Chapter 11

FOOTNOTES:[142]Acta, p. 18. Freiburg edition, p. 62.[143]Cecconi, p. 144.[144]Menzel,Jesuitenumtriebe, p. 173.[145]Serie VII. vol. vi. p. 234-5.[146]Serie VII. vol. vi. pp. 226-27.[147]Neue Folge, Heft iii. p. 75.[148]Civiltá, Serie VII. vol. vi. p. 229.[149]Ibid. p. 229.[150]Friedberg, p. 88.[151]Stimmen,Neue Folge, Heft iv. pp. 59, 60.[152]Curious examples of this use of education are given by Menzel,Jesuitenumtriebe.[153]Serie VII. vol. vi. pp. 445 ff.[154]Vol. vi. p. 488.[155]Ibid. p. 488.

FOOTNOTES:

[142]Acta, p. 18. Freiburg edition, p. 62.

[143]Cecconi, p. 144.

[144]Menzel,Jesuitenumtriebe, p. 173.

[145]Serie VII. vol. vi. p. 234-5.

[146]Serie VII. vol. vi. pp. 226-27.

[147]Neue Folge, Heft iii. p. 75.

[148]Civiltá, Serie VII. vol. vi. p. 229.

[149]Ibid. p. 229.

[150]Friedberg, p. 88.

[151]Stimmen,Neue Folge, Heft iv. pp. 59, 60.

[152]Curious examples of this use of education are given by Menzel,Jesuitenumtriebe.

[153]Serie VII. vol. vi. pp. 445 ff.

[154]Vol. vi. p. 488.

[155]Ibid. p. 488.

CHAPTER IX

Publication of Janus—Hotter Controversy—Bishop Maret's Book—Père Hyacinthe—the Saviour of Society again—Dress—True Doctrine of Concordats not Contracts but Papal Laws—Every Catholic State has Two Heads—Four National Governments Condemned in One Day—What a Free Church means—Fulda Manifesto—Meeting of Catholic Notables in Berlin—Political Agitation in Bavaria and Austria—Stumpf's Critique of the Jesuit Schemes.

Littlemore than three months remained before the opening of the Council, when the intellectual movement respecting it received a new impulse. A book under the title ofThe Pope and the Council, by Janus, issued from the German press; and conjecture at once ascribed the principle authorship to no less a person than Döllinger, although it was assumed that he had availed himself of aid. The profound impression made by this work may be accounted for, partly by the excitement in the midst of which it appeared, and partly by its own force. It combined a minute knowledge of the inner history of the Church, with comprehensive views of the questions, both doctrinal and constitutional, which were now raised.

After a few clear passages from modern utterances of authority. Janus strikes the keynote rather higher than he is prepared to sustain it—"So they find themselves under a delusion, who believed that in the Church, the spirit of the Bible, and of old Christianity, had got the upper hand of that spirit of the middle ages according to which she was a penal establishment, able to send men to prison, to the gallows, or to the stake."

Beginning with theMagna Chartawhich Innocent III condemned, while he excommunicated the Barons, Janus cites case after case in which the establishment of free institutions, and especially of freedom of worship, brought down the solemn condemnation of the Pope. The case of Austria in 1868 is thelatest. With the quietness of scientific knowledge, he states what at the time would have required from an English writer arguments and proofs in detail, namely, the simple but most important fact that the oft-quoted word of the Apostle, "We must obey God rather than men," means, in the Jesuit sense, We must obey the Pope as the representative of God upon earth, and the infallible interpreter of the Divine will, rather than any civil superior, or any law of the State (p. 33).

The tone of Janus is calm and scholarly, without being cold; and the acuteness of his analysis is such as is found only where clear intellectual insight is united to trained habits of weighing language with reference to possible interpretations by such casuists as are formed by the Curia and the Jesuits.

He clearly proved that the Church was on the eve of one of the greatest constitutional changes ever effected in any commonwealth. If, in the past, the forged Decretals of the pseudo-Isidore had facilitated inroads upon the constitution of the Church, how much more would an authentic article of the creed, containing in itself the power of making any number of other articles, and assuming as its basis the unlimited authority of the Pope, pave the way to far-reaching civil and ecclesiastical encroachments! When Archbishop Manning said of Janus that by some it was "regarded as the shallowest and most pretentious book of the day" (Priv. Pet., iii. p. 114), he greatly moderated the tone of his Continental friends. Most bad things that could be said against a book, or its writers, were said in very bad language. The Archbishop himself could not let it pass without twice calling it "infamous," and that in a pastoral.

The excitement in Germany now reached a point at which the bishops began to be alarmed. The "good Press" undertook to extenuate the importance of the changes dreaded, and threw doubts on the probability of their being adopted. The perplexity became greater when, in France, appeared a book in two volumes from the pen of Monsignor Maret, said by some to be the most learned prelate in the country, and who, at all events, was Dean of the Theological Faculty of the Sorbonne.He combated the proposed innovations with French tact and skill, raising a voice, if not for the old Gallican doctrines as a whole, at least for some remains both of them and of the liberties with which are identified the names of the most renowned Churchmen in France since the Reformation.[156]The book made a profound but passing impression. It was calledReligious Peace and the General Council; but the Jesuit historian Sambin (p. 47) styles it a brand increasing the conflagration. The question raised was that between a constitutional but oligarchical government and a personal one for the Church. Maret holds that in her constitution a check upon the monarch was provided by the "aristocracy," that is, the bishops (vol. ii, p. 107). The democracy is formed by the priests and the laity. But we may point out that this is very loose language.Democracymeans a people with power, not a populace excluded from all functions of government. The people in the Papal Church are absolutely stripped of all part in government. They are a mere populace. The clergy are disfranchised officials. That Church is a society with a populace, but without a democracy. Before the Vatican Council, it had a constitutional aristocracy. Since then, the bishops are nobles without any but delegated power. Maret clearly states the familiar fact, that in the earlier centuries both clergy and laity took part in the election of bishops. But when he comes to speak of the part taken by kings in their election, the facts glide out of sight, as noiselessly as writers of his school generally say that they are wont to do in the hands of a Jesuit. A reader might imagine that kings first got the idea of a right in the election of bishops by some grant of the Church; whereas even the Bishops of Rome were for a long time elected on imperial or royal order, coming from Greek or Goth, from Arian or orthodox prince, as the case might be.

Maret quotes Cardinal de la Luzerne as saying that a General Council, in which the order of priests was not represented, would be illegitimate though not invalid (vol. i. p. 125); and gives it as the general opinion of theologians that their presence wasnecessary. He also admits that the presence of laymen in the Councils is attested by a large number of documents.

