no means of supplying it from the oral instructions of the Apostles. The Epistle of St. James was addressed" to the twelve tribes scattered abroad;" and the first Epistle of St. Peter" to the strangers scattered throughout Galacia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia." But the matter is put beyond all doubt when we examine the sense of those documents on the subject. St. Luke calls his Gospel a "treatise of all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the days in which he was taken up." St. John says, "these are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye might have life through his name." In the Acts of the Apostles, we have the discourse of St. Peter by which three thousand were converted and added to the Church; and the words by which Cornelius and all his house were saved. In the fifteenth chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul gives an epitome of the subjects of his preaching, which he thus introduces: "Moreover Brethren, I declare unto you the Gospel which 1 preached unto you, by which also you are saved," &c. În the 4th chapter of his first Epistle to Timothy, St. Paul, referring to the articles of Christian doctrine and practice laid down in the foregoing part of the Epistle, says, "these things command and teach; meditate on these things.......continue in them, for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself and them that hear thee." In the 2d Epistle he says, "from a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation:" and he adds, "all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, THAT THE MAN OF GOD MAY BE PERFECT, THROUGHLY FURNISHED UNTO ALL GOOD WORKS." These passages, to accumulate no more, prove beyond all reasonable doubt that Holy Scripture contains all things necessary to salvation; or, that it is so complete as to need no addition; and, as it has been before shown that it is so evident as to need no interpretation, the Protestant rule of faith is demonstrated to be perfect. The most clear and forcible evidence, however, is no protection against the aggressions of the enemies of scriptural truth. In our next number, we shall show the futility of some of the most plausible objections by which the enemies of Scriptural truth have endeavoured to make the "Word of God of none effect." ROMAN BREVIARY. Historical Lessons of the Roman Breviary. No. 8. ST. FRANCIS XAVIER. WE proceed to redeem our promise of considering some of the par ticular miracles attributed to Xavier. One leading criterion for estimating such matters, evidently is the intrinsic credibility and probability of the things themselves. Every man of ordinary penetration, who reads the portentous narratives of Metaphrastes, or Jacobus de Voragine, discerns in a moment that they are and must be false; and that it would be as ridiculous to discuss the evidenee for and against them, as to propound grave “ Historic Doubts" respecting Gulliver's travels. As Dr. Milner generously allows us to make the best use we can of the discernment and judgment which God has given us, to distinguish false accounts of every kind from those which are true;"-we request our readers to apply theirs to the following exploits of the "Apostle of the Indies:" and we think they will be able to come to a pretty uniform conclusion respecting them, without any very severe exercise of their reasoning faculties. When Xavier was at Meliapore, he persisted in visiting St. Thomas's Church by night, after he had been warned that the place was haunted by a troop of devils. This infernal militia, being piqued at his thus setting them at defiance, assaulted him one night in great numbers, when he was at his devotions before the image of the Blessed Virgin; and beat him so violently that he was all over bruised, and forced to keep his bed for three days. He himself concealed this adventure; but it was discovered by means of a young man, who heard him crying out lustily, "O! my Lady! help me!-O! my Lady! wilt thou not help me?" However, when he was somewhat recovered, he boldly renewed his nocturnal visits; and the devils, finding that the argumentum baculinum made no impression upon him, afterwards "only made a noise to distract him in his prayers;" and one time, disguised in the habit of Canons, they counterfeited so well the midnight matins, that he asked the Vicar, "Who were those chanters who sung so admirably?" The Vicar told the circumstance to many people, after Francis's death.* Phædrus tells us that his fables have a two-fold use-to excite laughter, and to furnish rules for discreet conduct. When our readers have laughed their fill at the above adventure, they may extract from it two very useful pieces of knowledge:-first, that the Virgin Mary is the properest person to apply to for protection against evil spirits; and secondly, that singing the Roman canonical hours, in full clerical costume, is a very favourite diabolical pastime. • Bouhours, pp. 189-90. Tursellinus, 178-82. Doubtless those canonical imps laid a particular emphasis upon " Fuga catervas dæmonum," and such like passages in the service. We could, with little trouble, produce fifty stories, from approved authors, of the devil acting the Romish priest or friar, quite as profane and ridiculous as the above. We can just remember an old puppet-shew exhibition of a furious combat between Punch and the devil, terminating in the utter discomfiture of the latter; when the little wooden hero brought his sable adversary to the front of the stage, and completed his triumph by compelling him to sing " God save the King; very absurdly as we then thought; not knowing that it might be justfied by such respectable precedents from the Romish hagiology. A Portuguese soldier called Mendoza, being plundered by pirates and left pennyless, met Xavier near Meliapore, and asked for relief. The father put his hand in his pockets, but found them empty. However, he bid the suppliant take courage, as Heaven would provide for him; after which, walking forward a little, he again put his hand in his pocket, and pulled out fifty gold fanams, which he gave to Mendoza. The pieces of gold were found to be so pure and fine, that it was not doubted but they were miraculous.