luxury,
from Asia. There were, undoubtedly, many bad popes, men as bad as the
incestuous, and, according to the recent dogma, the infallible
Alexander Borgia; priests who are not all vile, but many nobler than
their system, acknowledge this with regret, and among whom there are
some whom I can reverence, such as John Henry Newman, for instance,
whose life would favorably compare with that of Shelley, or any
liberal. There have been popes, also, whose lives have been as pure,
as disinterested, and as virtuous as that of any stoic or epicurean.
We owe much to Sixtus the Fifth, founder of the Vatican Library, and
would-be regenerator of order in his temporal dominions; to Leo the
Great, whose patronage of the arts has sent us down the wondrous
statuary, painting, and works of genius, which are the admiration of
the world; and to Hildebrand, who brought together, in one harmonious
whole, the struggling elements of European society. It is well to
note, too, in order that I may not be misunderstood, that Catholicism
is better than savage Fetishism, and Rationalism in degree superior to
either; and, further, that Liberalism should only war with evil
principles, and not with men whom they are generally the exponents of
ignorantly, and to the best of their knowledge. Comtism[D]
acknowledges the fact that Christianity was not simply a mere advance
on, but where we shall only find the civilization of Europe as it was
during mediaeval times, and recognizes this most strongly, by placing
over fifty of these great geniuses and luminaries, popes, bishops, and
saints of the Catholic Church, in the Comtist Calendar, under the
sixth and seventh months dedicated to St. Paul or Catholicism, and
Charlemagne or Feudal Civilization respectively. We should thank the
followers of Comte for thus bringing to our notice what we might be
liable to occasionally forget in our bigotry and frequent
over-anxiety.

[Footnote D: Comtism, or Positivism is that casuistical system of
modern Atheism, founded by Auguste Comte, the Ignatius Loyola of
Materialism, and which that learned pantarchical madman strung
together in Esquirol's lunatic asylum. It is an insidious philosophy,
full of Jesuistry, and teaches a _soi-disant_ Religion which is
Ir-religion, a pseudo-God, which has no conceivable existence, and an
impossible immortality of the soul, ignoring a future state. The
present crusade of Comtism in our midst, with false colors flying can
be justly comp