1 JULY 1837, Page 18

GORDON'S PROTESTANT AND ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCHES.

Tfts object of this little book is to point out in what the strength of the Roman Catholic Church really consists; so as to prevent the Protestant Church from wasting its force upon masked works instead of attacking the citadel; or, which Mr. GORDON seems to think, the citadel being almost impregnable, to take a lesson from the enemy and fortify ourselves in the same way. According to our author, the power of the Catholic doctrines rests upon two dogmas, which attack the enthusiastic disposition, or the doubt- wearied but trust-disposed intellect in their weakest points: and these dogmas are the claim to miraculous powers, and an infal- libility which allows of no interpretation contrary to the Church, and forbids inquiry as a crime against faith. With a view of shaking the Catholic, or minds disposed to Catholicism, argu- tnente against transubstantiation, or any of the lesser incredibilia of the Romish Church, Mr. GORDON conceives are useless. The Catholic is taught to consider that stage of concealed doubt which urges the mind to inquiry, as a sin of the first magnitude : he is • AO obey, and not to nelson. Those intellects which, abusing free- dom of judgment, have wandered from sect to sect, or have fallen pr rat rate under the impossibility of forming a rule of faith by ,Se.f-interpretation of the Scriptures, or are trembling upon the verge

of' the cold gulf of scepticism, are taken by the bait of a powes higher than their own, and an authoritative decision which silence doubt by forbidding question. Having inherited or adopted these

large dogmas, there is no difficulty with the less; and if the mass, and the worship—or as the Catholics, refining upon words till they misconvey things, prefer to call it, " the invoce. tion "—of saints, and extreme unction, are not very convincing so reason, they are cmisolatory to the weak or the bewildered mind.

But besides these innate advantages of the Catholic Church, she is just now favoured by some of a temporary kind, to which the increase of her disciples is to be attributed, if any increase is really taking place. The right of private judgment, already alluded to, is pushed by the character of the age to a dangerous

extretne. In Germany, especially, Mysticism on one hand and Rationalism on the other, are driving men to wild fanaticism or religious infidelity. Under the pretence of philosophical interpretas time; of the Scriptures, piety is scandalized by Deism dissemitiated from the pulpit ; reason is alarmed by the " fantastic tracks "of fanatics who father their vulgarity and violence upon the inspire. tion of the Holy Spirit ; whilst in countries whose creed advocates the right of private judgment, the minds of the people are push- ing it in temporal matters to an extreme terrifying to authorities. Hence Mr. GORDON argues, that the individual victims of Mystis cistn or Rationalism, whose inquiring minds render them mistime, but whose happy temperament secures tivm from scepticism, take refuge in a church the fundamental principle of which is to free its votaries from doubt. On the other hand, many who are indifs ferent to the dogmas of the Catholic Church, look upon it with ap- proval, as the sole medium between religious phrensy or no reli- gion at all. The remedy for these evils, according to our author, is to cease attacking the subottimate Catholic doctrines, and to revise the Pro- testant right of plivate judgment, so as to confine it within safe limits. What these limits are, is not clearly defined by M". Goa. DON: he, properly enough, leaves to the Convocation the task of bel- ling the cat. But we incline to an opinion that much Is attributed lathe tight of' private judgment which it dues not perform ; fir we have never yet been able to discover where it exists de facto. A careful distinction must be drawn between laxity and liberty, or between the permission to inquire, (which cannot be wititheld,) and the permission todiffer. Though the Church of England may neglect her flock, she permits of no public re tunciation of her Articles, which she can punish ; and the membor of the smallest sect would be expelled from his congregation if he presumed to differ from his brethren in the dogmas of his conventicle. Nor, theologically speaking, is this so monstrous as it seems. The right of private judgment, in a full sense, is often but another name for the right of rebellion. " The woman who deliberates is lost:" the religionist who wishes to inquire into the truth of his creed, is already a sceptic in his heart. ' Of the general nature of Mr. GORDON'S arguments, our notice will have furnished an idea ; many of his subordinate ones are distinguished by acuteness aud thought. In a literary sense, ,A his deficiencies are a want of nets and a tendency to overlay his arguments; his excellences are force of expression, elevation of a tone, and often a philosophical perception. The following passage r?1 is an example of these qualities.

In the present age of the world, the inference against transubstantiation it short and conclusive; rosaries afford an easy triumph ; the discipline of celi. bacy is austere, unsuited to modern manners; both communions equally dread r the roafeseional ; nor do the doctrines of supererogation, penance, or purgatory, command the assent of any candid reasoner by the prevalent force of their own unassisted evidence. As to the fraudulent maxims and crooked policy which sully some parts of the Romish annals, these are now generally understood to be an integral part of that mixed scene of insurrection and tyranny which encoded the fall of the Gothic government, for the better part of a century,- acting an the Church, and not exempting ecclesiastical ptinees front that con- tagion which involved all the secular. The dreadful annals of the sixteenth century are no more chargeable on the Romish Church, than the romantic courage of the preceding age ; which equally agitated the prelates and minis. tars ot religion, and poured a monastic chivalry over the Teutonic plains Every system, whether civil or religious, which, like the Roman Catholic, t descends through a vast series of ages, will contract, in the course of its trans. mission, many such hues and stains—will receive and transmit the mural im- press of many a generation. Ecclesiastical history catches and reflects the genius of an age, as strongly as the narrative of its civil transactions, and even more strongly, by reason of the delicacy of those subjects with which it is con. - versant. But it is the business of those who pronounce on the moral cow. plexion of system., to distinguish the accidental from the essential ; and it es- . pecially belongs to those who censure a communion subverted and decried, El separate its natural colour from the transient hues which collateial objects may have cast upon it; and above all, not to mistake the glare which an aged blond shot on all the coeval institutions, civil us well as sacred, for the intrinsic qualities of that system, for spurs belonging to it, or blemishes inherent in it.