ultimately to aim, and to which, there can be no doubt, we shall yet reach. Many causes have operated to produce this feeling. Not the least effective of these we take to be, the appreciation which our ministers are now beginning to have of their own position. In our unendowed churches, hitherto, there has been a singular backwardness on the part of the ministers in this respect. They have left to others the assertion of that principle which lies at the foundation of our christian polity-that "the labourer is worthy of his hire." Now, however, that they have cast aside a modesty, if we may so express it, that became them not, and was as prejudicial to the welfare of their respective churches as it was injurious to their own private interests, are we saying too much-and here we speak in reference to the ministers of our own denomination when we ask them to exhibit a similar laudable zeal in regard to all the departments of the ecclesiastical system to which they belong. This leads us to a subject of great importance in connection with the United Presbyterian Church, and one which we hope will not be overlooked at the ensuing meeting of Synod-namely, the allowance which we give to our theological professors. We can boast of as able a staff of theological professors as any religious body in the country. All of them are men of sterling talents,-while some of them are highly distinguished in various walks of sacred literature. Yet, true it is, that these men are paid for their services in relation to the Theological Hall, with the paltry pittance of L.60 each per annum. A stranger to our communion, in looking over our financial statement, would deem it a thing almost incredible, that we could get the services of five such eminent men to supply our professorial chairs, for the sum of L.300 yearly. It is accomplished, however; but, in that accomplishment, we certainly have not much credit. These men may be willing, out of love to our church, and regard for the noble work of being instructors in our "school of the prophets," to undertake the duty upon such terms; but is it right on our part so to requite their labours? Is this a way to reward profound scholarship, high intellectual endowments, and, above all, great facility in imparting that knowledge of the Scriptures which makes wise unto salvation? Not to speak of the previous preparation requisite for the fulfilment of the duties appertaining to the professorial office, L.60 will only give about thirty shillings for each day's work of the "session." This is the money value set upon the labours of our professors. Now, we put it to the members of the church, if this is a scale of remuneration that will stand comparison with what is allowed even to the subalterns of the other learned professions. Why, a fifth-rate advocate, in his 66 session," " will pocket, in the course of a day, half-a-dozen such fees! But look, in the next place, at the time bestowed on the getting-up of our professors' lectures before the session of the Theological Hall commences. With the Rationalistic views of the German philosophers prevailing to a large extent in this country, and with Popery every now and again appearing in some new and more insidious phase, our professors, if they perform the functions of their office aright, must study these systems of error and superstition, and be prepared to demonstrate to the students under their charge, how they can be overcome and demolished. This cannot be done without much labour and research, and also without some considerable expenditure of money in the purchase of such works as are necessary for the purpose. A professor resident in Edinburgh may, perhaps, save that expenditure, as he has access to the theological library; but it is not likely, so long as the present system exists of combining the duties of the pastorate with those of the professor, that we shall have our professors all resident in the metropolis; and those who are not, must, of necessity, be subjected to the outlay to which we have adverted. It is also deserving of notice that, in the case of those "non-resident" professors, a very large expense must be incurred for lodgings and other accommodation in Edinburgh during the session; so that if we were to open a debtor and creditor account in these pages, we fear that it would be but too easy a task to show that, at the end of the twelvemonth, the L.60 would have nearly all disappeared from the creditor to the debtor side, leaving our respected professors in the position of having devoted, without any pecuniary reward or compensation, a large portion of their valuable time and labour to the benefit of the church in a department which, above all others, is calculated to promote its spiritual usefulness and prosperity. Other religious bodies treat their professors differently; and it will not be without its use, if we shortly allude to what some of these bodies do in this matter. The English Congregationalists, in their new united college at St John's Wood, devote no less a sum than L.2300 a-year in payment of the salaries of their professors, viz. Dr Harris, Principal and Theological