Pope Innocent III. for the rising institute. The Pope received him with the greatest kindness, and encouraged him to proceed with his work; told him, as he had told St. Francis, to return home and choose some existing rule, and afterwards to come again for a more formal approbation.

It was on this occasion that the two great saints met each other for the first time. St. Dominic was praying one night, according to his usual custom, when he saw in a vision Jesus Christ full of anger against the world, and His Blessed Mother present two men to Him to appease His anger. In one of the men he recognised himself; but the other he could not remember to have ever seen; still he studied his appearance most attentively, and the vision remained deeply impressed on his mind. The following morning, when he was in one of the churches of Rome, he perceived, in the garb of a poor beggar, the figure of the very man whom he had seen in his vision of the preceding night; and running to him, he warmly embraced him, uttering in a broken manner these words: You are my companion; we will walk together, and then none will be able to prevail against us.' Having said this, he related to Francis the vision which he had received; and again the two saints embraced.

Before Dominic could return to Rome, Pope Innocent III. had departed to a better life, and Honorius III. had become his successor. This Pope gave Dominic still greater encouragement, and authorised him to plant his Order wherever it might please God to open the way for them. On the Feast of the Assumption, 1217, Dominic held a general chapter in the church of La Prouille; and in a manner exactly similar to the plan adopted by St. Francis, his sixteen companions were distributed up and down in different parts of Europe, the same Divine blessing and power of increase accompanying them wherever they went.

Dominic was seized by his last sickness in Venice, in 1221, the year after that in which he had held the general chapter of his Order in Bologna, which now numbered more than sixty flourishing houses in different parts of Europe, and formed eight provinces, under their respective provincials. Finding his malady increase, he begged his brethren to carry him back to Bologna; a task which was accomplished not without difficulty. Here, though in a dying state, he refused to be laid in bed; but still continuing to wear his woollen habit, he caused all the brethren to be summoned around him, and telling them of the grace of virginity which he had been able to preserve by the mercy of God, he cautioned all who desired to preserve the same grace to be extremely watchful into what company they came; and then, with his last words commending them to the providence of God, he said, 'This is the inheritance that I leave you: "Have charity one with another," preserve humility, and make poverty your possession.' Shortly after this the community was called together to be present at his death, and to recite the Prayers for a Dying Soul. When they came to the words, 'Come to his aid, ye saints of God; come to meet him, ye angels of God; receive his soul, and bear it into the presence of the Most High,' his lips moved for the last time, and

his hands were clasped towards heaven. He was solemnly canonised by Pope Gregory IX., on July 12th, 1834; and his festival is now kept by the universal Church on August 4th, the day on which he departed to receive the reward of his labours.

§ 74. Protestantism, or the great departure from the faith of the Church, the sign which is to precede the end of the world. A brief account of Martin Luther and the schism of the sixteenth century.

St. Paul, writing to the Thessalonians, says, 'Be not frightened, as if the day of the Lord were at hand. . . . Let no one seduce you by any means; for except there first come a departure,' &c. If it be true that St. Paul is here calming the fears of the Thessalonians, who appear to have thought the end of the world close at hand, still it is plain that the older the world grows, the nearer it must be approaching to its end; and we may consequently begin to look out for the sign of the general great departure from the faith of which St. Paul speaks.

There is something worthy of being carefully observed as regards the Protestantism which began in the sixteenth century to cause whole nations and peoples to renounce the faith and discipline of the Catholic Church. But as other great heresies, such as that of Arius, have had a similar ruinous effect, in causing a great falling off from faith without the end of the world following in their wake, Protestantism cannot simply for this reason by itself be understood to be the sign to which St. Paul refers. What is remarkable, however, in Protestantism is, that though Dr. Martin Luther and the others who were leaders at the time formed sects, the disciples of which called themselves by the names of their masters-as Lutherans from Luther, Calvinists from Calvin- Protestantism has long ago ceased to be the name of any particular doctrine. Lutherans, Calvinists, Anabaptists, Socinians, and all the different sects which arose at this time, as regards what is meant by Protestantism, are just as good Protestants the one as the other. They may, and do, dispute with each other about what is to be held to be true, as Christian doctrine, but as regards Protestantism they are all quite agreed. How come, then, those who are completely at war with each other about Christian doctrine to agree completely about 'Protestantism'? The reason is, that Protestantism proper has but one solitary doctrine and one solitary precept-viz. Depart from the Roman Church. All who satisfy this one precept entitle themselves to the name of 'Protestant.' It is true that, up to the present time, those who have protested against the Roman Church have generally had the credit of deserving to be, in some way or other, known as Christians; but this is rapidly ceasing to be the case. 'Protestantism' has now come to be the name of the confederacy of almost all without exception whose cry is, 'Depart from the Roman Church; so that there would seem to be no rashness in recognising it as the departure (discessio) which St. Paul points to as the sign indicating the world to be drawing to a close.

