The Express.
London, England, 1865-04-15 00:00:00

the French Concordat of 1801 ; and lastly, a cata-

iogue of unsound propositions drawn up in 1863,
with the judgments of learned theologians there-
upon, which seems to have served as a model
for the Syllabus Errorum. The original Latin
of the Papal documents is given, and oppo-
site it a French translation. Le Clere and
Co. have the honour to be printers to the
Pope, and may be trusted when they declare that
they have been most solicitous for the purity of
the text and the exactness and authority of the
translation. " How great would be Jur happiness,"
exclaim these excellent publishers in the preface,
"to have some, however small, share in the triumph
of truth, and of the Church which defends it."
We must do them the justice to declare that they
have performed their part with conscience and
liberality, and that henceforth this well-edited
volume will be valued by all who desire to speak or
write with intelligence of the spiritual reign of
Pius IX.
By that school of catholica which is moat dis-
posed to magnify the authority of the Pope in the
church the pontificate of Pius IX. is regarded as
one of the most illustrious in the modern history
of the Papacy. His whole reign has been marked
by a succession of doctrinal definitions and deter
minations. He has enriched the church with new
dogmas, making that matter of faith which was
before only matter of opinion, and methodisiag
truth which was previously held in an unorganised
and amorphous state. In this latest authoritative
utterance he has taken the highest ground yet
occupied. The greatest act of his reign, the
promulgation eleven years ago of the dogma of the
Immaculate Conception, concerned catbolics ;
in his latest Encyclical he pretends to judge his
age, and pronounce sentence on its most cherished
opinions. Whatever may befall, this Encyclical and
Syllabus, illustrated as they are by the volume
before us, will form an imperishable monument
of their author. The documents here collected
have a further importance, derived from the
character of infallibility claimed for the declaration
of which they form the basis. The Dublin Review
says with reference to the authority possessed by
the Encyclical over the interior convictions of a
catholic—" We have no hesitation in maintaining
that its doctrinal declarations possess absolute
infallibility in virtue of the promises made by
Christ to St. Peter's chair." And to the same
effect, too, the Bishop of Arras writes to M.
Barocbe that "in the Encyclical everything is
doctrinal and even dogmatic. This being laid
down, your Excellency will understand that with
us dogma is not a simple opinion, but the Divine
truth itself—sovereign, eternal, immovable as
God." After this it is needless to point out how
interesting these various declarations must be as
well to the catholic who seeks infallible guidance
as to the protestant who desires to look into the
faith professed by so many of his fellow Christians.
It has often been observed that the Encyclical
with its Syllabus deals with particular propositions,
deemed erroneous, less on their own account than
as they form part of and have their place in a
general sustained assault on the body of
catholic dogma ant the authority of the
church. This mode of treatment gives a
completeness to the whole while it adds
significance to each of the parts. The error of errors
which is incessantly condemned in these Allocutions
and Bulls is that the aid of the church is an advan-
tage which a Christian man may estimate for him-
self. It is the soul of proposition after proposition
emerging in various forms, which the Pope is never
weary of condemning. In all ages men have
arisen within the catholic church who have been
inclined to believe that the All Merciful is
nearer and more accessible to them than priests are
willing to allow. Dean Milman has observed with
great judgment that it was thie pervading senti-
ment which distinguished the celebrated " Imitation
of Christ," a work of unequalled popularity, from
the catholic literature of its age. " The Imitation
is the soul of man working out its own salvation
with hardly any aid but the confessed necessity of
Divine grace." And this is the sentiment which
never fails to awaken the anxieties and kindle the
wrath of the Pope. It was alarm on this account
that impelled him in the first year of his Pon-
tificate, and while hie political administration
constituted him the wonder and hope of liberal
Europe, to "reprobate and condemn those
perfidious Bible Societies, which, renewing
the odious artifices of heretics of old, unceasingly
produce, and contrary to the wise rules of the
church, matter among the least instructed of the
faithful the books of Holy Scripture translated into
the vulgar tongues, with interpretations oftentimes
most perverse, devoting incalculable sums to the
distribution of thousands of copies of the Scrip-
tures, and giving them away gratuitously, in order
that every man, after having rejected tradition, the
doctrines of the fathers, and the authority of the
church, may interpret the divine oracles according
to his own particular judgment, and so fall into the
I abyss of terrible error."