* This is much of a piece with the old legend of St. Agnes, in which we are told, that the virgin, being exposed naked, had a garment miraculously provided, which fitted her so well, that there was no doubt but it was made by an angel. We make no question but that angels could, if they chose to try, coin Portuguese fanams and shape clothes much more skilfully than any human artist whatever; but we think it no disparagement to believe that they have much more refined and elevated employments. When the saint was on his way to China, he made a number of converts at Tchen-tcheon, whom he baptized on ship-board. While he was christening them, he appeared of a stature much higher than his own; insomuch that they who were upon the shore near the vessel, believed that he had been standing upon some bench, but seeing him coming and going, and always appearing of the same height, they thought there might possibly be some miracle in the matter, and were desirous to be satisfied concerning it. Stephen Ventura went into the ship on purpose, and approaching Father Xavier, saw, that with his feet he touched the hatches, and yet his head was higher than the tallest there on whom he sprinkled the sacred waters of baptism. Ventura likewise observed, that after he had baptized the company, he returned to his natural proportion.↑ Virgil's Eneid was once in great repute as a conjuring book; and the great Ignatius Loyola once expelled a very obstinate devil by simply repeating the line Speluncam Dido dux et Trojanus eandem. We leave it to our classical readers to determine whether the verse, 'Et rabie fera corda tument; majorque videri,'§ might not, if pronounced secundum artem, contribute towards the preternatural enlargement of St. Francis Xavier. The passage may, at all events, serve to prove, that in this mark of sanctity, to which neither the Apostles nor John the Baptist ever made any pretensions, he has a formidable rival in the Camæan Sybil. During the same voyage, the child of a Mahometan fell overboard while the vessel was going right before the wind. Three days after the accident, Xavier seeing the father all in tears, enquired the cause of his sorrow, and having learnt it, asked him if he was willing to become a Christian, in case his son were restored to him. "The infidel promised him, and three days after this, before sun-rising, they saw the child upon the hatches. The child knew not what had become of him for those six days, and only remembered his falling into the water.”‡ Bouhours, p. 198. Tursellinus, p. 477. We leave it for those skilled in the history of fiction, to ascertain whether La Motte Fouqué stole Peter Schlemihl's inexhaustible purse from this incident, and made the devil the bestower of it by way of disguising his plagiarism. + Bouhours, p. 622-3. Turscllinus, p. 479. Here, as in fifty other instances, there is an awkward disagreement between the biographers: for Tursellinus positively affirms that the affair took place on dry land, at Sancian, several hundred miles from Tchen-tcheon. We think it as unnecessary to fix the precise locality of the miracle, as to find the longitude and latitude of Calypso's island. Virg. Æn. vi. 49. Bouhours, pp. 621-2. This, though not quite equal to St. Vincent Ferrer's resuscitation of the child at Morella, after its lunatic mother had cut it in pieces and cooked one quarter for dinner, is, we must allow, a miracle of no small dimensions. We fear the log-book of this Chinese voyage, made use of by Tursellinus, was carelessly kept, for in his edition of 1596, he says not a syllable about the matter. We may here remark, once for all, that the most astonishing miracles are almost invariably the last which become known. The trifling ones float like straws upon the stream of tradition, and are soon picked up, the large and precious pearls lie at the very bottom, and it requires sixty or seventy years' careful fishing to bring them to the surface. When Xavier was on his way to the island of Baranura, he unluckily dropt his crucifix into the sea. Had it been found in the stomach of the next fish caught by the crew, like the ring of Polycrates or of the Mayor of Newcastle, that would indeed have been something like a miracle, but still might have been resolved into sheer good luck by the incredulous. Accordingly we find, that when the saint had landed, and was walking on the beach in company with Fausto Rodriguez, twenty-four hours after the accident had happened, they both beheld arising out of the sea, a crab-fish which carried betwixt its claws the same crucifix raised on high. "I saw," says Rodriguez, “the crab-fish come directly to the Father, by whose side I was, and stop before him. The Father, falling on his knees, took his crucifix, after which the crab-fish returned into the sea."* The Jesuit Remond, who published thirty fustian panegyrical orations on Loyola and Xavier, soon after they were canonized, is very eloquent on this miracle, and proposes that the ancient sign Cancer should be turned out of the zodiac, and the above crab-fish put in its place, to remind star-gazing navigators of the propriety and benefit of invoking Xavier's intercession. We think that Fausto Rodriguez and himself, would shine with at least equal lustre and propriety in the more modern constellation of the fox and the goose.† When Xavier first went to Malacca, "the parents shewed him to their children; and it was observed that the man of God, in caressing those little Portugueses, called every one of them by their proper names, as if he had been of their acquaintance, and were not a stranger newly come on shore."