Tutor, Dr Philip Smith, Mathematics, &c., Rev. Mr Godwin, Logic and Exegesis of the New Testament, Total, L.500 500 500 400 400 L.2300 The Baptists in England, on the other hand, we believe, pay their theological tutors from L.250 to L.300 per annum, with residence and other perquisites. Then, if we take Scotland, we find that the Free Church pay the large sum of L.3550 to their professors, namely:— Dr Cuningham, Dr Buchanan, Dr Bannerman, Professor Macdougall, Dr Fleming, Dr Black, Dr Duncan, Professor Fraser, Professor M'Laggan (Aberdeen), L.450 400 400 400 400 400 400 400 300 L.3550 This is irrespective of various smaller salaries paid to tutors. From the gross amount, however, there falls to be deducted the fees received from students; so that the annual sum paid by the Free Church on account of theological teaching will be about L.2500, or eight times as much as the United Presbyterian Church! Even the Independents in Scotland, small in number as they are, pay more than we do for theological education. These facts, we trust, will awaken attention to this matter at the coming meeting of Synod. The honour of the United Presbyterian Church is intimately connected with this matter. Throwing aside the question of justice, we cannot afford, as a denomination, not inferior to any in Scotland, to allow this stigma to rest longer upon us; and consistency demands that those who are properly seeking a higher scale of remuneration for themselves, should not overlook the case of those who are, considering their duties, the worst paid among their number, and whose salaries are fixed by the Synod itself, and not by the churches under their care. Q. THE CONFESSIONAL UNMASKED-MAYNOOTH MORALITY. THE lengthened agitation which resulted in 1829 in the removal of those disabilities that harassed Roman Catholics, and branded them with the stigma of political exclusion, had one consequence, inevitable perhaps, and yet deeply to be lamented. The habit of regarding them as a class suffering from unjust persecution, and injured thereby in a material, as well as moral sense, brought about the re-action which would naturally occur in liberal and generous minds, and from being objects of active hostility, they became objects of as active favour. From being persecuted, they were courted and caressed; from being unwisely restricted, they came to be unwisely fostered. From the period of the Emancipation Act down to our own days, blandishments and kind words to Popery formed part of a settled state policy, and the active creed of so-called liberalism; while O'Connell, an unprin cipled and intriguing Jesuit, a man who, in all his acts and speeches, had specially in view the advancement of Popery in its worst phases, was a pet object of reforming idolatry, the very enfant cheri of progressive radicalism. At the time we speak of, one had only to talk of the colossal corruptions and abominations of Romanism, its unchanged and unchanging character of evil, to be stigmatised as a narrow-minded and antiquated bigot,-one quite out of place in an age of enlightenment. The well-known characteristics of Popery were deliberately ignored, and it was taken for granted that she had advanced with the age, profited by its enlightenment, and modified in obedience to its tolerant and humane legislation, her code of jugglery, blasphemy, and blood. For twenty years this went on, and one frail defence after another was levelled to the ground, in presence of the masked batteries of our treacherous and irreclaimable foe. One warning after another was despised, while we cherished in our bosom the serpent, which, warmed into activity, now rears its crest and menaces us with its poisoned fang. Happily all that is over. Warned by late experience, our countrymen are now awake to the designs of Romanism, and watch its developments and aims, with a gaze from which the film of false liberalism and dangerous confidence has completely fallen. Maynooth is looked to, and people are inquiring, if it really be the case that doctrines subversive of the first principles of morality are there systematically taught to the future religious guides of the Irish people. They ask themselves whether the money of the nation is well spent, or whether it is not laid out in the propagation of doctrines dishonouring to God and destructive Books exposing the true character and more secret doctrines of Romanism, and containing revelations which a very few years back would have been scouted as the veriest flams, and ridiculed with scornful incredulity, are now published, and read, and believed, and that belief is vigorously acted on. To one of the most remarkable of these publications* we now call the attention of our readers, and if any should think our quotations too startling to be credited, they may get it and judge for themselves. to man. This pamphlet is in many respects very singular and ingenious, and differs from every other of the sort we have seen, though our experience is considerable. It is not merely owing to the extent and variety of its shocking revelations, though that is certainly without parallel, that it is novel in its