Middletown transcript., 1869-12-25

ileo and Newton had not then been born.
to map out the character and laws Of tiHts
magnificent progress in the heavens. which,
ought to teach US humility when We coni4-
pare it with the progress we boast. of on
earth, thus, in one INSTANCE at least, bring
ing the cause Of sGienca to serve the cala.t.
of religious truth. When the Council of
Trent assembled, the solar system of
Ptolemy, which places the earth in the
centre of the universe, had just been dis
puted by Copernicus, himself q canon Of
the church Of Rome, his works on that
subject having hoeR printed only two
years before the council met. In those
inventions which abridge distance, and
which have been truly said to do more
than all others for the civilization Of our
species, which facilitate the interchange
productions, and tend to remoye Ratilnai
and provincial antiRathies, the highways
even of England were such as in bad Yea.
ther to be almost impossible, and iG w,
rious parts of that kingdom goods were
carried by long trains of pack-horses.
The continent ON which we live had only
been discovered fifty y-three years before by
Columbus, in the undecked vessel, Pinta,
not larger than small size gun sloop Of
the present day. Ships at that period,
were of comparatively small size, though
they had been so far improved as to sail
upon wind, and the compass and as
trolabe having come into use, it was pos.
sible to engage in longer voyages. Those,
great powers of the old world, Prussia and
Russia, were unknown by name at the
time when the last Roman Catholic Parli-
ament assembled in the " Eternal City"
America, which has now "a Archbishop,
ricks, 119 Bishopricks, thousands of in
ferior clergy, aud an immense Roman
Catholic population, had not then been
colonized .,.
The first occasion for the Council of
Trent was furnished by Luther and the
Protestant princes, WHO appealed from the
decision of the Pope to council. Pho
council, having assembled, defined more
explicitly, at its different sessions, i'm
pugned doctrines of the church declared
tradition to be equally with the Bible
rule of faith the Apocryphea of the Old
Testament to be included in the canon of
the Bible; the Vulgate the ancient Latin
version used by the Roman Catholic
Church } was proclaimed to be the autheh-
tic version of the Bible, and the church
its own legitimate interpreter, The Ro-
man Catholic doctrines of original sin,
justification and the sacraments of the
eucharist, of confession and extreme unc-
ton, &c. were defined and promulgated.
The council closed, after various inter.
missions, Dec. 4, 1868.
A contemporary, referring to some of
the innumerable evidences of material
progress which the world has made SINGS
the Council of Trent, considers it strange
that in an era in which everything is
changed and advancing, Christianity
should remain stationary as If either nat
ural or revealed religion were progress
sive science, and there was any connection
between gunpowder and gas and the vital
doctrines of the Christian regulation, Il
is conceded, even by the advanced school
of rationalsts on the continent, that the
Christian system of morals cannot be i'm
proved The man who had in his posses
sion the Christian code in the days Of the
apostles could not possibly lie iaqre en-.
lightened as his duty to God and his
neighbor by familiarity with the principle
of the steam engine, or with all the dis;
} covcries and inventions which have since
been made If we contrast the pure and
self-denying lives of the first disciple OF
Christianity, ignorant as they were Of
compass, printing, gas, &c. With those
whose moral ideas are Illuminating the
. world at the headquarters of mechanical
progress, in such exhibitions as the Rich
ardson affair, we shall see how idle it is
: to imagine that there must be a progress
in divinity analogous to that which is
taking place in pharmacy geology and nav
igation. To the real believer in Christi,
anity it is not necessary to say that IN
what God revealed to man in the firsi
century, man cannot make any more dis
coveries in the nineteenth. h.-Batt. San.