able declaration of the resurrection of the entire human family, both of the just and of the unjust. The characters are placed in direct contrast, and so is their final destiny. But where is there in these words the slightest intimation of the continued existence of the one state and of the termination of the other? If the term "life" comprehends eternal bliss, so must the term "damnation" express unending misery. This fearful word occurs many times in the New Testament, and the challenge may be fearlessly given to produce even one instance in which by fair interpretation it can mean extinction, or any thing approaching to it. St. Paul, speaking of the future doom of those who obey not the Gospel, thus describes their sad and miserable state: "When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power." (2 Thess. i. 7-9.) 66 Vengeance," "everlasting destruction,"—if language have any meaning, if words be capable of any clear, definite signification, St. Paul teaches that the sufferings of the disobedient will never terminate. What impression is his language calculated to make upon the mind of any unsophisticated person, but that it expresses the doctrine of unlimited, never-ceasing suffering on account of sin?

Again, when does the Apostle say this "destruction" will take place? Not after a period during which certain severe torments will have been experienced, as the Annihilationists teach, but at the last judgment. The word "destruction," we are told, means putting out of being. Yet destruction, with regard to one mode of existence, does not imply destruction with regard to all modes of existence; on the contrary, it does imply the existence in some other form of the thing "destroyed." Philosophers say, and it is admitted correctly, that indestructibility is inherent in all substances. Not a single particle of matter in the vast universe can be annihilated. The body by death is dissolved; the parts of which it is composed become disunited, and it returns to its original element; but no part of the material structure is deprived of its existence. On the glorious morn when the Archangel's trumpet shall sound, the same bodies that were committed to the grave, or slept their long sleep in Ocean's bed, shall arise, though in a widely different state, and in a condition greatly altered. There will be a resurrection, not a creation. And if the annihilation of the body be improbable, surely it is much more improbable that the soul, so much more closely allied to the nature of Him who is the King, Eternal, Immortal, Invisible, will ever be annihilated. We have no evidence from experience, analogy, or revelation, that God will reduce to nothing any being, matter, or spirit, that He has formed; the facts that have come under human cognizance, and all the reasonings from analogy, support the converse. The supposition involves in it a reflection on the wisdom of God; it implies that absolute power might be exerted in an arbitrary manner to counteract the operations of Divine justice; which would be nothing else but making mere force supersede the just demands of law. In reference to modes of existence, there is a constant change, but not as concerns the essence of existence. That is unchanging.

We read, Luke xvii. 29, that on the day "Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all." Though "destroyed," were they annihilated? Certainly not. Our Saviour says, Matt. xi. 24, "It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee " (Capernaum). By a common figure of speech, the place is put for the inhabitants. They are represented as being doomed at the last day to suffer a punishment less terrible than the inhabitants of those cities which beheld the mighty works of the Son of God, and repented not. Again, in Rom. xiv. 15, St. Paul says, "Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died." Can the Apostle mean annihilation ? "Art Thou come," said the demons, " to destroy us?" We may learn the meaning of "destroy" here from the corresponding passage in Matthew," Art Thou come to torment us?" The wicked will suffer a destruction, not of being, but of well-being. The sinner will be deprived of all that constituted his happiness, dignity, and enjoyment; all his holy, happy susceptibilities will be withered and blasted: joy may die, so that all sources of enjoyment may be entirely dried up, and be for ever sealed; hope may die beneath the chilling influence of despair. This is destruction, but not annihilation.

The word "death" is also employed to express the sorrows and miseries of sinners in a future state. But does it imply unconsciousness, or annihilation in any form? It nowhere has such a signification. The death of the body cannot bear such an interpretation: spiritual death cannot be understood as extinction of being. Those in Scripture said to be spiritually "dead," still live: they who are consigned to endure the sufferings of that place of "outer darkness," are represented as "weeping, and wailing, and gnashing" their teeth. Those who "overcome," says Christ," shall not be hurt of the second death;" but could any be annihilated, they would be incapable of suffering. We read that "death" will be "destroyed" on the morning of the resurrection; but where do we read of the destruction of the "second death?" "Death and hell," or Hades, will be cast into "the lake of fire, which is the second death;" death as it now exists will be no more, and Hades, the intermediate state, will exist no longer. We read of some who were cast into the "lake" alive; (Rev. xix. 20;) the beast and the false prophet "were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone;" and in Rev. xxi. 8, this dreadful lake is said to be the "second death." Hence the second or deeper death cannot be the deprivation of being. As the first does not terminate either the material or the immaterial part of our nature, neither does the second. In the words of Dr. Clarke, "The first death consists in the separation of the soul from the body; the second in the separation of body and soul from God for ever. The first is that from which there will be a resurrection; the second is that from which there can be no recovery. By the first, the body is destroyed during time; by the second, body and soul are destroyed throughout eternity. Life eternal is commenced in time, but consummated and perpetuated in eternity; eternal death is commenced in time, in alienation from God, in enmity against the Most High, but perfected in eternity. 'Life,' in Scripture, is much more than existence. I live,' says the Apostle, yet not I, but Christ, liveth in me;' to be spiritually-minded is life and

