Paul III., Julius III., and Pius IV.; from the year 1545, to the year 1563.

The councils wholly rejected by Rome are the following:1, Antioch, A.D. 345; 2, Milan, A.D. 354; 3. Ariminium, A.D. 363; 4, Ephesus ii., 449; 5, Constantinople, A.D. 730; 6, Constantinople, A.D. 755; 7, Pisa, A.D. 1511; 8, Wittemburgh, A.D. 1536.

The councils partly received and partly rejected are these:1, Sardis, A.D. 351; 2, Sirmium, A.D. 356; 3, Trullo, A.D. 528; 4, Frankfort, A.D. 794; 5, Constance, A.D. 1414; 6, Basil and Lausanne, from A.D. 1439 to 1449.

And the council which the Church of Rome can neither determine to receive nor determine to reject is that of Pisa, A.D. 1409; which council deposed two rival Popes, Gregory XII. and Benedict XIII., and elected Alexander V. It had been called together to heal a schism in the Church; yet, according to Ballarmine, not only failed in removing that schism but actually increased it. Still the Roman Church cannot entirely reject the council, for then its acts would have been void, and Alexander V. would have been no true Pope, and Alexander VI. would have called himself the fifth of that name and not the sixth. One thing however is clear, that the council had power to depose and to elect the Popes; and as Constantine summoned the Council of Nice and was therefore its superior, so long as this superiority was recognized the Emperor was above the Pope; nay, down to the time of Charlemagne, the Pope could not be chosen without the approval and confirmation of the emperor, and when appointed he swore fealty to the emperor, as did all the citizens of Rome.

The Councils of Constantinople, of 730 and 755, were rejected by Rome, because they forbad the worship of images. In 773, there was a council at Rome under Adrian, which acknowledged the supreme authority of Charlemagne. "Decernit, ut populus Romanus omne suum jus et potestatem in Carolum transferat, ut pontifex, et synodus dignitatem patritiatus, ei conferat; ut ipse habeat jus et potestatem eligendi pontificem, et ordinandi sedem apostolicam; denique ut archiepiscopi et episcopi per singulas provincias ab eo investituram accipiant."

In the Lateran council, 1215, transubstantiation and auricular confession were decreed, and the cup was forbidden to the laity. In the council of Constance, 1414, three Popes were deposed, and Martin V. was chosen, and mass was confirmed, and the cup was more strictly prohibited to the laity. In the council of Florence, 1439, a compromise with the Greek bishops,

concerning the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son as well as the Father, was agreed on; but the Eastern Churches refused to ratify the acts of the council, and would not allow themselves to be bound by what the bishops had done, so that eventually the council had no result.

The last of the general councils was that of Trent, which brought its sittings to a close in the year 1563; and which, by its acts, superseded and took the place of all former councils; revising, so as to abolish or to re-enact, all former decisions; and stamping its own acts as absolute and final. Moreover, these acts of the council were carried out in the creed of Pius IV.; which every one who had come to years of discretion was required to subscribe or confess; and, by a catechism of elementary instruction, to prepare the mind for an intelligent profession of those articles of faith which the creed of Pope Pius contained, many of which were then for the first time announced to be essential and indubitable articles of the Roman faith. The creed and catechism had been both drawn up with an avowed and specific reference to the decisions of the council, and the acts of the council proceeded upon system, each act forming a part of one whole; having grown out of that systematic theology which, arising among the schoolmen in a time of great corruption, had exercised all the ingenuity of a long succession of very clever men, not only in palliating existing abuses but in justifying them, and even in working them into a system which might be so plausible as to have the coherence and consistency of truth; but which very coherence forbad the rejection of any one portion of that which had been thus incorporated so as to form one whole. The system is practically felt to be one whole, and few have boldness to question any part of it: but should any venture to do so, they would find themselves stopped in the exceeding ingenuity by which every avenue of doubt is closed at the fundamental Roman dogma of the infallibility of the Church. They assume it to be an indisputable truth; they avoid determining whether the infallibility resides in Pope, or councils, or the whole Church; and thus, being limited to no one ordinance or portion of the Church, it is tacitly assumed and rendered available anywhere, as the ultima ratio, when no other argument will stand.

The system of Rome must be rejected altogether, as a system, before men will be able to separate between the truths which the Romanists have retained and the modern corruptions by which they have defiled the Church.

So that the present faith of Rome, which really dates no higher than the council of Trent, and had never been solemnly

determined or recognized by the authorities of that Church until 1563, constrains us to regard the religion of modern Rome as one of the newest of the sects, although it is held by so large a portion of those who call themselves Christians, and whom we cannot exclude from the visible Church. Romanism is, in this aspect, not so venerable as Protestantism: it has arisen after the formation of the Lutheran Church-after the Church of England had taken its fixed form; not only after the days of Henry VIII. and Edward VI., but after Elizabeth had come to the throne of England, and the work of reformation in these lands had been completed, and our religion had become what it is at this day.