Von Schulte reviewed this work in theLiteraturblatof Bonn (v. pp. 2 and 54). Looking at it in a popular sense, Schulte thought it was a book to mark an epoch. It was likely to produce a great effect among the clergy, little among the laity. Time has not justified this anticipation. The fact is, all the younger clergy had been educated out of French ideas and sympathies, and such of the young laity too as had been brought up by priests. Men were but beginning to find how the Christian Brothers, and convent schools, and episcopal seminaries had changed France.

TheCiviltá, in reply, objects even to Maret's formula,the Pope with the bishops superior to himself alone. Such an objection implies that in Council all the bishops add to the Pope nothing at all. So many mitres without any heads in them would add at least as much. We believe, indeed, that great thinkers have doubted whether a judge with his wig is not superior to the same judge without his wig. But the Pope with all the bishops is not superior to the Pope without any bishop! The Jesuit writer says that he thinks he expresses the mind of Maret with exactness when he puts it thus,The supreme power resides in the Pope together with the bishops; in the Pope as supreme, whose strict duty it is nevertheless, to obey; in the bishops as subordinate, who, nevertheless, have the right to command(Civiltá, VII. viii. p. 257 ff.).

The choicest auditories of Paris had often crowded noble Notre Dame, quaffing with delight the sparkling eloquence of the Carmelite preacher Hyacinthe. Now the ear of the country was thrilled for a moment, by a cry from that eloquent voice. "By an abrupt change," he wrote to the General of his order on September 20, 1869, "for which I blame not your own feelings, but a party in Rome, you now accuse what you didencourage, and blame what you did approve, commanding me to hold a language, or to preserve a silence, which would not represent my conscience."

Placed in this difficulty, he must forsake General, order, and convent. He continues: "My profound conviction is, that if France in particular, and the Latin races in general, are delivered over to social, moral, and religious anarchy, the principal cause is, not assuredly Catholicism itself, but the manner in which it has been understood and practised for a long time."[157]

St. Peter's Day, always a great day in Rome, was, of course, of surpassing importance in the year of the Council. TheCiviltácelebrated it in an article very like one of the Pope's Speeches. This article yields an example of a dualism in the government of the universe which must glide in as the unconscious but inevitable complement of the doctrine into which Papal writers fall, in explaining away what to others seems the blight of Providence on whatever they rule according to their own principles. They begin by separating the God of Providence from the God of grace. They end by turning the bounties of Providence into the bribes of the evil one. It will be seen that in what follows national prosperity comes from the devil. The increase of our fields, the blessing in our basket and our store, are in reality a curse. This, though unseen to the poor Pope who teaches such things, presents a true and a very hurtful form of Manicheism. It is another proof that they who readily forge and hurl bad names are not safe from the errors which those names when correctly used denote.

In June the Curia had to set up a strong resistance to the movement originated in Austria for the abrogation of the Concordat. That instrument, which had formed the diplomatic triumph of Cardinal Rauscher and had crowned the professional reputation of Schulte, had legally restored to the Papal Church much of what it calls its liberties; but the clergy complained that they never practically got all that was promised upon paper; In theFrondbiographies of the Cardinals, that of Rauscherdescribes the condition of the Church in Austria, under the Josephine laws, as deplorable! Instead of leaving her, like Protestant Prussia, to manage her own affairs, without having defined either what "manage" or "her own" meant, Austria, knowing how Rome interprets, had taken a different course. There was left, according to our authority, no canon law, but only such legislation as was imbued with Febronianism and Caesarism. Bulls, briefs, rescripts, and even the pastorals of bishops were subject to the royalplacet. Marriage was withdrawn from under the control of the Church. The State pushed into everything, "and the Catholic Church had none of the liberties claimed by the tolerance of the age for all religions." Rauscher had succeeded in getting these grievances redressed, but now the national spirit was rising against his work. His Concordat bound Austria to concede to the Church "all rights and privileges to which by the divine order and by canon law she is entitled." Probably the Emperor but imperfectly comprehended what that implied. Rauscher comprehended it. He was as honest a man as any Papal priest is likely to be. He was the adviser of the Emperor, and his sworn personal friend. Any one may tell what such friends do for princes who will only master what Rauscher managed to bind his sovereign to. The minister, Von Hasner, put the plea for the abrogation of the Concordat on ground exceedingly offensive to the Pope and those around him. When the Concordat was contracted, said Hasner, Rome was an independent State. Now, it has ceased to be so, and is sustained only by foreign arms. The reply from the Vatican was: So long as the Pope is sustained by Christian arms, he can never be sustained by those of foreigners. The reply of the politician would have been that in 1855, when the Concordat was concluded, the Papal State was as much dependent upon foreign arms as in 1867, the only difference being that at the former time the arms holding a great portion of it were those of Austria.

On the anniversary of the Pope's accession, his speech, addressed to the Sacred College, contained the following passage: "The two societies of which the world consists," said hisHoliness, are, first, the Tower of Pride, i.e. Babel; secondly, the society whose prototype is seen "in the upper room, on the day of Pentecost, where Peter, the Apostles, and thousands of the faithful of different nations, heard one and the same language and understood it." Those who wish to form a clear idea of what these two organs of two hostile societies are—the Babel tongue and the Pentecostal tongue—must just keep their eyes open as we go on. (Civiltá, VII. vii. p. 130.)

The Pope, on June 25, calling governments before "his tribunal," and sitting in judgment, pronounced censure on the governments of Italy, Austria, Spain, and Russia. Italy was discussing a law to subject students even for the priesthood to the conscription. Austria was miserably wronging and injuring the Church. Spain was doing likewise, or worse. And Russia was persecuting the Polish bishops and sending them into exile. The high spirits of the Court at this moment appear in the comments on these sentences. We give a few specimens from theCiviltá(VII. vii. p. 135, etc.)—

From no other lips could those words burst forth, save from those of him who is set by God as ruler of His Church, with divine power, above all human powers.... Only the Pope can thus menace, reprove, and instruct, because he only is set in a region above all human greatness between heaven and earth.... When science gloried in being Catholic, and authority in being derived from God, both were, when they spoke, echoes of the word of the Pope. But science and authority have become unchristianized. The Pope has remained what he was—the herald, the oracle of the Lord.

The article proceeded to show that the Pope had menaced in the same breath one republic, Spain; two constitutional monarchies, Italy and Austria; and one absolute monarchy, Russia. This could not be done unless the Pope was king. Then follows a specimen of history as it flourishes under Pius IX. The Roman Emperors used to imprison the Popes, in order to reign in Rome; and Constantine,not wishing to imprisonthe Pope, abandoned Rome. But a king not Pope, and a Pope not king, never were able to live here together, and never will be able to do so. (Civiltá, VII. vii. p. 131 ff.)

