In a little work lately published in France by the Protestant Pastor, Mr. Bost,(65) the author gives as a reason for not being a Catholic, that while the Church calls on us to submit to its authority, it cannot tell where the authority resides.(66) The Ultramontanes place it in the person of the pope; but the Gallicans have never admitted this idea, and place the supreme authority in a universal council. Besides, what sort of infallibility is that which has tolerated the Inquisition, applauded the St. Bartholomew massacre, preached crusades against the heretics in France, massacred the Protestants in Holland, burned ten thousands at the stake in Spain? If it be said that Protestants also have persecuted, we reply, that they did it _against_ their own principles, but that the Catholics persecuted in accordance with theirs; and that the Church which claims exclusive infallibility and holiness has no right to excuse itself _because it has done no worse_ than those which it denounces as being in error and sin. § 3. The Protestant Orthodox Idea of the Church. Protestantism does not claim for its Church exclusive holiness or infallibility. It defines the Church to be “a congregation of faithful men, in which the pure word of God is preached, and the sacraments duly administered.”(67) Why, then, the reaction towards Romanism? It is partly owing to the passive element in man—the wish to be governed, the weariness of independent thought, which led Wordsworth to say,— “Me this unchartered freedom tires,”— and which, in “Van Artevelde,” declares that,— Thought is tired of wandering through the world, And homeward fancy runs its bark ashore,— and partly because the Protestant Churches are often less active and diligent in the practical part of Christian work than the Roman Catholic Churches. Instead of a manly Protestantism, they give us a diluted Catholicism. They insist on a creed which has neither antiquity nor authority to recommend it, on sacraments that are no real sacraments, but only symbols, and on a ritual which has neither the beauty nor variety of the Roman worship. What does the Protestant Church propose to itself as its end? To produce an abstract piety, instead of a concrete piety—not a piety embodied in life and conduct, but taking only the form of an inward experience. If the churches should set themselves the work of feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, of removing the vices and crimes of men, of helping the outcasts and visiting the prisoners, they would have a more living piety growing out of this active charity. Their prayer meetings would be much more vigorous when they prayed in order to work, than when they pray in order to pray. Men should not be admitted into the Church because they are pious, but in order to become pious by doing Christian work. By loving, practically, the brother they have seen, they would come to love God, whom they have not seen.