THE

BIBLIOTHECA SACRA.

ARTICLE I.

WAYS TO ROME.

BY REV. FRANCIS WHARTON, D.D., LL.D., PROFESSOR IN THE EPISCOPAL THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY AT CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

In one respect the work before us1 is open to serious exception. Herr Nippold is a "liberal," and as such revolts from anything that savors of a positive faith. He does not see that orthodoxy can be anything else than compulsory; he is unable to conceive of a mind that in perfect freedom, under the blessed influences of the Holy Spirit, accepts and obeys the revealed gospel of Christ. "Bondage," and yet "liberty," simple submission to a creed coalescing and becoming coincident with entire freedom both of belief and life, these are among those mysterious harmonies which, verified as they are by the experience of every Christian heart, pass, like the co-existence of predestination with individual responsibility, beyond the range of the comprehension of the world. Hence it is that so often we hear the view incidentally taken by Herr Nippold in one of his closing sections that whatever sets up an authoritative standard, in matters of faith at least, opens the way to Rome. Now, in one sense, this is nothing more than Luther's well-known

"Welche Wege führen nach Rom. Geschichtliche Beleuchtung der römischen Illusionen über die Erfolge der Propaganda," von Friedrich Nippold. Heidelberg, Verlagsbuchandlung von Fr. Bassermann. pp. 456. 1869. VOL. XXVIII. No. 111.-JULY, 1871.

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saying, that there is a pope in every man's belly; and if it be limited to this, it is a position that all must admit. Every man, if he follow his natural instincts, will be a pope if he can. And this holds good in things ecclesiastical, as well as in things practical and domestic. The Methodist class-leader who patronizes no Christianity that is not Methodistic, and sees nothing Methodistic that is not Christian; the Presbyterian elder who makes his self his creed, and his creed an anathema; the Episcopal neophyte, who believes himself the holy catholic church that can never err, and who treats his bishop with the most abject professed veneration and the most insolent practical contempt - each of these assumes papal powers, so far as his little opportunities will allow. Nor can we stop here. If the pope is incarnate in any one, it is in those by whom "free-religionism," as it is called, is most clamorously maintained. Some months since was published the life of a "liberal" Unitarian clergyman, who, having obtained a chaplaincy during our late war, used the powers it gave him to take military possession of a Southern pulpit, and there, as he exultingly tells us in his diary, to "force" the reluctant people to listen to the theories, political and social, which he was pleased to call the gospel. A regiment stood without; a prison or a gibbet rose in the perspective. It would be disloyal to fly from the loyal preacher who thus took possession; and thus he was able, as he felicitated himself, to ruthlessly assail the most cherished convictions of his hearers' hearts. Now, this was the "compelling to come in" of Pope Innocent, with but a slight variation; the variation being that in one case the compulsion was to hear that everything the church. taught was true, while in the other case the compulsion was to hear that everything that the auditory believed was false.

Nor can we exempt Herr Nippold himself from the same embarrassing charge. Of all others, when we remember his pretensions and protestations, he ought to be the last to have nestling in him an embryo pope; but when we scrutinize closely his bearing, we cannot but see that appearances are

very much against him. Notwithstanding his creed of universal liberty, there are ominous shudderings observable in him, and ill-concealed mutterings of reprobation, when any one comes athwart his vision who believes more than he is pleased to believe himself. It is the "pope It is the "pope" of human nature that more or less fully occupies each of us. It is the same pope that, under the guise of rampant liberalism, is concealed in the person of even Herr Nippold. In this sense, it is true, orthodoxy embodies the pope; but it is orthodoxy only so far as it is burdened with our corrupt nature, and in this respect orthodoxy and heterodoxy stand on the same ground.

But the position which we have thus criticised fills, we are bound to say, but a very small and unimportant place. in Herr Nippold's treatise. The object before him is one of deep interest; and he has bestowed on it not only exhaustive historical labor, but acute critical skill. He has undertaken to meet the boasts of the Romish Propaganda, that there is a great moral movement among devout Protestants towards the Romish see; and he has performed the work by taking up the list of converts published by Rome, so far as Germany is concerned, and explaining, in each case, the motives and circumstances of conversion. The examination is so interesting, both psychologically and theologically, that we now propose to sum up its general results.