Great attention was awakened by the prominence given by theCiviltá(p. 210) to a publication of Bishop Plantier, ofNimes. It was "splendid and profound." Plantier spoke of the suggestion that the two doctrines of Papal infallibility and the assumption of the Virgin should be defined by acclamation. He alleged that such a mode of definition could be conveniently and infallibly adopted, and asked if the Council should adopt it, what would be the harm? He ridiculed the idea that the assistance of the Holy Spirit would be given to a decision by vote and not to one by acclamation. The appearance of this in theCiviltá, after all that had passed, quickened the fears of the anti-infallibilists and also of the anti-opportunists lest the Pope should be determined to carry through the definition by acclamation.

Early in September the bishops of Germany met at Fulda, and issued a collective pastoral. They solemnly deprecated the rumours spread abroad as to the intentions of the Council. The bishops went on to asseverate that the Council would never define any new doctrine which was not contained in holy writ or in tradition, but would define only principles which were written "on all your hearts by faith and conscience" (Friedberg, p. 276). The Catholics of Germany took this solemn language in its apparent meaning; and the persuasion that their bishops would stand fast, and that the Curia would not ride roughshod over such a body, tranquillized most men. Only ecclesiastics appear to have suspected that the assurance might amount to little more than carefully dovetailed words.

The German bishops, in giving the assurance that nothing but what the faithful believed would be defined, probably hoped that the fact of their having to give such an assurance would weigh at Rome, as a hindrance to the plans in contemplation. If so, they only furnished one more proof of the truth which we in England have been told by Dr. Newman, thatno pledge from Catholics is of any value to which Rome is not a party.[158]

If the German bishops read as little as Dr. Friedrich says they do, they perhaps do not read theUnitá Cattolica. Thereis no doubt that it, at least, speaks language agreeable in the highest quarters. In its number for the preceding 1st of May, it commented on the same assurance as having been flung before the French people. "If the Council," says this real echo, "should only define what all believe, the Council would be useless, for in points which all believe all are agreed." To say, it proceeds, that an Œcumenical Council should express what all the faithful think, is to confound the Teaching Church with the Learning Church. "The pen falls from our hands, and we have not courage to contend against such nonsense."

After having put this assurance before their nation, certain of the bishops felt it necessary to address a private appeal to the Pope, drawn up by Dinkel, Bishop of Augsburg, representing the great danger to the Church in Germany which the proposed alterations would involve, and praying him to abandon "the far-reaching projects which were ascribed to him."[159]A similar appeal was sent to his Holiness by the prelates of Hungary, in which country a notable commencement had been made in restoring the laity to a part in the management of Church affairs.[160]

In June 1869 a remarkable meeting of Catholic notables was held in Berlin; with an account of which Sepp opens his book. The chair was filled by Peter Reichensperger, since noted for his Ultramontane zeal, and Herr Windhorst, now the Ultramontane leader in the Reichstag, was present, with even Dr. Jörg, of Bavaria, whose allusion, in the winter of 1874, to the attempt of Kullman on the life of Bismarck called forth a remarkable speech from that statesman. These gentlemen, thinking, or professing to think, that their bishops would defeat what the Curia had planned, adopted an address expressive of confidence in them, and of their hope that the threatened collision between the Church and their governments and nation might be averted.

Sepp himself went to Prague to present the document to Cardinal Prince Schwarzenberg. The latter read it slowly, thought it over, and said, "It is far too weak. With Romeyou must hold very different language from that." In further conversation Sepp said to the Cardinal, "You have in Prague the first canonist in Germany (Schulte), the man who drafted the Austrian Concordat, and surely he can be employed in similar work for the Council." The reply was: "You have in Munich the greatest Catholic theologian in Germany, and the gentlemen in Rome will not hear of his being invited" (Sepp, p. 4).

Large numbers of priests had been returned to the Bavarian Parliament, all burning with zeal against Prussia, and against union under it. In 1868 the clerical agitation had gone so far that, in November of that year, President Badhauser, when closing the Landsrath, addressed the members in unwonted language—

When the government of the country and its organs, the chamber which represents the people, and the new laws, are daily held up to suspicion, mockery, and contempt, when the peasantry are excited against the townspeople, and when men, throwing off all patriotic shame, feed themselves with hopes of foreign intervention, threatening our German warriors with the chassepots, then must every honourable man condemn such proceedings; for the venom daily instilled will, in time, poison the honest country people, as occurrences in Upper Bavaria already show.[161]

Secret associations for Ultramontane objects were formed even among children. Those of the clergy who would have warned the authorities were still kept still by secret terrorism. The meeting of the Council and the necessity of overthrowing Prince Hohenlohe were closely connected with this turmoil. And the Liberals plainly said, "The whole Catholic world is to be fanaticized, to enable the great Catholic powers, after crushing Prussia, as they hope to do, to carry out a grand reaction."[162]

TheVaterlandwent so far, when Napoleon III took his lastplébiscite, as to tell its readers that a French intervention in Germany would soon follow, that it was eagerly looked for, and that all would join France to break the hated yoke of Prussia. Morally, Prussia was already at an end, but it was for Franceto put an end to her physically. "Who can tell if we shall have any North German Confederation, Zollverein, or Prussian monarchy in 1871?"[163]Similar hopes of great events often pointed to the year of the Council, or the year after. TheCiviltádid not scruple to tell Napoleon III that he owed the newplébisciteto Mentana. So far from concealing the Pope's direct action in a question affecting the stability of a throne, his confidential writers exaggerated his influence.

In Austria a struggle had set in against the supernatural order. Laws on civil marriage, education, and registry of baptism were passed by the legislature, and tardily assented to by the Emperor. The Bishop of Linz issued a manifesto saying that he would not acknowledge the new illegitimate laws—of course under the plea of obeying God rather than man. Turning on the Emperor, he said that he had pledged his faith to the Concordat as a man and as a kaiser. Other prelates, in milder language, set Papal above Austrian law. Finally, as we have already seen, on June 22, 1868, the Pope himself laid the new laws under his condemnation.

A Catholic meeting against the school law was being held in the church at Schlanders, and while the curate was making a speech Count Manzano, the local authority, declared the meeting closed. Cries of "Down with him! kill him!" were raised. He was thrown to the ground, beaten on the breast, and barely escaped to the barracks of the gensdarmes.

When the Council was closely approaching, great excitement broke out in Austria against the religious orders. The spark which kindled the blaze was the discovery of a nun confined in the Carmelite convent of Cracow. She had been kept in one cell for twenty years, with incredible privations and in bestial filth. The rage of the public forced the government to go as far as some show of action. Orders were issued for the inspection of convents. Sentences of bishops condemning priests to confinement in ecclesiastical prisons were declared invalid unless the culprit voluntarily consented. The bishops were also required to give in lists of the voluntary prisoners.

These measures were resented as an "insult to the episcopate." The Bishop of Brünn won himself an honourable mention in theCiviltáby a circular in which he repelled the pretensions of the government, refused the list required, and told the superiors of monasteries to pay no heed to the orders. While this second government was set up, beside that of the country, the voice of Rome cheered it on in taking the upper hand. The same voice railed against the constitutional ministers, the parliament, and the laws.