Martin Luther was the son of a poor miner, and was born at Eisleben, in northern Germany, on the 10th of November, A.D. 1483. At an early age he was remarkable for unusual natural capacities, and, amongst other gifts, for that of a beautiful voice and a taste for music. During the Christmas seasons many were the little donations which he picked up as a carol-singer, to assist him in prosecuting his studies as a poor student. In the year 1505 he became an Augustinian monk in the town of Erfurt, in consequence of the fits of terror which he frequently experienced from meditating on the wrath of God, and on the various instances in which it had been displayed within the reach of his own observation. In 1508 he was removed to another Augustinian house in Wittemberg, where he graduated as bachelor, and afterwards as doctor, in the university which had lately been founded there. What was secretly working in his mind appears from various letters which he wrote at this time to his former prior in the monastery in Erfurt, in which he denounces in the strongest terms the prevailing course of studies that was generally received, evincing a most marked and particular hostility against Aristotle, whose philosophy St. Thomas of Aquin has all but incorporated with the Christian theology. Luther's hatred of the great Greek philosopher went to the length of saying, 'that if he had not known him to have been a man, he should have had no scruple in calling him a devil.' In the year 1510 he had occasion to go to Rome on the business of his Order; and of this journey he himself gives us an account in his commentary on the 117th Psalm: 'I was at that time such a dead sort of saint, that I ran through all the churches and the catacombs, and believed in everything that was told me there. I celebrated also some ten Masses or more in various churches, my chief sorrow being that my father and mother were not dead; for I would gladly have delivered them out of purgatory by my Masses and other good works and prayers.'

A few years later, a certain John Tetzel, a Dominican friar, came to the university of Wittemberg, where Luther had become a professor, to collect money for the rebuilding the basilica of SS. Peter and Paul in Rome; and on the eve of All Saints, 1517, Luther affixed to the door of the principal church in Wittemberg ninety-five propositions condemnatory of Tetzel's doctrines real or supposed. This led to a vehement dispute between the two. Tetzel argued publicly against Luther's propositions, and obtained the degree of doctor from the university of Frankfurt-on-the-Oder for what was deemed to be his successful disputation. This was the opening of the flood-gates of a strife of which three centuries and a half have not seen the end.

Pope Leo X. was not at first disposed to attach much importance to the controversy, regarding it as mere monkish quarrelling; but on being informed by the Emperor Maximilian that the case was really serious, he sent his legate, Cardinal Caietan, into Germany. The Cardinal's mission remained without any other result than that Luther appealed from the Pope to a General Council.

On the 15th of June 1520, Leo X. issued the Bull 'Exurge Domine,' condemning Luther's writings; to which Luther replied by an angry letter, declaring the Papal Court to be more corrupt than any Babylon or Sodom. This brought a sentence of excommunication on Luther, the copy of which he burnt publicly in the market-place of Wittemberg. On the 18th of April 1521, he appeared before the Diet of the empire at Worms, and boldly confessed the authorship of his books, of which he refused any retractation. The Diet passed on him the sentence of outlawry; but his friend the Elector of Saxony gave him an asylum in the castle of Wartburg, where he completed his translation of the Holy Scriptures, and laid the foundation of many subsequent writings. So many of the German princes espoused Luther's cause, that he was able to continue for the rest of his life not caring for the Diet's act of outlawry.