character; but to the fact, that all the quotations are given in the original Latin, in juxta-position with the translations of them, and the classic scholar may compare both, and at the same time take advantage of the copious references to verify the correctness of the quotations. The celebrated pamphlet of Sir G. H. Smith, M.P., on his justification of the use of the epithet "beastly" as applied to the doctrines taught at Maynooth, is, though far inferior, the nearest approach to the present publication we have yet seen, and we believe a somewhat similar work was published some years ago in Dublin. Before commencing our quotations, we may simply say of the work, that the compiler seems to have been as indefatigable as he was ingenious, having ransacked the works of all the most noted Romish casuists and doctors, though we can infer that there is one work, from which even he, though not very squeamish, has evidently turned away with intolerable loathing. There is a certain piquancy and humour in some of his remarks, which are decidedly Hibernian in character, and though we must condemn that habit of mind, which could permit any man of ordinary feeling to be facetious on such subjects, we marvel at the self-j f-possession of one, who can calmly stop in the midst of his revolting task to illumine with an occasional flash of real wit, the seething dunghill on which he is at work. And what a cloaca of rank abominations is here laid bare to the sickened gaze! All that the most ingenious and hair-splitting casuistry can devise to excuse crime and refine away the barriers between right and wrong-all that intellects, fertile in invention, can summon at their call to make the worse appear the better, and "The Confessional Unmasked," showing the depravity of the Priesthood, &c., being Extracts from the Theological Works now used in Maynooth College, and sanctioned by the "Sacred Congregation of Rites."-London: Henry Allman, 8, Amen Corner. Pp. 76. The readers of Gavazzi's Orations will recognise the work to which we allude. We do not care to name it. exhibit vice with the attributes of virtue, to adjust gratification to desire, to give every possible crime its value in the mart of penance, and its exact position in the tariff of sophistry, to define the boundaries of the venial, so that the determined transgressor may tell to a nicety how much he may dare before absolution becomes at all a necessary thing-all that an imagination, rankly prurient, can rake up from the depths of its own vileness, and then luxuriate in contemplating-all sorts of monstrous and unnatural crimes* devised by these doctors of theology and canon law, with a fertile ingenuity which may safely be termed unparalleled, and explained with a minuteness which would indicate a life-long apprenticeship in the school of the horrible and the obscene-crimes natural and familiar only to the vilest of society, and crimes whose mere mention would bring blushes on the cheek of a Cyprian-such are the contents of this book, and such the matters on which these sainted doctors of Romish celebrity dilate with the power of their logic, and all the resources of their erudition. In the concise and significant preface to the book, we are told what are the authorities from which the extracts are taken, and the reasons why they are selected. The chief are Liguori, canonised in 1839, as St Alphonsus; Dens, of Louvain; Bailly, Delahogue, and Cabassutius, Sanchez, and Suarez, the former almost supreme in his vileness, are also quoted from. To these we may add St Thomas Aquinas, who has been designated the "seraphic" or "golden" doctor, As to Liguori, it is proved by the Roman Catholic Callendar for 1845, that previous to his canonisation in May 1839, all his writings had been rigorously discussed more than twenty times by the Sacred Congregation of Rites, which decreed that not one word had been found in them worthy of censure. His works are also recommended by Cardinal Wiseman to his priests. The high standing of Dens as a Romanist authority is well known. And Bailly, Delahogue, and Cabassutius are proved by the Report of the Educational Commission of 1826, to be stated class books at Maynooth. All these works may be examined by the curious inquirer for himself in the British Museum or other national libraries, and he may satisfy himself of the perfect authenticity of every quotation given, and of its literal cor rectness. The following, then, are some of the contents, and they are, in fact, so many theses, which the learned doctors establish, or appear to establish, with most elaborate argumentation. Priests may swear they do not know what was told to them in confession, because in that case they know it only as God.-p. 2. All persons may swear falsely, even on oath, before judges. p. 2-4. Priests may deceive the dying, by pretending to give absolution, even when in reality they do not give it.-p. 10. Persons who have not been absolved, may obtain testimonials from the priest, stating that they were absolved.—p. 8. Women may commit adultery with impunity, and even deceive their husbands afterwards.