The combative Bishop of Linz, in a great meeting, said that he did not cast any doubt on the religious feeling of the Emperor, but he was now nothing more than a constitutional sovereign. Instead, therefore, of merely saying that they had confidence in the Emperor, they must come to his aid. This was repeated in Rome, with the explanation that it had been said that the bishop in this appeal for aid to the Emperor was only uttering the sentiments of his Majesty as expressed to the bishop. Thus were bishops commended by the organ of the Papal Court for breaking the laws of their country, and credited with influencing the mind of the sovereign in a sense hostile to the constitution.[164]

The Ultramontane party had frequently, during the year (1868) been encouraged by correspondents in Paris to expect a war of France against Prussia. On March 10, theUnitácontained a letter expressing fears that Austria and Italy might agree to remain neutral, but quoting a passage from theVolksbotein favour of French invasion of Germany. On April 23 it was said that for a year past the Emperor had allowed no opportunity of rousing the war spirit to pass. A week later a crusading significance was given to the approaching anniversary of Joan of Arc. It was announced that more than twelve archbishops and bishops would attend—among them Cardinal Bonnechose—and that the Empress would grace the scene. On May 1 the fact that the appearance in Paris of Benedetti, the French ambassador at Berlin, was officially said to have no connection with political prospects, was noted fora smile. On the 13th the display at the festival of Joan of Arc at Orleans, with a great array of prelates, was described as "one of the noblest ever connected with war and religion, well adapted to excite a nation which aims at uniting the cross with the sword." On June 19 it was said that the mission of General Fleury to Florence was with reason taken as a sign of approaching war.

Yet, while the Emperor of the French was looked to as leader against the foe whom the Church had marked out for the first victim, every sign of discord in France, every outbreak or disorder was eagerly paraded as proof of the anarchy to which all countries must come under any régime but that of the Church. At the same time every crime, riot, or difficulty in Italy was magnified and dwelt upon with the same moral. "Let the Chamber invoke the authority of the Council, and proclaim its canons as the laws of the State," was the demand of theUnitáeight months before the Council met (March 21). Another saying was, There are three Italys—the Italy of Pius IX, which prays; the Italy of Mazzini, which conspires; the Italy of Menabrea, which trembles (March 27). Menabrea was then Premier. Again—

The Council is drawing near, and Babylon is trembling, hell is blaspheming, and before long the world will hear the infallible word of truth and righteousness. Hallelujah!... The revolution which for nine years has been bent on marching to Rome is disgraced, senseless, divided. The traitors are betrayed, the robbers plundered, and the rebels plotted against by rebellion. Hallelujah! (March 28).

TheUnitáfound that the threefold opposition of governments, rationalists, and heretics showed itself most strongly in May, the month of Mary, which only means that the Immaculate has set her heel on the three heads of the Hydra. Here the mention of governments as one head of the Hydra is no slip of the pen, that is, governments which dwelt in Babylon, as we have just read, or in the tower of Babel, as it is more frequently expressed. Three days later (May 23) theUnitácries, "It is time for Catholics to be up in defence of the Council. It is the onlyplank of safety for shipwrecked society." TheMemoriale Diplomatiquesays that "governments are less and less disposed to interfere in religious questions, unless their rights are infringed; but such reserve is war against the Council, whichbeing infallible cannot infringe any right." The italics here are our own; and would that we could print the words on the mind of every rising man in England. That would save vast waste of words.

The courage of theCiviltáwas stimulated by the French elections in the summer, and its hatred of United Italy boiled over. The ever faithfulUnivershad given the watchword to the electors. "The temporal power, and liberty of higher instruction!" In the cry "liberty of higher instruction," we have the popular side of the original call of theCiviltáfor universities all over Europe, canonically instituted. One hundred and twenty deputies were pledged to the program, and the French electors ought to be proclaimed as having deserved well of Catholicism. "The illustrious Louis Veuillot," as theCiviltástyles him, had shown that what the Voltairians wanted was the separation of Church and State, from which would follow the decay of Christian worship to such a point that it might be feasible to annihilate it.

Noble, Catholic, chivalrous France is contrasted, by theCiviltá, with vile Italy. The latter, in a serious catalogue of crimes, is said to have "reduced the bishops to the extreme of poverty, has at its own caprice impeded the divine word, and showed more than sixty dioceses widowed of their pastors." The French voters had said, "We go to the urn as the delegates of the universal suffrage of Christendom." "The monstrous edifice of Italian unity must crumble," says this Romanist, who was no Roman. It is founded on the ruins of the temporal power of the Pontiff, which cannot perish. (VII. vi. 611 ff.)

The plea of the Liberal Catholics for freedom of conscience became more and more offensive to the Catholics. The Fathers of Laach, in censuring the address of the laymen of Coblentz, went so far as to say that the treatment of the Jews in Rome "showed no want of humanity or civil tolerance." These educated laymen well knew that the proper condition of heretics, according to the same principles, ought to be much worse than that of the Ghetto Jews. The latter, not being baptized, were theoretically not subject to the jurisdiction of the Church, but the others, as Bellarmine shows,though not of the Church, belonged to the Church. Stumpf, writing in the BonnLiteraturblatt, did not content himself with questioning the intolerant doctrine of the Jesuits; he directly attacked it. He took an important step further—one, indeed, which seems like a new life in the Roman Catholic intellect. He told the Jesuits plainly that their exclusive principle of onefoldrendered religious freedom and unity impossible. Here he touched the distinction between the grand and the huge, which Romanists carefully keep out of sight, and which the sincerest advocates of liberty in their ranks had hitherto overlooked. They took for a grand conception of the unity of Christians, as consisting in submission to one human head. That conception is narrow and illusory. It fails of grandeur by monstrous disproportion. Stumpf goes on to declare that the absolute dominion of the Church over the State, although the favourite doctrine as he admits, in Rome, is in contradiction to the fundamental principle of Christianity. He would no longer be content, as a Liberal Catholic, to plead for freedom of conscience merely as a compromise. He says, We now represent a principle. The theocratic principle menaces society, and that principle will never be satisfied till the acknowledgment of civil rights is made to depend upon the profession of the Catholic faith. He adds that a promise to compromisetill we had the powerwould content no one, because the modern world has learned that nothing is settled till the principle is settled. He says, We are determined to have the Church a Church, and the State a State. But this a postulate which demands, as its condition, individual freedom. According to him it was Christ that introduced among men the idea of independence, and that of a limit existing to the power of the State, by distinguishing His own kingdom of love and grace from that of law and compulsion. "When the Church authorities," says Stumpf, "doadmonish the rulers of the State, their first counsel should be to consider it their highest duty to protect freedom of conscience. They ought to warn them, before any other kind of unrighteousness against the use of force, for or against any form of religion which is not inconsistent with the maintenance of moral law"; and he adds, what we shall emphasize, "privation of civil equality is an employment of force." Such, he says, was the counsel given by the early Christian teachers; and though later teachers reversed it, their course is not to be justified before the law of Christ.