True it is that the Romanists will not allow their religion to be thus modern; but their denial of the fact no more proves it to be false than the adoption of the fables of Isidore into the Roman breviary proves these absurd and groundless legends to be true. These legends had become part of the system, and therefore could not be separated without loosening and endangering the whole fabric, though they are proved to be utterly unworthy of credit, and every well-informed Romanist must be thoroughly ashamed of such trumpery. Isidore Mercator, who called himself Peccator, was the promulgator, and is generally regarded as the inventor of these legends, and of pontifical letters containing references to councils, in support of the fables of which we speak. Dionysius Exiguus would not include those earlier epistles and canons in his collection, and all those of Sylvester, Damasus, &c., preceding the time of Siricius, are regarded as spurious and not worthy of the least degree of credit. The first mark of spuriousness is that these writings often refer to questions which had not arisen in the Church at the time when those who are said to have written these epistles lived: the second is that the Roman consuls which are named scarcely ever agree with the corresponding Pope: the third is that the vulgate version of Scripture is quoted by Popes who lived before the time of Jerome: the fourth is that they are all written in one and the same barbarous style of Latinity, which it is not probable that so many living so much nearer the Augustan age would have employed. Evaristus is supposed to write, Episcopi sunt obediendi ; Victor to write, Nocere aliquem; Marcellinus to write, Paternas disciplinas injurare; Stephen to write, Charitative, &c., &c. Yet certainly Latin was written with great purity to a much later period than that of these Popes, as we know from their genuine writings; and no mention can be found of these pontifical epistles until the time of Isidore, A.D. 830.

In proportion as we feel the value of authentic records, so is our indignation roused when these are tampered with, or when the forgeries of later ages are, to serve particular purposes, endeavoured to be palmed upon the Church, as genuine expressions of the mind of the primitive fathers. Councils, when lawfully summoned, and allowed to exercise their functions. uncontrouled, are of great importance, as forming the true counteraction to the license and to the unbecoming collisions of private judgment; which, when individuals are allowed to exercise without controul, turns to the destruction of unity in faith and in practice and an oecumenical council of orthodox bishops is the highest authority to which, under present circumstances, the Church can look; it is the paramount authority for the time being, and its determinations can only be modified or set aside by another council of equal or superior authority. Local or provincial councils are of paramount authority within their own bounds, and where recourse to a general council is not practicable. But these local councils cannot bind the Catholic Church, and often are rather to be rejected than to be received, from their being summoned to meet some extraordinary emergency. The English councils bind the Church of England in the adaptation of that Catholic truth which has been handed down from the primitive Church, to the character of each particular age: and so the council of Trent is only the council of a larger province, and binds only those Churches who were represented in that council; and, as none of the Eastern Churches and none of the Protestant Churches were represented at Trent, it has no pretensions to the authority of a general council, and its decisions are to be rejected whensoever they run counter to the determinations of any of the great councils of the fourth and fifth centuries.

If a second edition of this "Manual" should be called for, we would recommend the author to prefix some notice or classification of the councils, either from Bellarmine or from the fuller and more recent enumeration of Dens, with such remarks as would very readily occur to an English clergyman: and we think that the usefulness of the book would be increased by a table of the councils in chronological order, and by another table of the Popes and contemporary fathers; but, even as it is, we recommend the work as a very useful book of reference for students of ecclesiastical history.

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ART. V.-Description of the Skeleton of an extinct Gigantic Sloth; with Observations on the Osteology, Natural Affinities, and Probable Habits of the Megatherioid Quadrupeds in General. By RICHARD OWEN, F.R.S., &c. J. Van Voorst. IT is not our purpose to undertake an examination of this splendid volume, the title of which we have placed before our readers. All whom it would interest must already know that, like all the other works of the same distinguished anatomist, it needs no commendation from us, and is beyond the reach of our censure. But we refer to the first work in its class-to the very highest authority-to a work the correctness of which we fully admit, in order to show that, while we admit the value of all the researches which are making into the natural history of the earth, and acknowledge the bearing of these researches upon the fossilized remains of a former world, we do not admit that these remains were deposited before the creation of man; and do not admit that the strata in which they are found render the Mosaic account of the deluge inadmissible: because we maintain that the deluge, as it is described by Moses, was most certainly supernatural; while the geologists have most unaccountably assumed that it was brought about by natural causes.

The great sagacity and unrivalled precision of Owen have rendered his facts incontrovertible; and we are as certain of the osteology and natural affinities of many of these extinct species as we are of the forms and propensities of living animals. The question, however, still remains-how these fossils acquired their present appearance and position in the earth? Was it by natural-was it by supernatural agency? We assert that the deluge bears, on the very face of things, indubitable proofs of its being brought about by supernatural agency; and this, therefore, will carry with it evidence to decide the other question, and afford the means of showing by what kind of supernatural agency the fossil remains may have been brought into the condition and situation in which they at present appear.

The deluge, and its preparatory and concomitant circumstances, is therefore the question to which we shall, in the first instance, direct the attention of our readers; professing, however, to do little more on this occasion than to bring the subject under the consideration of our readers, to suggest thoughts upon it for their reflection and examination, and to supply a few reasons for a more diligent enquiry into some of the circumstances connected with the Deluge than has yet been given to them. Great coolness of judgment should, however, be exercised upon it, and much varied and extensive information brought to the consideration of it.