Luther died on the 22d of February 1546, at Eisleben, the place of his birth. He had broken his vows of monastic life in a marriage with a nun; and towards the end of his life his mind and conscience appear to have given him no rest. Scarcely any one attended him to the grave; and the man who had for years perseveringly vented nothing but bad words and virulent contempt against the Roman Church, experienced in a burial without honour the truth of the words of Isaias, 'When, tired out, thou shalt leave off venting contempt, thou shalt be despised.' Luther's distinguishing doctrine was, that man possesses no gift whatever of free will to make his own choice, aided by Divine grace, between good and evil, but that he is a mere clod of earth; God working in some men, through the gift of faith, their election, and holding others, without mercy, sentenced to eternal reprobation.

§ 75. St. Ignatius Loyola founds the Society of Jesus, to defend the faith of the Church against the schism and apostasy of Luther.

The prophet Ezechiel, in his vision of the Temple, saw a stream the waters of which came forth from the sanctuary, while on its banks there grew fruit-bearing trees, the leaves of which were good for medicine' (xlvii. 12). If God is pleased to permit the free will of men to break His compacts, and to trample upon His laws, His arm is not shortened, and where sin abounds, grace can much more abound. So great an evil as that which had now broken in upon the Christian society of Europe seemed to stand in need of more than the ordinary remedies; and in the hour of need a fruit-bearing tree grew up on the banks of the stream flowing forth from the sanctuary, the leaves of which furnished the required medicine. A saint came into the world, who founded a new Order to reinforce the army of those on whom the duty of doing battle to maintain the cause of faith had devolved. This saint was Ignatius Loyola, and the Order which he founded was the gifted and world-wide company of the Jesuits.

Ignatius Loyola was a Spaniard of noble birth, from the province of Biscay, and was brought up by his parents to the profession of arms.

When old enough, he was sent to serve in the Spanish army, and while on duty he received severe wounds in each of his legs at the siege of Pampeluna; in consequence of which he lay for many weeks upon a sick-bed, as if he had been a prisoner. In this condition he sought to while away the hours of his confinement by reading books, works of knight-errantry being his favourites. But when the supply of these failed, he was forced to betake himself to reading the lives of saints. From some subsequent statements of his own, which are given at length in the narrative of his life in the Acta Sanctorum of the Bollandists, it appears that what he read of the saints forced him to reflect, and caused him frequently to say to himself as he lay on his bed, 'What if I were to do something of the same kind as the blessed Francis and the blessed Dominic? This is what St. Dominic did, this is what St. Francis did; I must do the same thing.' Thoughts of this description remained fixed in his mind; and when after several months he had at last so far recovered the use of his legs as to be able to walk about and to mount a horse, he one day told his family that he was going to the little town of Novareto to pay a visit to the Duke of Navarre; upon which he mounted his horse, and never returned to them any more. He at first took refuge in the Benedictine Abbey of Montserrat; and remaining there in concealment for some time, at length, by the advice of one of the fathers, he put on the habit of a penitent, and, like another St. Francis of Assisi, he went about begging his bread from door to door. Fearing, however, that he might probably be recognised and reclaimed by his family, he retired to a cave in the neighbourhood of Manresa, where, like a second St. Benedict, he spent a whole year in solitude. The reward of this of lonely penance and retirement was the book of the Spiritual Exercises, the plan of which was revealed to him in his solitude. It is interesting to see how the military man peeps out in their contents; for there is this beautiful characteristic in the work of God, that existing natural gifts are always suffered to mingle themselves with the action of Divine grace, and to be turned to account in their own way, so that in the hands of God nothing that is naturally good has to be wiped away or destroyed. Thus our Lord made His chief fisher of men out of an actual fisherman; for His great preacher of the heavenly riches to be acquired by the practice of poverty He took the son of a keen and pushing trader; and for the founder of a new militia especially destined to combat the hostile camp which Luther's apostasy called into being, He chose a soldier. In what follows we have a genuine specimen of a true soldier's meditation. Imagine, says the book of the Exercises, a plain near Jerusalem where Jesus Christ the Lord sets up His standard, and gathers all the good men to Himself, and offers Himself to them as their leader; and imagine, again, another plain near Babylon, where Lucifer exhibits himself as the leader of all the bad men and the adversaries. The sequel of the meditation is equally full of the mind of the soldier, and it concludes with a colloquy addressed to the Blessed Virgin, ask

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