peace.' If life, in Scriptural terminology, mean a certain state of existence, then must death, the opposite to it, denote existence in a certain state also." Christ did not die to redeem men from non-existence, but from a cursed death. "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him." How can the wrath of God be said to abide on beings who have ceased to exist? Supposing that the evil from which Christ has saved us is but of limited duration, how feeble are such words as these, "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life:" how insipid the contrast between perdition and eternal life, if to "perish " means to become extinct, and "everlasting life" is opposite to it, and must imply mere existence! Then we might read, "God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not cease to exist, but should have everlasting existence !" Thus the grandest passage in the Bible is deprived of its strength and its glory. To what wretched puerilities will men descend to favour a particular dogma! The love of God is by such theories as we are combating lowered in an infinite degree, and its claims upon our love and devotedness proportionably diminished.

(To be concluded.)

GALLICANISM IN THE REIGN OF PHILIP THE FAIR:

PIERRE DU BOIS.

THE question of Gallicanism is one which must for some time yet be on the order of the day. It would be impossible to surmise at what distance our neighbours are from the separation of Church and State; even the present republican government does not seem disposed to settle the problem in the "liberal" direction; and there are a number of considerations, religious as well as political, which render the solution much more difficult than casual observers would be inclined to suppose. It is a curious thing to notice what opposite elements concur to make up the theory of Church-rule which is generally known by the name of Gallicanism. In his relations with the Pope, a Gallican clergyman is a kind of heretic; so much the more dangerous because, whilst professing himself a staunch and faithful son of the Church, he upholds the lowest ideas about the authority which belongs to the successor of Saint Peter. For him there is no such thing as the Pope's infallibility; and every decree issued from the Vatican is a mere brutum fulmen, so long as it has not been sanctioned by the secular authority. On the other hand, if we view him in his position as the subject of a temporal ruler, as the citizen of a State, the Gallican priest is a complete slave; he has sacrificed his conscience at the shrine of politics, and must often follow reluctantly, under severe penalties, a course entirely repugnant to the dearest feelings of his heart. Erastianism is bad enough, Gallicanism is infinitely worse; and when we observe its fruits in the life of one of its noblest representatives, Bossuet, we see at once all the evils of the system.

On the present occasion we shall ask our readers to accompany us as far back in the history of France as the reign of Philip the Fair, and to study for a short time with us the Gallicanism of the Middle Ages. The hero of our narrative is described in a document of the fifteenth century as Petrus de Bosco, advocatus causarum regalium ballivia Constantiensis et procurator universitatis ejusdem loci. He is the least known, perhaps, amongst the clever lawyers who helped the bold but unprincipled Philip the Fair in his campaign against the Papacy.

The biographical details that have been handed down to us respecting Pierre du Bois are extremely unsatisfactory. We are led to suppose that he was by origin a Norman, and 1250 may be named with tolerable certainty as the year of his birth. He studied in the University of Paris, where he heard Thomas Aquinas preach a sermon, and Siger de Brabant comment on Aristotle. Although his education was of a decidedly serious character, yet he must not be looked upon as a scholastic doctor; his works are generally cast into a popular mould, very different from the crabbed, subtile, and dry method enforced by the authorities of the Sorbonne. He read assiduously the medieval chansons de geste, to which he even ascribed historical weight; his ideas on astrology, philosophy, and science in general, are stamped with a kind of Deism, which reminds us more of the materialist theories professed in the school of Padua than of the orthodox teaching maintained by the Paris divines.