Theendof the State, as viewed by Stumpf, is much loftier than that assigned to it in the Papal theory. In the great collection of families called by men a State, he does not see a body politic without a moral mission, existing, according to the ruinous theology of Rome, only for temporal ends—a body politic which would be unworthy of God or man. According to Stumpf, the end of the State isthe maintenance of general moral order. This theory does not bind the families of a country acting in their collective capacity, to prescribe the creed and cult of individuals. No more does it bind them, on the other hand, to resign all moral aims, leaving every moral question to be decided for them without any appeal to the common conscience, to fruits or to the Bible, by a power which would strip the State of every moral quality, and would also prescribe the creed and cult of all. The theory of Stumpf holds that the collective authority of the nation, in the affairs common to all the families of that nation, is called to regulate action so far as action affects the common good, but does not hold that it is called to regulate belief. Claiming for the Church the full right of asserting and urging moral principles, Stumpf, with great solemnity, claims for the legislator freedom to frame law according to his own conscience, and to his belief in what tends to the maintenance and the perfecting of moral order. This he has to do without the direction of any ecclesiastic, but knowing that he must give account to God.No omnipotent word of Church authorities can or shall deter us from this work.Then he interjects, Would it not be pleasant to have to consult the theologiansof theCiviltáand theStimmen? The Jesuits, he alleges, had no conception of any exercise of moral power upon one another but in the way of commanding and obeying. The Church in the middle ages, by her influence in secular affairs secularized herself, and lost her moral influence, which was never recovered to Christianity till the States had done what the Jesuits call apostatizing from Christ, and so opened the way for a return of true moral Christian influence. The early Church, he truly and nobly points out, was able, in the face of the omnipotent heathen authorities, to pervade society with her true moral influences; and he contends that nothing can give back to the Church her position as the first force in culture, but the recognition of the independence of the State.

One very curious part of this grave and forceful essay is the protest of the layman against the twisting of Scripture by the Jesuits. He puts together a number of the texts upon which they ring the changes, making them prove their own ideas by the simple process of putting those ideas into them, and reiterating them again and again. The first of the texts which he quotes is, "Teach all nations." He, apparently, is not aware that this is now as handy a weapon with those theologians as "obey God rather than man." In their lips "teach" means "make laws," and "all nations" means, notevery creature, but, collectively, all States. Therefore the words "teach all nations" are, in the lips of the Jesuits, a commission to the Pope to give laws to all countries, or, in highflown language, "to exercise the supreme magisterial office." The Jesuits had saucily told the laymen of Coblentz to ask the nearest theologian for an explanation of the relations between the natural order and the supernatural. But this particular layman gave them as good as they brought. When men write as he does, they have begun to be Catholics, have ceased to be Papists, and are, however unconsciously, in process of ceasing to be Romanists.

The Allocution of June 22, in which the constitution and new laws of Austria were condemned, had proved as distasteful to Liberal Catholics as it had been agreeable to the Jesuits."The Curialistic notion," says the author ofReform in Head and Members, "that the law of the Church must be the inviolable rule for all laws and statutes, and for all and every kind of activity in the life of the State, runs through it like a black thread. The AustrianMagna Chartaof civil, political, religious and scientific freedom was called a sacrilegious law. Moreover, the Pope," he proceeds to say, "had declared that these laws themselves, together withall that should arise out of them, are and ever will be invalid and of no effect.... Every enlightened person among the Catholics of Germany and France concealed himself in silence and in mourning at this rude opposition of Rome to the public law of the entire Western world." Count Beust, in a despatch dated about ten days after the Allocution was delivered, said that "the Holy See had extended its animadversions to subjects 'which we by no means can allow to be under its authority.'" We shall hereafter see how clearly and completely Count Beust had now grasped the question as between the Papacy and the life of nations.

FOOTNOTES:[156]Monsignor Maret boldly quotes Eusebius as saying (Book II. cap. xiv.) that Peter was not only the greatest and strongest of the Apostles, which is like what he says, but that he was the prince and patron of them all, which he does not say. That is said for him by the Latin translator. The one word προἡγορον, "spokesman," or champion, of Eusebius is deliberately turned into the two, "prince and patron"—Principem et patronum.—Maret, vol. i. p. 97.[157]See the original,Vitelleschi, p. 266.[158]Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, p. 14.[159]Friedberg, p. 19.[160]See Lord Acton,Zur Geschichte.[161]Weltbegebenheiten, 336.[162]Ibid. i. 327.[163]Ibid. 340.[164]Civiltá, VII. viii. pp. 209 ff.

FOOTNOTES:

[156]Monsignor Maret boldly quotes Eusebius as saying (Book II. cap. xiv.) that Peter was not only the greatest and strongest of the Apostles, which is like what he says, but that he was the prince and patron of them all, which he does not say. That is said for him by the Latin translator. The one word προἡγορον, "spokesman," or champion, of Eusebius is deliberately turned into the two, "prince and patron"—Principem et patronum.—Maret, vol. i. p. 97.

[157]See the original,Vitelleschi, p. 266.

[158]Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, p. 14.

[159]Friedberg, p. 19.

[160]See Lord Acton,Zur Geschichte.

[161]Weltbegebenheiten, 336.

[162]Ibid. i. 327.

[163]Ibid. 340.

[164]Civiltá, VII. viii. pp. 209 ff.

CHAPTER X

Conflicting Manifestoes by Bishops—Attacks on Bossuet—Darboy—Dupanloup combats Infallibility—His relations with Dr. Pusey—Deschamps replies—Manning's Manifesto—Retort of Friedrich—Discordant Episcopal Witnesses.

InNovember 1869 the Bishop of Versailles, writing of Bossuet, said that the fame of the Eagle of Meaux was from day to day declining (Friedberg, p. 81). This was but a symptom of the new war against nationalism. Professor Ceccucci, though writing for a French audience, did not scruple to say, "If Bossuet escaped excommunication, he owed it to the benign and paternal indulgence of the Holy See" (Frond, iv. p. 112). Bishop Dupanloup soon took occasion to show that Innocent XI sent Bossuet two briefs congratulating him on having written in a manner calculated to win back heretics and increase the propagating power of the Church.[165]If the Church, even before infallibility had been proclaimed, began to be so conscious of its narrowness that it could hardly contain Bossuet, what will it be when a few centuries more have passed over it?

