there one, unless a limited exception be made of the argument. from their striking traditions, which may not also with hope and plausibility be urged in favor of their Chaldean origin? While at the same time their Chaldean name, country, and language, (whether called Syriac or Chaldee,) is an a priori claim to their being the representatives of the Chaldeans. We have not wished, however, to be drawn into an examination of the arguments for their Jewish origin: it is only incidentally that we have done so. We aimed simply to give some of the positive evidences of a different view of a disputed question.

Let us again follow M. Boré in his melancholy lucubrations. The brief specimens we shall give of his general language in reference to Protestants, are not, we believe, to be regarded as tokens of a peculiarly narrow spirit, or of an illiterate mind, but of the feelings of many eminent Romanists. M. Boré pretends not to be a member of any ecclesiastical order, (although we have high authority for believing that he is under monastic vows,) and assumes the position of a tolerant Catholic; and has had the best opportunities of having his prejudices softened down. But the intolerance and severe language which he manifests, are inwrought in the system which he espouses. If, for a moment, he adopts the generous language of liberality, he is soon borne away from it: he is never constrained by his better genius to make concessions of benevolence, sincerity, or other honorable traits to a Protestant, but the antithesis of his sentence buries his praise with a fearful load of opprobrium.

"Let us never forget that without our religion, which alone honors the most holy virgin, the mother of Christ, woman would never have acquired the influence she possesses. If there is any one thing which exhibits the weak side of Protestantism, and its powerlessness to effect in Christian society any radical change, it is in regard to the emancipation of woman, and her re-establishment in the dignity which she owes to Catholicism. The American ministers might remain centuries in this country, and gain all the men over to their doctrine; yet they would not have accomplished more than half of their task, for they will never be able to extend their influence over woman, nor penetrate into the sanctuary of a family. A father will take good care that his daughter shall not enter into a chamber, which the presence of a bible cannot, in his eyes, transform into a church. The only expedient would perhaps be to confide the female part of the flock to the wives of these gentlemen." II. 283. Is it

in irony that our friend writes here? One of the very evils that we should have thought he would deplore, would be, that the "minister," being married, can have so much more influence over woman than an unmarried monk. In what, whether in Christian or in Heathen lands, has the influence of Protestant institutions been as signal as in elevating the condition of woman? Wherever M. Boré moves, Protestantism is present to his startled imagination. In those fields where he had expected to find only the sectaries of the Eastern churches, he finds enlightened men of the Western world, and he seems filled with a spirit of extermination. "We Franks," he exclaims, "we Franks, American Missionary Sirs, who have caused your missions at Constantinople, Smyrna and Beyroot, and everywhere else, to make shipwreck, produce great fear in your minds." II. 360. After this imprudent boast of the cause of the troubles that our missionaries have experienced in various places, he admits that these same missionaries are not such contemptible enemies.

"If the Propaganda of the Americans is not annihilated by a more devoted mission, and founded on the truth, we shall soon have to renounce all hope of doing any good in the country. The system of the Americans has rendered the position of a European who wishes to counteract their disagreeable proselytism very difficult." II. 332. "My good Chaldean priest, who lives with me, writes every little while to Nestorians and Catholic Chaldeans to keep up friendly relations with them, and to overthrow the influence of American propagandism, which in vain is making its redoubled efforts."

"There is no comparison between these heretical communinities and Protestant communities. Protestantism, as the most able controversialists have proved, cannot have any divine worship, and is from necessity continually passing into Deism. Their pastors limit all their functions to go and preach a lecture once a week, and give explanations of the spiritual and literal sense that every one is free to accept or reject. There is no priesthood in this: it becomes just the office of a reader, more convenient and more profitable to fill than that of mayor. Protestantism is naturally incompatible with the mind of the Orientals. It will perish in the cold and misty climates where it was born, and where, for a while, it still swallows up the faith and charity of men." II. 418. "Protestantism, implying in itself negation, cannot be of long duration, but soon exhausts itself

a state that the Protestant church now offers to our eyes, degenerated as it is to a state bordering on Socinianism." I. 33. "In the second place, a thing which we can never pardon in the missionaries, is their complete ignorance of the first doctrines of the Christian religion, which they pretend to preach to the Orientals. How can they expect to be favorably received by these men, of whose ignorance they complain, when these same men hear them deny the divinity of our Lord, the hierarchical establishment of the primitive church, and when they see them stupified with the fact, that they still practise the baptism of infants, whereas the use of this ordinance, according to the Americans, signifies a superstitious belief in original sin?" II. 52.

