position, or itself undergoes transformation. It is as when a single drop of some potent essence is suffused in a chemical compound; what just before was colourless, or of a brilliant hue, is now, and in a moment, turgid; the splendour of the rainbow is gone; an earthy feculence clouds the liquor; -heat too is evolved, and noxious fumes rise from the surface.

The despot remains nearly the same from the commencement to the close of his career; for pride and hatred are steady qualities, and arrogance is stagnant. But the demagogue, or factious leader, passes through three stages of character at least; and when he comes to the goal is often hardly to be recognized as the being who started. The Despot too, is very nearly the same personage under every diversity of ecclesiastical system. But the sectarist or schismatic receives a specific character from the circumstances that surround him, and from the qualities of the body from which he breaks off. This accidental influence may be either for the worse or the better; and in truth when the body is in an extreme degree corrupt, and the objection insisted upon by the separatist is in the main reasonable, we cannot be justified on the ground merely of some extravagance or vehemence of conduct, to designate the Objector as a Fanatic. A man who takes up a righteous cause may speak or act fanatically, and yet well deserve our respect and gratitude. He alone should be

called fanatic, whose course of conduct was at first prompted by impetuous passions; and who throughout it, shrinks from the calm ordeal of

reason.

Protestantism has been reproached on account of its fruitfulness in factions: the same reproach unquestionably attaches, and in an equal degree, to the ancient Church, and especially in the era of its highest secular prosperity. But the Church of Rome boasts of her unity; and she may be allowed to do so. Not now to mention the terrible means she has employed to quash rising schism, we should bear in mind that main principle of her polity which has left a wide field open always to spiritual enterprise and ambition. Protestant Churches have failed to calculate upon certain unalterable tendencies of human nature, and have made no provision for giving vent to exuberant zeal. The very same minds which, during the first four centuries, or among ourselves, would have headed a faction, and given their name to a hostile and separate communion, have, under the fostering care of the Papacy, lent their extravagance to the Church itself, and have proved its most efficient supporters.

Either as Founder of a new order, or as Regenerator of an old one, energetic and ungovernable spirits saw before them at all times an open field. It is true that a curbing hand was held by the popes upon this species of ambition;

yet the restraint was not more than enough to enhance, by difficulty, the passion for enterprise. The young and frenzied devotee, after astounding the monasteries of his native province by unheard-of severities-by portentous whims -by wastings, whippings, visions, ecstasies; and after imposing upon his superiors an unfeigned terror by turbulences of behaviour-always thoroughly catholic, and therefore so much the more difficult to be dealt with, obtained their ready leave (with flaming credentials in his hand) to beg his way bare-foot from Spain, France, or Germany, to Rome. At the foot of the Sovereign Pontiff he threw himself in the dust - prostrate, body and soul: there he wept and raved his season:already he had vowed himself the "dauntless Chevalier of the Virgin," and only waited permission to fight her battles, and those of the Church, under sanction of its Head. During the weeks or months of suspense, his austerities and his pretensions roused a hundred jealousies among the comers and goers of the papal court: feuds and seditions made a perpetual din under the windows of the Vatican; and it seemed as if all the demons had flocked together to thwart if possible the holy purpose of the new adventurer, from whose hand they expected many a terrible buffet. At length the Holy See, having proved the constancy of the candidate; or shall we rather say, having ascertained that his frenzy was of the sort which, though it might be

managed, could not be repressed, and glad to rid itself of the importunity, granted the desired sanction, and signed the Brief.14

The Founder or the Reformer, now big with a licence that would reach all extents of absurdity, paced his way back-patrician mendicant! to his native mountains. Monasteries spring up

about him in each cleft of the rocks :—his rule attracts every moon-stricken brain of the province; and in a year or two he moves about, the admired patron of insanity--far and near. Such, in substance, has been the history of scores of adventurers who, had it been their ill

14 The career of Ignatius Loyola combines, in the most complete manner, all the proper elements of ambitious sectarian fanaticism; and a well written life of this illustrious founder might subserve other purposes than that of exhibiting the folly, knavery, and superstition, that are encouraged by the papacy. We much need-protestants as we are, to have placed before us, and for our instruction, those vivid instances of delusion and extravagance which the annals of the Romish Church so abundantly furnish. Whoever has closely and calmly watched the growth and maturity of fanatical illusion in the case of certain noted individuals that still figure on the stage of ghostly ambition, must have become convinced that nothing but accidents and names costume and phrase, often distinguishes canonized from uncanonized heroes. Might it be hoped that the parties themselves, or at least their well-read chiefs, would look into the glass of history, and catching there their own resemblances, draw an inference of incalculable importance! Would any one who retains a particle of good sense or sober Christian feeling wish to find that his public course has been, in its essential motives, and in very many of its circumstances, the counterpart of that of men whose names are signalized as the spiritual fathers of innumerable cruelties, impostures, and corruptions? Let Gonzales and Ribadeneira be read and digested by any who, while panting for the notoriety of miracle, are forgetting truth, honour, reason, faith, virtue.

luck to be born on protestant ground, could have done nothing more illustrious than give an ignoble name to an ignoble sect-have troubled their own age by angry divisions, and have conferred upon three centuries after them, the burden of some hard-to-be uttered epithet of faction.

Deprived of its monkish apparatus (considered only as a means of drawing off restless ambition) the Romish hierarchy could not have stood its ground so long. Only let us follow up to its consequences the supposition that it had had, age after age, to contend with the dauntless spirits that originated or restored the several orders-with St. Dominic, and St. Francis; with St. Bernard, with Loyola, and with De Rancé ; in that case it had long ago been rent and scattered to the winds.

So far as considerations of this sort should be allowed to influence spiritual affairs, the question would deserve to be entertained, Whether a permanent and readily available provision should not be made within the arms of a protestant church for giving a range to those extraordinary dispositions and talents which in all times make their appearance, and which, if not preoccupied, do not fail grievously to trouble the community that neglects them.

Fanaticism, we have said, has first an active or turbulent, and then a settled and moderated