The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-01-06 00:00:00

POPERY AND THE GERMAN REFORMATION

(From the Church of England Quarterly.)
That Rome must be broken to pieces is clear, and the
Germans are leading a powerful band for its destruction ;
that she cannot, and will not, be built up again by the ho-
nesty of those who have recently joined her communion
is equally clear to any one that is at all conversant with
her policy, or who will just remember how necessary it is
to her interest to crush all the motions of spiritual life
which might effect her standing, or weaken her absolut-
ism in rule ; whilst, in the secession of so many good and
excellent men, a striking lesson is taught us all in the
power of Romish subtlety to pervert an honest mind
when once it is yielded to her fascinations : a still greater
lesson remains to be taught to those who would follow
her, if only they will wait to receive it, of 'that which she
makes of her victim when once in her power. A broken
heart or spiritual apathy—these are the alternatives that
await by far the greater portion of those who are gone
over to her. Be this as it may, howeves, both the move-
ments of which we are speaking prove that there is
throughout the world a spirit at work, whose office it is
to brealeiPup and to destroy ; in the exercise of whose fear-
ful power it is almost matter of indifference whether the
household he enters be sound or unsound in the rule
which it professes to follow; and from whose deadly vi-
sits nothing may hope to escape unscathed. " Judgment
(it is written) must begin at the house of God ;" and,
though the secession of the Oxford men will not help
Rome, it is doubtless doing its work in the fulfilment of
His word as respects England.
There are some who consider Ronge as the Luther of
the nineteenth century : there are others who can discern
nothing in the movements of which he is the leader but
lawlessness, infidelity, and rationalism. These opinions
have, each in their way, much truth ; but do not express
the whole of it. Ronge has before him a work, the result
of which will probably be the shaking of Rome to-its very
centre. In as far as this effect is conceived, that which
he is doing may bear some resemblance to the labour of
the great reformer; but there the resemblance ceases.
Neither in the character nor powers of his mind, the
ground he takes, nor the object he has chiefly in view,
can he be compared with Luther, who, however the Ro-
manists may seek to blacken his fame, was certainly the
great man of his age, and moved to his work by higher
and holier motives than can be discovered in anything yet
put forth by Ronge. On the other hand, whilst we firmly
believe that the stand which he takes is more rationalistic
than religious—for it is for political and intellectual free-
dom, rather than for spiritual liberty, that he is contend-
ing—we are persuaded, that those who will see nothing
but lawlessness and infidelity in this movement have en-
tirely shut out from their minds the part which Rome has
borne in bringing it to pass; and this, not because they
have overlooked it, but because they have; such a tender-
ness in dealing with her worst errors as amounts, in point
of fact, to an adoption of them. Now, if our hatred of law-
lessness hinder us from an unqualified approval of what
Rouge is doing, common sense and justice demand that
we pass a right judgment upon the miserable and profane
policy that has prepared the way for his work. Whatever
may be the nature of Ronge's reasonings in his justifica-
tion, the facts upon which he grounds-them are before all
the world ; and he must be blind indeed who does not
see in them Rome unchanged and unchangeable, unscrip-
tural and tyrannical : as grossly determined to force her
lie on yuor ignorance, and make money of its folly, as
ever ; and here we are not speaking of any disputable dog-
mas, but of the jugglery of Bishop Arnoldi and his coat,
of hich there me many duplicates; and, which, more-
over, has been clearly proved, by two professors of the
University of Bonn, to be nothing more than a stuff and
manufacture of the middle ages 1 We would recall to
the mind of our readers, that in Boxley in Kent, there
was a famous crucifix, called " the rood of grace," the
figure upon which, by machinery, was made to turn its
head, and move its eyes ; and, when the monasteries were
dissolved, the springs by which these movements were ef-
fected were discovered, and shown to the people. At
Hales, in Gloucestershire, the blood of Christ was said to
be contained in a phial of crystal; this the people some-
times saw, and sometimes did not. When they could not
see it they were taught that they were the subjects of
God's anger; but when it was visible, of his favour. A
like discovery was made—the phial was found to be
opaque on one side and transparent on the other ; and
the blood itself, the blood of a duck renewed every week.
At a more recent period, when the French occupied Na-
ples, the priests, in order to excite the people against the
enemy, showed them the phial containing the blood of St,
Januarius. The blood was, to all appearance, congealed ;
a proof, as the people were well taught to believe, that the
anger of God and his saint was kindled against them,
This coming to the ears of the French officer in com-
mand, he sent a request that the blood might liquify as
usual, accompanied with a gentle hint of unpleasant con-
sequences if it did not. It is almost needless to add that
St. Januarius became propitious. Why do we recall these
instances amongst the many which history records to the
minds of our readers? Simply that they may know that
the same dishonesty and wicked craft, which could coun-
tenance the " rood of grace " at Boxley—the deceitful
phial at Hales—the false blood of St. Januarius at Naples,
is as ready as ever to uphold the virtues of a detected im-
posture, if only there be credulity enough left to yield a
fitting profit in its use. If any one deny this, we would
refer him for the proof to Belgium, to Spain, to Italy, to
Germany—even to France. Wherever Romanism has a
strong-hold may be found innumerable instances of mi-
racle-working relics, not only of those to which time and
tradition may have lent a certain show of sanctity, but of
those which modern authority has, for the first time, pro-
nounced to be real and efficacious. It is not many
months ago (it was in the autumn) that the Pope sent, as
a present to the Bishop of Bruges, certain bones, with-
drawn from the catacombs of Rome, pronounced by him
to be bones of St. Leon, a Roman soldier, martyred in
the third or fourth century. These bones were enclosed
in a waxen image of the martyr, representing him as dead,
with a gash in the throat. This image was clothed in
the worst possible taste—in the tawdry silks and spangles
that usually make up the costumes of a minor theatre—
and with as little resamblence to the apparel of a Roman
warrior of that period as to the court dress of Louis le
Grand. It was laid on handsome cushions, enclosed in a
glass case, richly ornamented with gilded carving, and
thus exposed to the gaze and veneration of many thou-
sands, who crowded, for the space of a week, to the show.
Priests there were and plates for money, in course; and
every aid that ecclesiastical authority could give to force
the minds of the gazing crowd into a posture of worship
and adoration. Many of the poor people believed that
the figure which they saw was really that r,f the martyr,
miraculously preserved, nor did any take pains to unde-
ceive them ; whilst the liberal journalist of the town
poured unmeasurabie contempt on the whole proceeding,
and desired to be informed how these bones had lasted for
so many sges, and by what process the very bones of St.
Leon had been extracted from the catacombs—how, in
short, their identity had been ascertained. It is not impro-
bable that these bones of St. Leon will become to Belgium
what the relics of Ste. Philom6ne are at present in France
—the objects of intense adoration, and possessing, in the
estimation of the faithful, virtues of wonder-working effi-
cacy. The priests, both high and low, lend their influ-
ence in bringing their people to this relic worship ; and,
whatever they may sap in controversy tq the contrary, do,
in fact, as we have seen a thousand times, countenance it
in its grossest forms. What are we then to think ?—that
they believe the tales they teach, or suffer to be taught,
their people? In this case, what hope can there he of a
Church, whose ministers have not advanced in Christian
intelligence one jot beyond the grossness of the darkest
age ? Or is it that they do not themselves believe these
tales, yet use them as expedients for the maintenance of
their influence ? If it be so, then is their pticsicraft a
craft of the most miserable and dishonourable kind : and
woe to the men, who, in these days have entered their
communion, hoping to find their ideals of ecclesiastical
excellency realized ! Their own honesty of purpose will
avail them little in the midst of a system, whose compli-
cated, but exquisitely wrought machinery adapts itself to
every possible case wherein the energy of spiritual life
may break forth to crush it, if it manifest itself in any
form of scriptural and Christian truth.