As the opening of the Council drew nearer, feeling grew warmer in political and religious circles. Archbishop Darboy sketched the impending dangers in a pastoral—

"You have been told that articles of faith which hitherto you have not been bound to believe, are to be imposed upon you; that points affecting civil society and the relations of Church and State are to be treated in a spirit opposed to the laws and usages of the age; that a certain vote is to be carried by acclamation; that the bishops will not be free, and that the minority, even if eloquent, will be treated as an opposition, and will soon be put down by the majority.... It must be owned that much has been done to spread these alarms by writers taking different sides."[166]

Bishop Dupanloup, when about leaving home for the Council,published a memorable letter. He seemed to regard the desire of the French clergy for centralization as the origin of the cry for a dogma. The change, however, from a national to a Papal spirit was natural. Was it likely that youths from the schools of the Christian Brothers, passed through an episcopal seminary, would comprehend the national spirit and episcopal convictions of Darboy or even of Dupanloup?[167]The lower education of the country had been just long enough in the hands of Rome to begin to bear fruit. Dupanloup meant no ill to France when he succeeded in binding Louis Philippe to Gregory XVI, by inducing him to give the priests their way in schools, in return for forbearance in baptizing the Comte de Paris, as the son of a mixed marriage, and of a mother who refused to abjure her Protestantism. But he then did one of the most hurtful deeds to France, and to the future of European peace, that man could have done.

This letter, cries Sambin, gave an episcopal head to the revolt; ... the objection was pointed against the opportuneness of defining the dogma of infallibility, but it was hardly possible to be deceived—the principle of infallibility itself seemed to be attacked.... The acts of the sovereign Pontiff were presented in a light so far from the truth, that a feeling of profound astonishment passed through the ranks of pastors and people. They were grieved to see the paling away of the triple halo which had hitherto hovered around the author's brow (Sambin, p. 49).

This was published in France in 1872, after Dupanloup had "submitted," and rendered new and conspicuous service to the Papacy. As Dupanloup's pamphlet will be hard to find hereafter, and as it is a representative document, we may give a general idea of the argument it presents.

For two years, says Dupanloup, thousands of printed papers have been circulated in the streets, containing a vow to believe in the personal infallibility of the Pope. Agents have got them signed by persons who did not understand the first word of the question.

He contrasts the confidence and freedom of speech granted to theCiviltáand theUniverswith the secrecy observed toward bishops. Naming Manning and Deschamps as the leaders in the agitation for the new dogma, he adds, "I say new, because for eighteen hundred years the faithful have not, on pain of ceasing to be Catholics, been bound to believe it." Alluding to the freedom which, it was said, the bishops would have in the Council, he asks what freedom was left to them even now, when any who expressed an unwelcome opinion were denounced in the papers, beforehand, as schismatics or heretics.... "After having taught for eighteen hundred and seventy years, the Church is now to come and ask in a Council, Who has the right of teaching with infallibility?... When the oak is twenty centuries old, digging to find the parent acorn under the roots is the way to shake the tree."

The Bishop proceeds, with tact and great earnestness, to plead for the necessity of moral unanimity in defining new dogmas. He relates a fact of interest, and one very closely affecting the person of Pius IX. We have seen that, in 1864, the Pope formally initiated official preparations for the Council; that he had long before 1867 decided important questions as to its constitution and procedure; that he had set commissions to work, consulted bishops in different countries, and ordered nuncios to select theologians; and that it was only political perplexity which prevented the assembly of 1867 from being the General Council.

Yet Bishop Dupanloup, whether then aware of these facts or not, makes the following statement—

I well remember, and more bishops than one who were present in Rome in 1867 can recall, the fact that one of the most serious anxieties of Pius IX, before deciding on holding the Vatican Council, was, lest questions should arise calculated to provoke stormydiscussions, and divisions in the episcopate. But the Pope remembered the sagacious conduct of the Council of Trent and of Pius IV, and proceeded, in the hope that it would not be forgotten at the future Council.

One of Dupanloup's solemn sayings is, "I have read and read again the catechism of the Council of Trent, on purpose to find if it spoke Yes or No about the infallibility of the Pope; I have ascertained that it does not say a word about it."

Again, he states that in 1867 one hundred and eighty-eight Anglican ministers wrote to the Pope asking for the basis of a union. In his reply, the Pope spoke of the authority of the Church and the supremacy of the Pope, but he did not speak of his infallibility. Yet journalists, screening themselves behind his name, tried to shut the mouths of bishops by attacks full of violence and gall. This was meant for M. Veuillot, who was not slow to reply.

As to Greeks and Protestants, Dupanloup points out that what is proposed amounts to telling them, "A ditch now separates us; we are going to make it an abyss.... Two years ago. Dr. Pusey said to me in Orleans, 'There are eight thousand of us in England, daily praying for a union.'" ... When Pitt thought of relaxing laws against Catholics in England and Ireland, he asked several learned bodies what was the real doctrine of the Roman Church on the power of the Pope. "I have under my eyes the replies of the Universities of Paris, Douay, Louvain, Alcala, Salamanca, and Valladolid." They all "answer expressly that neither the Pope nor the Cardinals, nor yet any body or individual in the Roman Church, hold from Jesus Christ any civil authority over England, any power to release the subjects of his Britannic Majesty from their oath of fidelity." Such doctrine was calculated to reassure Pitt, as against the contrary doctrine, professed in celebrated Bulls by more Popes than one. But what if the Pope be declared infallible?

As to Catholic governments, their standing jealousy of the ecclesiastical power would be increased. Had not BonifaceVIII taught that the temporal sword also belonged to Peter, and that the spiritual power had a right to institute and judge the temporal? Had not Paul III released all the subjects of Henry VIII from their oath of allegiance, offered England to any one who would conquer it, and given all the goods of the dissident English, real and personal, to the conqueror? Was not that Bull a great misfortune to Christendom? "I am sad—and who would not be sad?—in recalling these great and painful historical facts; but they force us to it—those whose levity and rashness have stirred these burning questions." After the dogma shall have been proclaimed, he contends that from the point of view occupied by governments, "all civil and political rights, like all religious belief, will be in the hand of a single man." The journals which claim to be purest in their Romanism "treat the doctrine, so strongly held by the Catholic sovereigns, as well as others, that each of the two powers is independent in its own sphere, as tainted with atheism."

The following passage in the Bishop's argument suffices to show that there may be more senses of the statement that Catholics do not owe any divided allegiance, than plain English folk ever dreamed of in their philosophy—

We lately read, as quoted with praise in a French paper, the following, which compares those to the Manicheans who deny that the two swords are in the same hand: "Are there two sources of authority and power, two supreme ends for the members of the same society, two different objects in the intention of the Being who orders all and two distinct destinies in one and the same man, who is both member of a Church and of a State? Who does not see the absurdity of such a system? It is the dualism of the Manicheans if not atheism."

We ought to interject the remark that "the two swords in the same hand" is not strict but popular language. The two are in the samepower, but only one is in the spiritual hand. Again, the taunt of Manicheism frequently falls from Jesuit pens. Boniface VIII set the example of calling people something like Manicheans, if they believed in any supreme power in princes on a level with that of the Pope.