-p. 19. Servants, who consider their wages too low, may compensate themselves by stealing from their masters to make up the deficiency. Questions to be put to young men and women, twenty years of age, to persons about to be married, to newly married ladies, &c. It is lawful to assist in committing rape.—p. 26. From the above catalogue, it is obvious that we can only give quotations relating to some of the subjects treated of. First, then, of the "seal of confession :-" "Can a case be given in which it is lawful to break this seal ?" Answer-"It cannot; although the life or safety of a man depended thereon, or even the destruction of the commonwealth; nor can the supreme Pontiff give dispensation in this, so that, on that account, this secret of the seal is more binding than *We may apply to these doctors Lord Maidstone's indignant denunciation of French novelists, "Ye whose pens audacious Probe all mysteries of crime." the obligation of an oath, a vow, a natural secret, &c., and that by the positive will of God."*-Dens, vol. vi, p. 219. "What answer, then, ought a confessor to give when questioned concerning a truth which he knows from sacramental confession only?" Ans. "He ought to answer that he does not know it, and, if necessary, confirm the same with an oath."Dens, vol. vi. p. 219. "It is asked, whether the confessor, interrogated concerning the sin of his penitent, can say that he does not know it, even with an oath? It is answered in the affirmative, in accordance with the common opinion which St Thomas and others hold. The reason is adduced by the divine Thomas in the quoted place, who says, 'A man is not adduced in testimony unless as a man, therefore he can swear that he does not know what he knows only as God; (and this holds good, although a confessor may have been asked to give his answer not as man, but especially as minister of God, as Suarez and the before-quoted authors rightly say) * * *What if he should be asked to answer without equivocation? Even in that case he can answer with an oath that he does not know it."-Liguori, vol. vi. n. 646. See also Delahogue, vol. i. p. 292. A prodigious number of authorities is quoted to the same effect, yet this same confessor, who acts as God, may deliberately cheat invalids or the dying, with the idea of absolution! 66 However, I approve that which the same Roucagl. says-That if an indisposed penitent threaten a confessor on account of being denied absolution, the confessor can justly fly from him and not return; because, in that case, these threats are not a sin made known for the purpose of obtaining absolution, but a sin committed in confession which does not require the seal. But that flight is only allowed to a confessor, if, by flying, he does not cause others to suspect that absolution has been denied; because, rather than do that, he should recite some speech, not intending to deceive the penitent, but only to obtain freedom from that trouble, although the penitent may deceive himself, believing that declaration to be the form of absolution."-Liguori, vol. vi. n. 659. On mixed marriages : "But, is the condition of educating the offspring in heresy repugnant to the substance of matrimony-viz., that the sons may follow their heretical father in his sect, and the daughters their Catholic mother? Ans.-This kind of stipulation is null, since it is repugnant to the obligation of parents; such marriage, with express or tacit compact, or under the condition, that either all, or any, of the children be educated in the sect of their heretical father, is always and everywhere unlawful, most iniquitous and grievously sinful against the natural obligation of parents, and against the divine and ecclesiastical law; for every parent is bound piously to take care that her offspring be educated in the true faith, and acquire the necessary means for salvation; therefore, she is bound by no obligation to permit the education of her offspring in a damnable sect."-Dens, vol. vii. pp. 144, 5. The editor here remarks :-" Thus, if the canon law were introduced into these countries (Britain), all the children from every mixed marriage would be obliged to be brought up as Roman Catholics, or else be declared illegitimate. Let us look at Prussia, and take warning in time."-P. 12. "Note. That if a Catholic knowingly contract marriage with a heretic, he cannot on that head separate himself from her, because he has renounced the right of divorce; except, however, the heretic promised her conversion, and would not stand to her promise; also, if the Catholic knows that he is in imminent danger of losing the faith by cohabiting with a heretic."-Dens, vol. vii. p. 180. Of concealing or dissembling the faith: Liguori asks, whether it is lawful to deny the faith, or to possess a false one, and answers thus, "In no case is it lawful, whether it be done by voice, or any other sign, Christ having said, 'He who hath denied me before men,' &c. In the meanwhile, in * It is afterwards shown that priests may break this seal of confession, when it suits their own purpose, or the fancied interests of the church. After reading this, can we believe a Roman Catholic on his oath? |