§ Here the saint is not only rivalled by an ancient pagan heroine, but we grieve to say, absolutely outdone. What was this nursery exploit in comparison with those of the Erythrœan Sibyl Erophile, who, as the scholiast on Plato's Phædrus assures us, not only addressed every body by their right names, but spouted extempore verses, the very day that she was born? We mention this for the benefit of the Church of Rome; • Bouhours, pp. 223-4. + Vid. Remondi Orat. p. 447-9. We insert a sentence or two as a specimen of his abominable style. "O generose Christi vexillifer, nobilioribus digne poetis, quam iis qui nescio quem olim cancrum, Herculei calcanei morsus præmio, inter signa cælestia retulere! Serpat in eorum fabulas malus cancer, illasque corrosas absumat! Tu illo priore detracto siderum choris subrogandus," &c. &c. Yet the author of this puerile declamation tells us he was sixty years old when he published it! He elsewhere (p. 455) proposes that a certain ship in which Xavier sailed, should be exalted to the stars, to the exclusion of the ship Argo. The Jesuit Theophilus Raynauld in his Treatise de Immunitate Cyriacorum, is very angry with some Dominicans who had presumed to put the Virgin Mary in the zodiac; perhaps he was unacquainted with the vagaries of brother Remond, or indulgently connived at them. Bouhours, p. 207. It seems he did not preserve this notable faculty very long, for when the Japanese Bouze Ficarandono asked him “if he knew who he was?" he replied. "No, for I never saw you before.” Tursellinus, p. 331. it being not unworthy to figure-mutatis mutandis-in some future bull of canonization.* When Xavier was in Japan, the inquisitive natives overwhelmed him with the multitude of their interrogations. It was in the midst of these, "that by a prodigious manner of speech, the like of which was scarcely ever heard, he satisfied with one only answer, the questions of many persons, on very different subjects, and often opposite to each other, as suppose, the immortality of the soul, the motions of the heavens, the eclipses of the sun and moon, the colours of the rainbow, sin and grace, hell and heaven. The wonder was, that after he had heard all their several demands, he answered them in few words, and that these words, being multiplied in their ears, by a virtue all divine, gave them to understand all that they desired to know, as if he had answered each of them in particular."+ This story, which, out of respect to the understanding of our readers, we will not attempt to refute, especially as we do not believe that a single well-educated English Romanist could be found hardy enough to defend it, is recorded, minus a few embellishments, in the alreadycited epistle of Antonio de Quadros; confessedly on the authority of a single Japanese. No man of common sense will long hesitate which alternative he ought to adopt, when he has to chuse between crediting such a monstrous narrative as this, and simply believing that a Portuguese Jesuit retailed an impudent falsehood. When the saint was last at Sancian, "he cleared the country of the tigers, which laid it waste. These furious beasts came in herds together out of the forests, and devoured not only the children, but the men also, whom they found scattered in the fields, and at a distance from the entrenchments which were made for their defence. One night, the servant of God went out to meet the tigers, and when they came near him, threw holy water upon them, commanding them to go back, and never after to return. The commandment had its full effect, the whole herd betook themselves to flight, and from that time forward no tigers were ever seen upon the island."§ Here, like the Athenian dicasts, to whom Demosthenes told his tale of the ass's shadow, we should like to know a little more. It might be impertinent to enquire whether any body else ever saw a herd of tigers, or how long the small and desolate island of Sancian would furnish sustenance for even a score of such destructive and ferocious creatures : but we have some curiosity to learn what became of them. Did they commit suicide by jumping into the sea; or fight with each other, till all were • As we do not wish to give the pagans an undue advantage, we think it fair, by way of holding the balance evenly, to inform our readers, that the Irish saint, Fursey, made an eloquent speech before he was born. + Bouhours, pp. 457-8. Tursellinus, p. 476. Eman. Acosta, p.7. Ant. de Quadros, (ap. Diversi Avisi) fol. 209. This story is, as our readers may perceive, vouched for by more authorities than any of the preceding; much more, however, to their dishonour than its own credit. Xavier was at this time absolutely incapable of making himself understood in Japanese. He read short discourses to the people, which had been drawn up with great difficulty and labour by his companion John Fernandez; and in all his viva voce communications with the natives, he was obliged to employ Fernandez as his interpreter !!! Bouhours, p. 632. All our witnesses of the sixteenth century, from Xavier himself down to Tursellinus, observe a dead silence respecting this affair, and do not so much as hint that any thing in the shape of a tiger was ever seen on the island; which they tell us was very barren, and had few provisions of any sort! Perhaps the tigers in question were of the Chinese breed described by Grosier, (Description de la Chine) which, he tells us, have no tail, and a head like that of a dog, (very like tigers indeed!) and also have a cunning trick of assembling a number of their fellows, to assist în grubbing up the trees in which the men pursued by them take refuge. These, we dare say, were as plentiful on the island of Sancian in Xavier's time, as they ever were upon the adjoining continent. |