The King at Mass Again.—Once more the King has gone on his annual visit to Marienbad, and once more, while there, he has attended Mass in honour of the Emperor of Austria’s birthday. This is much to be deplored. It was not at all necessary for the King to go to Mass to show his respect for the Emperor. There were other methods by which this might be done. I fear that his Majesty has no adequate conception of the pain he thus causes his most loyal Protestant subjects. King Henry of Navarre, afterwards King of France, in his earlier days, before he succeeded to Rome, acted wisely and courageously in relation to the Mass. He married a Roman Catholic Princess, Margaret of Valois, on a scaffolding erected outside of the church of Notre Dame, Paris. As soon as the ceremony was over his bride went into the church to attend Mass, but Henry of Navarre refused to go there with her, though he knew that by his refusal he would give great offence to the Romanists. When Queen Mary came to the Throne of England the Princess Elizabeth (afterwards Queen) was importuned to go to Mass to please her Royal sister. Elizabeth positively refused to do anything of the kind, and her refusal, writes Miss Agnes Strickland, in her Lives of the Queens of England, “excited the most lively feelings of admiration for her sincerity and courage among the Protestants.” We are told that the French Ambassador at this time wrote:—”Elizabeth will not hear Mass, nor accompany her sister to the Chapel, whatever remonstrance either the Queen or the Lords on her side have been able to make her on the subject.” Elizabeth went to Mass on one occasion, and on one only, but did it so unwillingly, and with such manifest dislike, that there can be no doubt she afterwards repented of her offence.—Protestant Observer.
Pastor Chiniquy.—It is just a hundred years since Pastor Chiniquy saw the light. For fifty years he lived in the Church of Rome, and during part of that time was a diligent priest in her service. But God opened his eyes to see the deluding errors of Romanism, and through the blessing of the Lord, he became the Luther of Canada. His experiences in the struggle that ended in liberty, and the persecutions he endured, are narrated in his well-known book, Fifty Years in the Church of Rome—a book which throws a lurid light on Rome and her ways.
English Monasticism in time of Henry VIII.—In his Henry VIII. and the Monasteries, Dr. Gairdner, a Papist, did his best to give a good character to these polluted institutions. He was not allowed to escape, however; with the result that he has made the following acknowledgment in a recent number of the Nineteenth Century:—”My estimate of the general morality of the monasteries, I fear, was rather too high. The St. Albans case I admitted. It was an exceptionally bad one; and though I made a mistake (which I rectified elsewhere) about the particular abbot whose misrule was so disgraceful, I never attempted to
palliate the facts. I have come now to see, however, that the moral decline of St. Albans after Whethamsted’s day was a gradual one, and had only reached the lowest depths of scandal when Archbishop Morton obtained visitation powers to correct that and some other monasteries which had the privilege, under ordinary circumstances, of exemption from Episcopal jurisdiction. . . . But the general laxity of monastic rule was, I fear, rather greater than I supposed on the eve of the Reformation. . . . I certainly did not wish to weigh down the scales on either side; but Mr. Coulton has convinced me that I have misinterpreted some things and thought too lightly of the real meaning of the findings in certain particular cases. Among other things, at page 103, where I have said ‘one monk was a dandy,’ I ought, I find, to have said, ‘one monk dressed in indecorous fashion.’ And this indecorous dressing in long hose—not ‘long boots,’ as I have made it on page 97—was a thing that would really be a police offence nowadays. So I fear that there is much to be said about the state of matters in a considerable number of monasteries to show that they were no good schools of delicacy or chastity.”