AMERICAN LADIES. -In Broadway, the principal
street in New York, but not near so fine as Regent-street
or Oxford-street. the characteristics of the Americans as
a people are hardly to be distinguished, as nearly one-
third of the passengers are foreigners. But in walking
leisurely through the other principal streets, the physical
conformation of the true-blooded Yankee, as he calls
himself, begins to be developed. The men have no shoul-
ders; they are tall and lathy, like corn-stalks, and under
the nape of the neck they are sometimes as narrow as a
female. The ladies of New York have been through time,
which means about fifty years, so famous for their beauty,
that I know I shall be accused of envy, hatred, malice,
and all uncharitableness, if I say that it is entirely q mis-
take. But the truth must be told, and I have seen more
pretty women in London in one day, than ever I saw du-
ring all my rambles in the United States. That promi-
nent point of female loveliness, and which the shole Eng-
lish race so much excel in, is entirely wanting in the
American ladies ; they are as fiat as their own horrid sea-
coast; and though they artfully endeavour to conceal this
national deficiency by a peculiar, newly-invented, and
really very ingenious corset, yet it will not do ; oar ima-
ginings return unsatisfied, and our worst suspicions come
back confirmed.—Rubio's Rambles in the United States
and England.

THE SLIDING SCALE.-But some, who affect to ap-
prove of protection, find fault with the present form and
rate of protection—in short, with the sliding scale, which,
they allege, throws the whole corn trade into confusion
and uncertainty. A fixed duty, they say, would be more
likely to produce equality of price—Poland would then
know what to sow—Arkansas know what to ship—we
should have a steady market and a regular supply. This
argument we have heard used by grave persons of reputed
common sense ; but to us it seems the most notorious and
superficial nonsense ; and the only thing that can be said
in its favour is, that it happens accidentally to he directly
in the teeth of all the doctrines and statistical facts of the
free trade philosophers. Corn is an article of which the
natural produce fluctuates from year to year, and the in-
trinsic price ft mu month to month ; the problem is, to
bring these natural and uncontrollable variations to some-
thing of a level price in the market—for the purpose of
keeping wages, and all the various relations of life con-
nected with wages (in wages we include every kind of in-
come from labour of the body or the mind), in such a
state of approximate level or gradual variation as may not
dislocate society—for the stomachs of labourers or arti-
sans, and of their wives and children, will not obey the
seasons, and must be fed nearly to the same amount in the
bad years as in the good—in the month of plenty as in the
month of dearth; and this can only be accomplished by
inviting the aid of foreign coin at a rate of duty sliding
along the scale of prices—say—as by the present law—ls.
when the price is 735.-20 s. when the price is 505., and
so a shilling increase of duty for a shilling lowering of
price. The prevailing mistake on this question is the
confounding the duty and the price—the true ♦iew being,
that a fixed duty enhances theffueltrations of price, while
D./including duty tends to airy of pries.—Quar. Rev.