Coming to the crucial question, What is speakingex cathedrâ?Bishop Dupanloup shows that the diversity of doctrine on this point is almost endless, and perplexing beyond belief. The lay Professor of Theology in the seminary of the Archdiocese of Westminster, Dr. Ward, formerly an Anglican minister, goes beyond the great majority. They hold that a condition necessary to an infallible utterance is that the Pope shall address the whole Church, but Dr. Ward thinks that this is not necessary. The majority think that the intention of binding the belief of the faithful must be clearly expressed, but Dr. Ward again thinks that it need not be so. Phillips, the German doctor, holds that the Pope need not consult a Council, the Roman Church, the Cardinals, or any one; nor is it necessary that he should maturely deliberate or carefully study the matter by the light of God's written word and of tradition, or even that he should put up a prayer to God before pronouncing sentence. "Without any one of these conditions," says the Bishop, "his decision would not be less valid, authentic, or obligatory on the whole Church, than if he had observed every condition dictated by faith, piety, and good sense." He adds the words of Phillips, that the definitionex cathedrâmay be verbal or written and with or without anathema, but must be given by him to all believing Christians as Vicar of Jesus Christ, in the name of the Apostles Peter and Paul, or in virtue of the authority of the Holy See, or in other similar terms. The Church, he says, according to Phillips, has no right to fix any condition or restriction whatever.

Citing the cases of Popes Stephen VI, Honorius, and Pascal II, Dupanloup shows that heavy facts obstruct the historical path to the new dogma.

He proceeds to point out that the difference between the universal infallibilists and the dogmatical infallibilists is very grave. The former argue that the dogma, if adopted in the sense of the latter, would involve a peril. A Pope infallible in some cases and fallible in others is, they think, a contradiction. If, as a private teacher, the Pope should err in doctrine, might he not impose his error on the Church? If this is not possible, you have either a Pope who thinks one thing and defines another, ora perpetual miracle! And why distinguish, ask the universal infallibilists, when Christ has not distinguished? "That thy faith fail not"—that means the faith of Peter in every sense, personal and pastoral. These theologians contend that a Pope could not, even if he would, fall into an error, public or private.

As to the effect of the change on the episcopate, Dupanloup contends that Councils will be rendered superfluous. Hitherto, the bishops have been judges of the faith, real judges, though in union with the Pope—co-judges, as was said by Benedict XIV. But if the proposed change is made, their judgment before or after will be of little account; as Monsignor Manning has said, the Pope can determine "without the episcopate, and independently of it." The bishops, he proceeds, are now Doctors, not mere echoes. With the Pope they constitute the Teaching Church. After the change they will not be a voice, only an echo.

Drawing a glowing picture of the services of the French bishops to the Papacy, he says—

"Ah! I dare to affirm that so much devotion to Rome and to the Catholic world gives to the Church of France the right to be trusted, to be heard." He adds, anticipating his arrival in Rome, "I shall no sooner touch the sacred ground, no sooner kiss the tomb of the Apostles, than I shall feel myself in peace, out of the battle, in the midst of an assembly presided over by a father and composed of brethren. There the noises will all die away, the rash interferences will cease, the indiscretions will disappear, the winds and waves will be calmed down."

The statement, frequently repeated, that Bishop Dupanloup in this letter admitted the doctrine, and contested only the opportuneness of defining it, is incorrect. This was pointed out at the time by Dr. Reusch, of Bonn, in theLiteraturblatt. Dupanloup once or twice says that he will not touch the question of its truth, one way or the other. He never, directly or indirectly, indicates belief in it. Many of his arguments more than indirectly oppose the very substance of the doctrine. He plainly feels that it is unscriptural, uncatholic, and unwise; but he knows that it is and has long been gospel in Rome.

Bishop Dupanloup was replied to by Archbishop Deschamps, of Malines. Monsignor Deschamps was following the straight path to the purple. He roundly lectured Dupanloup. "Why should not that trouble me which rejoices the enemies of the faith and of the Church?" "You have committed an error, Monsignor," he says, repeatedly. He correctly states that Dupanloup has not confined himself to the question of opportuneness. "You have handled the principal question, ... your fears have disturbed your vision."[168]Dupanloup prepared a rejoinder to Deschamps, but was prevented from publishing it by circumstances which taught him that in leaving France for Rome he had not passed from disturbance to tranquillity, but from regulated conflict to all-triumphant violence, compelling inaction, unless action was on its own side. In Rome, where any movement of an ecclesiastic is often accounted for by the prospect of some ribbon, robe, or perquisite, it was freely said that Napoleon had promised Dupanloup the archbishopric of Lyons if he would head the Gallicans. An English paper repeated this Roman scandal, fathering it on well informed circles. Certain circles are always well informed as to the motives of men who oppose them.

The pastoral from the banks of the Thames forms a contrast to that from the banks of the Loire. True, Archbishop Manning no longer speaks of the extinction of Protestantism, or the restoration of the Pope's dominion over the East, as probable effects of the Council. He even shows some dawning consciousness that the war which he had announced in 1867 with a light heart, would not be carried through so lightly. In the earlier part of his treatise he more than once coolly speaks of the bishops as being unanimous in the belief of Papal infallibility! Before the conclusion, Bishop Maret's work extorts the admission that he must now call that doctrine Ultramontane, which two years before, he had asserted to be Catholic. He none the less eagerly presses for the carrying out of the programme. The Church is far too large. She permits differences of belief, which are not only unseemly, butdangerous. After an outbreak of questioning thought and conflicting will, such as had been occasioned by a simple demand for only one or two new dogmas, tighter and tighter binding up seems to Dr. Manning to be not merely becoming, but even necessary.

While panting for additional fetters for his own Church, he speaks of Protestants as sighing for something beyond insular narrowness. In fact, it would seem as if he had no perception of the difference between a big sect and a large creed, or of the possible harmony between a local organization and a universal brotherhood. There is no insular narrowness, much less Pontine-Marsh narrowness, in the definition of a Church given by the English Church, whereby she marks her relation to all other Churches. That definition is large, catholic, and scriptural. It leaves the English Churchman free from any obligation to unchurch other Christians, and therefore he may rest and be thankful, when others feel bound, by the narrowness of their sect, to unchurch him. The Church of Christ was catholic when she could number only one hundred and thirty adherents in the whole world. She will never become more catholic than she was then. No sect can increase its catholicity by adding millions of ignorant and bigoted people, and calling them Christians.

Dr. Manning resented, as a sort of rebellion, objections taken against multiplying terms of membership, and adding new conditions of salvation. To him every increase of narrowness seemed an increase of unity. If there are men in the English Church sighing in a similar way for bonds and anathemas which, thank God! our island does not forge, they are not the men inspired by the catholic creed of their own Church, but men infected by the municipal creed of the Popes.