It is Nippold's theory that the last century, which ended in 1830, may be divided into two almost equal eras — the first, that of liberal advance, culminating with the French consulate; the second, that of conservative reaction, culminating with the short-lived triumph of Bourbonism and of the Holy Alliance. In the first of these eras, liberty, if we may use the expression, was in the air. Men caught it as if it were an epidemic. Philosophers, scholars, preachers, even courtiers, such as those who crowned Franklin with laurel, and waltzed Louis XVI. into war, were alike infected by its spirit. In the second of these eras conservatism seemed to emit the same universal infection. It was not

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merely conservatism shuddering at the horrors of the French revolution; but it was conservatism in another and better phase. Legitimacy-such was the term happily hit upon by Talleyrand at the Vienna Congress was the antithesis not merely of the popular license of the French republic, but of the military autocracy of Napoleonic imperialism. Legitimacy, therefore, was a safe and commodious refuge, not merely from the excesses of too little government, but from the excesses of too much. Into it rushed the enthusiastic rationalists of Germany, with patriotic banners flying, singing Körner's insurrection songs. Into it tottered the stupid retrogressivism of England, led by Percival and Liverpool, and followed by the English middle classes as a mass. It was not merely a refuge for the romanticism of Burke and the feudalism of Chateaubriand, but for the enlightened comprehensiveness of Canning and the majestic constitutionalism of Stein. That the latter were grossly mistaken the event showed; and soon they achieved their escape. But into the common ranks of reactionism they for the time went; for the temper was one which for the moment pervaded almost all phases of European political life.

But did not the same temper enter into the church? Herr Nippold maintains, and maintains truly, that it did; and he asserts, further, that this temper, when morbidly developed, was the cause of many perversions to Rome. These perversions, arising from this reactionary spirit, he carefully analyzes, and reduces them to the following heads:

I. Die mit der Gegenwart zerfallene Geburtsaristokratie (Politische Romantik).

II. Die romantische Dichter-schule (Poetische Romantik). III. Die romanisirenden Kunstschulen (Kunstlerische Romantik).

IV. Die restaurative Rechtslehre (Juristische Romantik). V. Die rücklaufigen Tendenzen in Lehr-und Nährstand (Sittliche Romantik).

VI. Die moderne Orthodoxie (Theologische Romantik).

Taking Herr Nippold's classification, therefore, the various ways to Rome may be thus described:

I. Political Romanticism; II. Literary Romanticism; III. Artistic Romanticism; IV. Juristic Romanticism; V. Social Romanticism; VI. Religious Romanticism. Or, viewing these tendencies as in their origin reactionary, they may be ranged as:

1. Disgust with the Political Present; 2. Disgust with the Literary Present; 3. Disgust with the Artistic Present; 4. Disgust with the Social Present; 5. Disgust with the Moral Present; 6. Disgust with the Theological Present.

At some of the " disgusts" which are above enumerated we propose, guided by Herr Nippold, for a few moments, to glance.

1. Disgust with the Political Present.

For, complete as was, apparently, the restoration of legitimacy by the Congress of Vienna, the second-class princes and nobility of Germany felt, even at the outset, that the ground on which they stood was insecure. The liberation-war (Freiheits-krieg) had evoked a popular element ominously like that which had destroyed Louis XVI., and which had driven into exile the French noblesse. Without this popular aid the battle of Leipsic would not have been won. It was this that gave such splendid enthusiasm to the German arms, as well as such immense accessions to the German armies. Without this Austria and Prussia would have remained secondclass powers, while the minor princes and nobility would have continued the obsequious satellites of Napoleon. They owed their release from this fawning slavery to the people; but they did not feel comfortable at the alliance. The monster, it is true, had rescued them; but the monster might devour them, if he were not restrained; and, besides this, anything like a partnership in power with such a creature was odious. And then, again, intelligent statesmen, such as those who then guided the Prussian and Austrian courts, were not slow in giving as their opinion that "legitimacy" must throw off its feudal incumbrances; that the exclusive social privileges of the nobility must be moderated; that some deference, at