"Although I am but a layman, I can do some service to the church here. There are some things that can be done most easily without the priestly character. Therefore I will say that the battle of three weeks which I had with the Americans, leagued with the Nestorians, would not have terminated so happily, if it had been sustained by a missionary, who is obliged to be somewhat reserved. I, on the contrary, with a sort of military costume, drove about on horseback like a dragoon, with my sword at my side, saying that I was come on the part of the Persian government, as indeed I could, seeing that I had a firman for a school at Tébreez. All doors were opened to me; the greatest personages were afraid of displeasing me; generals. and chiefs of the army courted me; and the poor Nestorians, who saw themselves attacked by me in the heart of their church, could not therefore resort to the Mussulmans for defence. I appeared as a man of the world to Mussulmans, and, underhanded, I made use, I assure you, of theological arguments, which are now circulating in the country, and will compel the Protestants to new apostolical labors. They have lost all which they thought they had gained in Turkey during the last five years. We think that we ought to give to the mother of God the honor of the confusion thrown upon those who deny her divine maternity." II. 334, 366.

We will not burden our pages with comments on the false or superficial statements in these extracts, nor direct attention to their impudent or blasphemous tone; we have quoted them, that it may be seen what ideas intelligent Catholics dare to propagate about Protestant belief, and with what unendurable means they presume to think of checking Protestant operations.

We might have quoted more of a similar character, where, in a pretendedly cool, historical survey, he charges Protestants with being "foremost in persecutions," "moved by temporal motives," opposing the church from "the pride of disobedience," and that they as a sect are now "dying amid doubt and Pantheism." But, lest some should suppose that the above specimens of prejudice and bigotry are more than commonly extravagant and bigoted, or are tokens merely of the feelings of an isolated individual, rather than of those of millions in a large body, we will subjoin here a few sentences from other writers; from the Correspondance de l'Orient de MM. Michaut et Poujoulat, in seven volumes. It will be seen that in their persecuting tendencies, they at least equal the language of M. Boré. They write from Beyroot.

"A point difficult to manage arises here. It is clear that very grave inconveniences arise from all these attempts at conversion. Now, would it not be desirable that the Mussulman government should forbid the missionaries to continue the work of proselytism, which they have begun? And as it would not be reasonable to demand of the Mussulman law, privileges for such or such a church, the Lazarists should no longer attempt to bring the Greeks, Syrians, or Armenians to their faith, but limit their exertions to keeping faith alive in the hearts of Christians of the Latin church. If such an order should today come to our clergy of Damascus or Antura, it seems to us that it could not occasion the same complaints that it might have done formerly, and for two reasons: first, because the missions of the Lazarists have not the same importance, or the same extent, as the missions of the Jesuits formerly and second, because the friends of Catholicism would find an advantage in it, which to them must be sacred, viz. that of hindering the American and English Bible-men from blowing the wind of Protestantism in Lebanon or Palestine. Would not a Lazarist have as much joy in hindering a Catholic from becoming Protestant, as in gaining to the Catholic faith the soul of a schismatic ?"

We can hardly give these gentlemen the credit of their apparent good faith in this proposition; as if they were willing that Jesuit missionaries should be excluded from Syria alike with Protestants. The fact is, the Catholics have already 150,000 followers in Syria, and a large number of the native priests have been educated at Rome. By the proposed edict, Jesuits would

have the right of raising up native preachers for all kinds of Syrians from among these Catholics, and thus have real possession of the field; while the Protestants, forbidden to have intercourse with any sect, would be driven from the field. This hint has been followed up by action on the part of the Jesuits in Syria, and if we have any missionaries there still, it is not because the Jesuits have not urged the Turkish government, both in Syria and at Constantinople, to expel the Americans. But God has hitherto allowed all their plans to be frustrated.

The animosity and aspersions with which Protestant missions are treated by Romanists, is not exceeded by the Greeks, but expressed in more rude, unpolished style. We cannot help quoting a few Greek opinions for the purpose of showing through what a tide of calumny and prejudice gospel truth will have to be forced, before it can directly reach the mind and hearts of the men of the East. One Papadopolos, in a volume printed at Athens in 1841, writes thus:

"The heresies of the Lutherans are seven: first, they are opposed to images; second, they make war on prayer, the church, and the saints; third, they honor not the Holy Virgin; fourth, they falsify the Scriptures; fifth, they say that Christ was not crucified, but that it was only an optical illusion; sixth, they do not worship the Cross; seventh, they deny transubstantiation. They have lost all feeling, since they follow the words of the devil, and listen to Sadducees and Nestorians, Voltaire and Luther. They have their inheritance with their father, the devil." Says Baïsios, a bishop, in a volume he published at Constantinople, in 1839: "The Satanic deeds of the Lutherans, who are of no sect at all, having become manifest, the plans of these infidels have been brought to nought, and they have been expelled from the nation." The late patriarch of Constantinople, Gregory VI., in a letter of fulminations against Protestants, says: "Let these heterodox apostles consider how they would have treated us, if we had acted in their country as they have acted in ours, against the religion of their ancestors. Let them remember, besides, that the people of all nations decree the penalty of death against those who dare to contaminate the religion of a people. Let them give us the same rights and privileges as to other people."

We might multiply such quotations from other printed documents, but we have quoted enough to show how little the enlightened Catholic differs from the clergy of a church that is