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I was told that Protestantism still survived in this head seat of Protestant resistance; so much the priest himself had told me in the monastery parlour. But I had yet to learn if it were a bare survival, or a lively and generous tradition.
Protestantism is indeed here a tender plant, exposed to the cold blast of adverse winds, but if it takes healthy root, well will it be for the social, moral, and intellectual advancement of the people.
No one, however, can study the development of Protestantism and of Protestant churches without feeling that into the Reforrmation, too, Hebraizing child of the Renascence and offspring of its fervor, rather than its intelligence, as it undoubtedly was, the subtle Hellenic leaven of the Renascence found its way, and that the exact respective parts, in the Reformation, of Hebraism and of Hellenism, are not easy to separate.
I was obliged to confess to myself that it was unsatisfactory. If I were obliged to choose between the Protestantism of Mr. Work and the Romanism of Father Hyacinthe, I am afraid I should choose the latter. "But," said Jennie, "Mr. Work's sermon was not true Protestant doctrine, John. There is a Real Presence in the communion.
The history of the two succeeding generations is the history of the struggle between Protestantism possessed of the North of Europe, and Catholicism possessed of the South, for the doubtful territory which lay between. All the weapons of carnal and of spiritual warfare were employed. Both sides may boast of great talents and of great virtues. Both have to blush for many follies and crimes.
Faith begets faith; faith in Christ brings faith in the sacraments, and faith in the sacraments brings faith in Christ. It is disbelief in the efficacy of the sacraments and in the sacramental principle in life that is the essential barrier between Protestantism and Catholicism, and until this barrier is dissolved there can be neither formal unity nor unity by compromise.
It is through means of this moral galvanic battery, set up in the Vatican, that the Church of Rome has gained its power of UBIQUITY has so well nigh made itself OMNIPOTENT, as well as omnipresent. "It is no mean or puny antagonist that strides across the path of a free, spiritual and advancing Protestantism.
Storer, the distinguished Protestant physician of Boston, says: "We are compelled to admit that Protestantism has failed to check the increase of criminal abortion."
Now it is a matter of fact that the contempt of the marriage tie, so prevalent in our country, is owing to Protestantism. It is the Catholic Church alone, again, that has always regarded the Christian marriage as the corner-stone of society; and at that corner-stone have the Popes stood guard for eighteen centuries, by insisting that Christian marriage is one, holy, and indissoluble.
And, in every point, the opposition to what I may be allowed to call the protestantism of the nineteenth century is so manifest, that we cannot but feel that the peculiar character of the system is to be traced to what I have before noticed the extreme antipathy of its founders to the spirit which they felt to be predominant in their own age and country.
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