasionally recalls by its language, its thoughts, and its method of exposition the philosophical lectures of the eloquent and brilliant Cousin, really, with all his errors, one of the greatest philosophers France has hitherto produced. Inferior to Cousin in power and originality of genius, in vigor and freshness of thought, he is superior to him in the soundness of his judgment and the justness of his views. He has evidently profited largely by the labors of the Eclectic School, especially in the history of philosophical systems, and follows it more closely in some respects than we could wish; but he is, after all, a truer Eclectic than Cousin, whom we must always respect as our former master, and really has a doctrine which solves all systems and reintegrates their several elements of truth in a higher unity. He steers clear in his principles alike of modern psychologism and the ontologism of the heterodox Germans, and avoids the exaggerations of the Traditionalists on the one hand, and of the Rationalists on the other. We know no work of the sort that, upon the whole, we can more conscientiously recommend to our young students of philosophy.

The present volume, though really introductory to those which are to follow, is complete in itself. It is devoted to the discussion of the Dignity of human Reason against the Skeptics and the Traditionalists, and the insufficiency of reason and the necessity of Divine Revelation against the Rationalists and those who assert the

sufficiency of nature. The first part is chiefly taken up with the assertion and vindication of the prerogatives of reason, and an exposition and criticism of the several philosophical systems which have obtained from Plato down to Cousin. In the history and exposition of systems, the author falls into the error, as we regard it, of explaining them by their dominant psychological principle, and of classifying them according to their respective views of the origin of human knowledge, rather than according to their respective manners of viewing and explaining reality, and therefore of making philosophy a doctrine of science, rather than the science of things and their causes, human or divine. It is only since Descartes that philosophy has been reduced to a mere doctrine of science, a miserable psychologism. With the ancients it was the science of things, and sought to explain reality. Plato's problem was not, "How, or by what faculty do we know? but, what must we know in order to have real science or knowledge?" His purpose was not to prove that we have a faculty of knowing the non-sensible, but that all real knowledge consists in knowing the non-sensible, ideas, or intelligibles, which, according to him, are the essences of things, the real things or existences themselves.

We should, also, differ with M. Maret and others as to the true historical starting-point of philosophy. He supposes, as do many others, that philosophy, properly so called, originated with the Greeks, and had its first feeble beginnings in the crude speculations of the Ionian school. We are unable to believe this, and could as easily believe that modern philosophy began with the materialism of the last century, and that there were no philosophers, properly so called, before Locke and Condillac. Truth is older than error, and men begin in the true, not the false. Philosophy did not begin with the Greeks, comparatively a modern people. Plato draws from an older school than that of Socrates, older even than the school of Pythagoras, or that of Thales, and is to be regarded as a restorer of the ancient wisdom rather than an original inventor. His great master was Pythagoras, and both he and his master travelled in the mysterious East, and drew from a learning which flourished long ages before either of them was born. M. Maret, though teaching a philosophy quite

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