But, unfortunately, Macaulay, having stated in majestic antitheses his problem of “the unchangeable Church,” makes no attempt to provide us with a solution.  This splendid eulogium is not meant to convert us to Catholicism—­very far from it.  Macaulay was no Catholic, and had only a sort of literary admiration for the Papacy.  As Mr. Cotter Morison has shown, he leaves the problem just where he found it, and such theories as he offers are not quite trustworthy.  He does not suggest that the Catholic Church is permanent because it possesses truth:  but, rather, because men’s ideas of truth are a matter of idiosyncrasy or digestion.  The whole essay is not a very safe guide to the history of Protestantism or of Catholicism, though it is full of brilliant points and sensible assertions.  And in the end our essayist, the rebel from his Puritan traditions, and the close ally of sceptical Gallios, after forty pages of learned pros and cons, declares that he will not say more for fear of “exciting angry feelings.”  He rather sneers at Protestant fervour:  he declaims grand sentences about Catholic fervour.  He will not declare for either of them; and it does not seem to matter much in the long run for which men declare, provided they can be kept well in hand by saving common-sense.  In the meantime the topic is a mine of paradox to the picturesque historian.  This is not philosophy, it is not history, but it is full of a certain rich literary seed.

The passage, though a truism to all thoughtful men, was a striking novelty to English Protestants fifty years ago.  But it will hardly bear a close scrutiny of these sweeping, sharp-edged, “cock-sure” dogmas of which it is composed.  The exact propositions it contains may be singly accurate; but as to the most enduring “work of human policy,” it is fair to remember that the Civil Law of Rome has a continuous history of at least twenty-four centuries; that the Roman Empire from Augustus to the last Constantine in New Rome endured for fifteen centuries; and from Augustus to the last Hapsburg it endured for eighteen centuries.  There is a certain ambiguity between the way in which Macaulay alternates between the Papacy and the Christian Church, which are not at all the same thing.  The Papacy, as a European or cosmical institution, can hardly be said to have more than twelve centuries of continuous history on the stage of the world.  The religion and institutions of Confucius and of Buddha have twice that epoch; and the religion and institutions of Moses have thirty centuries; and the Califate in some form or other is nearly coeval with the Papacy.  The judicious eulogist has guarded himself against denying in words any of these facts; but a cool survey of universal history will somewhat blunt the edge of Macaulay’s trenchant phrases.  After all, we must admit that the passage as a whole, apart from the superlatives, is substantially true, and contains a most valuable and very striking thought.