Like Dupanloup, Archbishop Manning made an attack and provoked a retort. He denounced the historical school of theologians in Germany, and especially in Munich, and was pitilessly cut up by Friedrich, in theLiteraturblatt. The Archbishop, like Auguste Comte, had reached a point in the development of theory when it was necessary that it shouldconquer history. Preparatory to the attack on the Catholic Faculty of Munich, he writes in mother English matter like the following (p. 10): "The day is past for appeals to antiquity.If Christianity and the Christian Scriptures are to be maintained in controversy against sceptical criticism, the unbroken, world-wide witness of the Catholic Church must be invoked."

A number of equally exposed positions are taken up in face of the Liberal Catholic scholars, and that with all the contempt which official power often feels for reasoning power—

"They who, under the pretensions of historical criticism, deny the witness of the Catholic Church to be themaximumof evidence, even in a historical sense, likewise ruin the foundation of moral certainty in respect to Christianity altogether" (p. 125). "No historical certainty can be called science except only by courtesy. It is time that the pretensions of 'historical science' and 'scientific historians' be reduced to their proper sphere and limits. And this the Council will do, not by contention or anathema, but by the words 'It hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us'" (id.).

However confused in his ideas of catholicity and of historical authority the Archbishop had become, the struggle he had done something to occasion and to exasperate already began to awake him to the difference between an ordinary addition to the creed and that change of base which he was moving heaven and earth to procure—

There is a difference, also, between a definition of the infallibility of the Pope and that of any other Christian doctrine. In the latter case the authority of the Church may be sufficient to overcome any doubt. In the formerit is this very authority, the principle and foundation of all certainty in faith, which is in question (p. 31).

These portentous words tell where Dr. Manning had placed himself—in pupilage to a power which, having left the divine "fountain of all certainty in faith," was disputing as to what cistern, of all the cisterns it had hewn out, was the one into which the true spring overflowed. Where will the dogma be found to conquer the history made by the Archbishop's own hand when he wrote those words—history proving that after he had been for years flourishing before Anglicans his Papal Society as affording absolute certainty in faith, he himselfdeclared her to be in the throes of a combat as to "the principle and fountain of all certainty in faith"? Where will a dogma be found to conquer the history made at the moment when his Papal Society, in accordance with his wishes, adopted an unchangeable decree, which,if true, proves that for all the time of her existence, she had not only been fallible, but had indeed failed, and that right grievously—failed as to the doctrine of her head, by withholding from him the recognition of his attributes and rights? If from the beginning the Popes were infallible, the Church, which never consented to recognize them as such till 1870, had up to that year failed in the doctrine of her head, and failed in opposition to her head. If they were not from the beginning infallible, she in 1870 failed in the doctrine of her head, and failed in conjunction with her head. The decree of 1870 fixes her in the fork, and out of it she cannot wrestle: if the decree was true she had been in a fault of faith up to that day; if it was not true, she committed that day a fault in faith.

Archbishop Manning did not fail to hold out once more a warning to the governments. For some months past the tone of the Vatican Press had been that of men who felt that they now held the internal peace of many a nation at their mercy; being able to menace almost any government with serious unrest, and some with overthrow. The habit of insinuating such threats seems to be native to the bad air which Dr. Newman truly speaks of as hanging around the foot of the Pope's rock.[169]But the following is too close a copy of those revolutionary vaticinations for the banks of the Thames—

The Catholic Church now stands alone, as in the beginning, in its divine isolation and power. "Be wise now therefore, O ye kings; be instructed, ye judges of the earth." There is an abyss before you, into which thrones, and rights, and laws, and liberties may sink together. You have to choose between the Revolution and the Church of God. As you choose, so will your lot be. The General Council gives to the world one more witness for the truths, laws, and sanctities which include all that is pure, noble, just, venerable upon earth. It will be an evil day for any State in Europeif it engage in conflict with the Church of God. No weapon formed against it ever yet has prospered (p. 130).

The last words might be enough to account for Cardinal Manning's dislike of history. They flatly contradict it, and it flatly contradicts them; for by the Church of God is here meant the Church of the Pope. The weapons which have most prospered from the days of the Reformation to this day are those that have been turned against the Pope. The nations that have most prospered have been those that have declared him a pretender; and in these nations the reigns that have been distinguished for prosperity have been the most decidedly Protestant. England was long ago put to the choice between the Reformation and the Church of the Pope, and happily chose the good part, and as she chose, so, ever blessed be the God of nations, has been our lot. We will repeat the choice of our fathers, and the lot of our children shall be better and better. And they will have to pity, even more than we are called to pity, those who, having rejected reformation, have placed themselves under a continual terror and a liability to a periodical outburst of revolution.

Friedrich, in theLiteraturblatt(v. p. 164), replied to the attack on the historical theologians of Munich. He said that the abuses of the middle ages had crept in through the total neglect of history. On the other hand, Protestant theology had risen up and had matured as a strictly historical theology. Baronius had attempted to win this weapon back to the service of Rome, and the Munich scholars had followed in his steps. If archives and original works were to be wrested out of their hands, it meant nothing more nor less than laying down their arms in the presence of their antagonists. Friedrich would not allow the ambiguous expression "the witness of the Church" to cover anything more than her infallible utterances.

He said that the Archbishop had a false idea of the way in which a Council should proceed, because he seemed to think that the Church might speak without first using all human means to ascertain the truth. If he thought so, he was under a delusion of which a careful study of the history of the Councilsmight cure him. The statement of Manning, "I have already said," that the proofs of Papal infallibility outweighed those of the infallibility of the Church without the Pope, provoked the remark that as the Archbishop had adduced only his own authority, "I have already said," we might still doubt the infallibility of the proofs until he had produced his credentials as one inspired. Friedrich says that while blaming others for attempting to influence the Council, Manning himself tried to impose his authority upon it, in such a manner that it might be fancied that the Council was not to utter the words of the Holy Ghost, but those of the Archbishop of Westminster. Thus he indignantly flings back in the face of the prelate the assertion that it was an attempt to interfere with the freedom of the Council when the Theological Faculty of Munich gave an opinion to the king of the country in answer to questions put by him. The Archbishop, he protests, has no title to deprive theologians of their calling, or of their right to investigate historical evidences or to give their views, so long as the Church has not spoken.

He reminds the Archbishop that, severe as he is against those who do not go as far as himself, even he does not go far enough, for his allies now begin to require people to say, that the Church may define dogmas without having any support in the Bible and tradition, and that indeed when nothing but apocryphal documents are in favour of the definition. And, moreover, that the authority of a General Council (as distinguished from that of the Pope) is only human authority. These innovations, says the sturdy German, we abhor; and then he leaves the Englishman to the care of his Jesuit allies with these words: "If what everybody here says" (he writes in Rome) "is true, that the Archbishop, at every opportunity, declares we have only one school to fear, the historical school, I grant to him and grant to his allies that they have the light of history to fear."

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