elapsed since, and though heresy has produced nothing new—for every heresiarch only reproduces the errors of his predecessors—still it will not, I hope, be ungrateful to the reader to have before him a succinct account of the sectaries who have since appeared, especially the Methodists, the most numerous, and, on many accounts, the most remarkable body of the present day. It is a fact which every close observer must be aware of, that heresy naturally tends to infidelity. When once we lose hold of the anchor of Faith, and set up our own fallible judgments in opposition to the authority of the Church, we are led on from one false consequence to another, till in the end we are inclined to reject Revelation altogether. Such is the case, especially in Germany at the present day, where Rationalism has usurped the place of religion, and infidelity is promulgated from the Theological Chair. It is true that in Catholic countries infidelity has also not alone appeared, but subverted both the throne and altar, and shaken society to its very foundations; but there it is the daughter of indifferentism. Lax morality produces unbelief, and those whose lives are totally opposed to the austere rule of the Gospel, are naturally anxious to persuade themselves that religion is altogether a human invention. This madness, however, passes away after a time. Religion is too deeply rooted in the hearts of a truly Catholic people to be destroyed by it. The storm strips the goodly tree of a great deal of its fruit and foliage, the rotten branches are snapped off, and the dead and withered leaves are borne away, but the vital principle of the trunk remains untouched, and in due season produces again fruit a hundred-fold.
2. That free spirit of inquiry, the boast of Protestantism, which, rejecting all authority, professes to be guided by reason alone, produced Rationalism. Luther and Calvin rejected several of the most important Articles of the Christian Faith. Why should not their followers do the same? They appealed to reason—so did their disciples; one mystery after another was swept away, till Revelation, we may say, totally disappeared, and nothing but the name of religion remained. The philosopher Kant laid down a system, by which true and ecclesiastical religion were distinguished. True religion is the religion of reason; ecclesiastical, the religion of Revelation, and this is only a vehicle for conveying the truths of natural religion. By this rule, then, the Scriptures were interpreted. Nothing but what reason could measure was admitted; every mystery became a myth: miracles were all the effects of natural causes, working on an unenlightened and wonder-loving people. Hetzel, Eichhorn, the Rosenmüllers, promulgated these blasphemies. Strauss, in his "Life of Christ," upsets all Revelation; and Becker teaches that St. John the Baptist and our Lord, with the determination of upsetting the Jewish Hierarchy, whose pride and tyranny they could not bear, plotted together, and agreed that one should play the part of the precursor and the other of the