On taking his leave of the Sorbonne, Pierre du Bois adopted the law as his profession. It was the time when, under the influence of the King, a formidable revolution was taking place, which gave to Gallicanism its real character. Till the reign of Philip the Fair especially, the ecclesiastical courts had enjoyed an authority so wide that scarcely a single case could be named respecting which they did not claim the exclusive right to decide. Gradually, however, the lay tribunals curtailed in various directions the enormous privileges of the Church; and when Pierre du Bois began to practise as a barrister, the order to which he thus associated himself was already one of the most important in the State. Gifted with a penetrating mind, clear-headed, and having an extensive fund of knowledge, he very speedily attracted the notice of some of the most important members of the French Government; and he had, no doubt, already made numerous friends at court when he received, in 1300, the appointment of "advocate of the king's causes," in the town of Constance; (advocatus causarum regalium;) two years later he became likewise procurator universitatis ejusdem loci; in other terms, he acted as solicitor for the town in the law suits it might have to carry on; and he was its representative at the States General. For reasons which we know not, and which will probably never be explained, Pierre du Bois entered, in 1306, into the service of Edward I., King of England, without, however, ceasing to be one of Philip's confidential advisers. It was as Duke of Guienne that the English monarch availed himself of our statesman's services, and he probably did so by the advice of Du Bois, who pointed out to him the advantage of introducing into the southern provinces of France the law reforms which had produced such good results in the north. Besides these official duties, if we may so call them, Pierre du Bois often acted as counsel for the secular clergy and the abbeys before the courts, both lay and ecclesiastical. His thorough acquaintance with

canon law, as well as with civil procedure, gained for him an extensive practice; and he himself tells us that he made a large fortune by pleading in the numerous cases where Church property was concerned. 1308 is the latest well-established date in which the name of our Gallican lawyer appears; but it is almost certain that he lived for many years afterwards, still holding an important place in the councils of the State, and furthering, to the utmost of his power, the King of France's policy against the pretensions of the Church of Rome. Whilst reviewing his works, we shall have more than once the opportunity of pointing out the leading features in his character, but it may be as well to give here the following summary from a recent article in the "Revue des Deux Mondes :”*—

The principles of Pierre du Bois went clearly as far as Protestantism, -the Protestantism of Henry VIII. and of Queen Elizabeth. Far from wishing to innovate in doctrinal matters, he always declared himself the ardent champion of the old faith; but he ascribed to the civil authorities the duty of watching over the Church, and of bringing about ecclesiastical reforms whenever these were necessary. If we consider the breadth of his views about the greatness of France and its action upon foreign States, we might almost compare him to one of the most eminent ministers of Henry IV., or of Louis XIV.: at the same time we are disgusted by the trickery, the selfish hypocrisy, and sometimes the cruelty of his advice. He prepared the way for those legists whose only god was the king, and who, in the interest of the monarch,-interest closely connected, as they imagined, with that of the State,-did not shrink from the most iniquitous and the most contradictory measures. The public men belonging to that school have contributed so much to make France what it is, that we are quite justified in not judging them very severely; at the same time the spirit of impartiality constrains us to say, that only through a series of acts of injustice and perfidy have they reached their object, which was the establishment of a civil society."

With reference to the above passage, we shall simply remark here that unless we are prepared to endorse the abominable maxim that the end justifies the means, we cannot see how the conduct of Pierre du Bois, and the lawyers belonging to his school, is susceptible of extenuation. The fact is that Gallicanism, however plausible certain of its principles may be, is essentially false as a theory of Church government, and immoral in the views it upholds as to the relations between the temporal and the religious powers. Immoral will perhaps be regarded by some critics as a strong epithet, but we use it advisedly; we maintain that any political system which holds religion to be merely a kind of superior administrative element in the economy of the State, is self-condemned; the genius of a Bossuet, or the highmindedness of a Portalis, may perhaps for a time blind the crowd; but instead of the "Eagle of Meaux " suppose an infamous priest, like Harlay de Chanvallon, at the head of a diocese; for Portalis substitute Calonne, and the consequences of Gallicanism stand out in all their glaring enormity.

Let us now return to Pierre du Bois, and give a short review of his works. The catalogue of them is as follows; we transcribe it from M. Renan's enumeration:

Feb. 15th, 1871.