Nevertheless, the Bishops of the future Council are to make it an article of faith that the Pope did not thereby exceed the limits of his power; in other words, that he could at his mere caprice, and for purely political or pecuniary ends, deprive millions of innocent men of what, according to the teaching of the Church, are the necessary means of salvation.

(3.) If the Council executes the programme of the Civiltà, it will also undertake a correction of the hitherto prevalent estimate of history. We now read in all historical books and systems of Church law that the immunities of the clergy (e.g., the privilegium fori, the unrestricted right of acquiring property, and exemption from civil functions) were gradually conceded to the Church by the Roman emperors and later kings, and have therefore a civil origin. This will be characterized as heresy.1

Those also will become guilty of heresy who write or teach that the extravagant pretensions of the Popes contributed to the separation of the Eastern and Western Churches, though this may be discovered in official duos menses eundem censum sine diminutione quâlibet non persolveritis, totum regnum ac tota terra predicta ecclesiastico erunt supposita interdicto."

1 The Syllabus condemns the prop. (30), "Ecclesiæ et personarum ecclesiasticarum immunitas a jure civili ortum habuit."

documents from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, and the avowals of a number of contemporary authorities.1

In prospect of such decrees all Catholic writers on Law or History should be urgently advised to publish their works before 30th December 1869; for from thenceforward, "magnus ab integro sæclorum nascitur ordo," and only Jesuits or their pupils will be called or qualified, without savour of heresy, to write on secular or Church history, civil law, politics, canon law, etc. There will at least be required for literary and academical work a flexibility and elastic versatility of spirit and pen hitherto confined to journalism.

(4.) Still more dangerous will be the questions of freedom of conscience, and persecution, when once the propositions of the Syllabus are made articles of faith, according to the will of the Jesuits and the Bishops. acting under their guidance.

The Syllabus condemns the whole existing view of the rights of conscience and religious faith and profession it is a wicked error to admit Protestants to equal political rights with Catholics, or to allow Protestant

1 It condemns proposition 38, "Divisioni Ecclesiæ in Orientalem atque Occidentalem Romanorum Pontificum arbitria contulerunt."

immigrants the free use of their worship;1 on the contrary, to coerce and suppress them is a sacred duty, where it has become possible, as the Jesuit Fathers and their adherents teach. Till then, Schneemann says, the Church will, of course, act with the greatest prudence in the use of her temporal and physical power, according to altered circumstances, and will not therefore at present adopt her entire mediæval policy.

The inevitable result of this is to propagate, from generation to generation, lies, hypocrisy, and deceit by wholesale; but that is the lesser evil. For freedom of opinion and worship produces, according to the Syllabus, profligacy and the pest of indifferentism. That, too, is to become an article of faith, and the future commentators on the decrees of the Council will have to confirm its truth by reference to the actual condition of the nations which have these liberties. They will point to the Germans, the English, the French, and the Belgians

1 It condemns prop. 77, "Etate hâc nostrâ non amplius expedit religionem Catholicam haberi tanquam unicam status religionem, cæteris quibuscunque cultibus exclusis ;"-prop. 78, "Hinc laudabiliter in quibusdam Catholici nominis regionibus lege cautum est, ut hominibus illuc immigrantibus liceat publicum proprii cujusque cultûs exercitium habere;" -prop. 79, "Enimvero falsum est civilem cujusque cultus libertatem, itemque plenam potestatem omnibus attributam quaslibet opiniones cogitationesque palam publiceque manifestandi, conducere ad populorum mores animosque facilius corrumpendos ac indifferentismi pestem propagandam." 2 Schneemann, ut supra, p. 30.

B

as the most profligate of men, while the Neapolitans, Spaniards, and inhabitants of the Roman States, with whom the exclusive system flourishes, or did till quite lately, are a brilliant model of virtue among all nations of the earth. To speak seriously, the contest inaugurated by the Encyclical of 1864 will have to be carried out with the free use of every available Church weapon,- -a contest against the common sentiment and moral sense of every civilized people, and all the institutions that have grown out of them.

It is but a few years since Ketteler, Bishop of Mayence, in a widespread work praised by all the Catholic journals of the day, undertook to show the moderation, tolerance, and self-restraint of the Catholic Church in its relations with the State and the separate Churches. He insists that the Church so thoroughly respects freedom of conscience as to repudiate all outward coercion of those beyond her pale as immoral and utterly unlawful; that nothing is further from her mind than to employ any physical force against those who, as being baptized, are her members; that she must leave it entirely to their own freest determination whether they will accept her faith; and that it is absurd for Protestants to suppose they have any need to

fear a forcible conversion, etc. etc.1 How far these statements can be verified by history is indeed very doubtful.

Meanwhile the Bishop is instructed by the Syllabus and its commentator, Schrader, that he has fallen into that forbidden liberalism which is, according to the Roman view, one of the grossest errors of the day, and that it was by special indulgence of Rome that his book was not put on the Index. What a light this throws on the condition of the Church, and what an unworthy mental slavery the Roman Jesuit party threatens foreign Catholics with is thus made clear enough! An illustrious bishop speaks, amid universal applause, without a syllable of dissent from his fellowbishops, on those grave questions, upon the right answer to which the legal position and beneficial action of the Church in our days in large measure depends. And now, a few years afterwards, the Pope, without indeed naming him, condemns his doctrine, and the very people who applauded the bishop's book applaud the Encyclical with yet profounder homage, and are convinced that what they took for white is black. Ketteler, who knows well enough that the main object of the Syllabus is to exalt principles at first only applied to the condition

1 Freiheit, Autorität, und Kirche, Mainz, 1862,