e _only_ publication professing to emanate from Roman
Catholics in this country that can be named in the same breath with the
leading Protestant Reviews."[1] Since he wrote these words its course
has been closed by Pontifical authority. M. Montalembert has barely
escaped censure with the payment of the penalty--so heavy to his
co-religionists--of an enforced silence; and Dr. Newman "interprets recent
acts of authority as tying the hands of a controversialist such as I
should be,"[2] and so is prevented completing the great work which has
occupied so much of his thoughts, and which promised, more than any
other work this country is likely to see, to set some limiting boundary
line between the provinces of a humble faith in Revelation and an ardent
love of advancing science. This is an evil inflicted by Rome on this
whole generation. But in truth, whenever the mind of Christendom is
active, the attitude of the Papal communion before this new enemy is
that of a startled, trembling minaciousness, which invites the deadly
combat it can so ill maintain.

[1] "Union Review," ix, 294.
[2] "Apol." 405.

These facts are patent to every one who knows anything whatever of the
present state of religious thought throughout Roman Catholic Europe.
Almost every one knows further that the struggle between those who would
subject all science and all the actings of the human mind to the
authority of the Church, and those who would limit the exercise of that
authority more or less to the proper subject-matter of theology, is rife
and increasing. The words of, perhaps, the ablest living member of the
Roman Catholic communion have rung through Europe, and many a heart in
all religious communions has been saddened by the thought of Dr.
Doellinger's virtual censure. And yet it is at such a time as this that
Dr. Manning ventures to put forth his "Letters to a Friend," painting
all as peace, unanimity, and obedient faith within the Roman Church; all
dissension, unbelief, and letting slip of the ancient faith within our
own communion. Surely such are not the weapons by which the cause of
God's truth can be advanced!

But we must bring our remarks on the "Apologia" to a close.

Some lessons there are, and those great ones, which this book is
calculated to instil into members of our own communion. Pre-eminently it
shows the rottenness of that mere Act-of-Parliament foundation on which
some, now-a-days, would rest our Church. Dr. Newman suggests,