IV. The Third Proposition.

I now pass to the operation of these extraordinary declarations on personal and private duty.

When the cup of endurance, which had so long been filling, began, with the council of the Vatican in 1870, to overflow, the most famous and learned living theologian of the Roman Communion, Dr. von Döllinger, long the foremost champion of his Church, refused compliance, and submitted, with his temper undisturbed and his freedom unimpaired, to the extreme and most painful penalty of excommunication. With him, many of the most learned and respected theologians of the Roman Communion in Germany underwent the same sentence. The very few, who elsewhere (I do not speak of Switzerland) suffered in like manner, deserve an admiration rising in proportion to their fewness. It seems as though Germany, from which Luther blew the mighty trumpet that even now echoes through the land, still retained her primacy in the domain of conscience, still supplied the centuria prærogativa of the great comitia of the world.

But let no man wonder or complain. Without imputing to anyone the moral murder, for such it is, of stifling conscience and conviction, I for one cannot be surprised that the fermentation, which is working through the mind of the Latin Church, has as yet (elsewhere than in Germany) but in few instances come to the surface. By the mass of mankind, it is page 22 morally impossible that questions such as these can be adequately examined; so it ever has been, and so in the main it will continue, until the principles of manufacturing machinery shall have been applied, and with analogous results, to intellectual and moral processes. Followers they are and must be, and in a certain sense ought to be. But what as to the leaders of society, the men of education and of leisure? I will try to suggest some answer in few words. A change of religious profession is under all circumstances a great and awful thing. Much more is the question, however, between conflicting, or apparently conflicting, duties arduous, when the religion of a man has been changed for him, over his head, and without the very least of his participation. Far be it then from me to make any Roman Catholic, except the great hierarchic Power, and those who have egged it on, responsible for the portentous proceedings which we have witnessed. My conviction is that, even of those, who may not shake off the yoke, multitudes will vindicate at any rate their loyalty at the expense of the consistency, which perhaps in difficult matters of religion few among us perfectly maintain. But this belongs to the future; for the present, nothing could in my opinion be more unjust than to hold the members of the Roman Church in general already responsible for the recent innovations. The duty of observers, who think the claims involved in these decrees arrogant and false, and such as not even impotence real or supposed ought to page 23 shield from criticism, is frankly to state the case, and, by way of friendly challenge, to intreat their Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen to replace themselves in the position which five-and-forty years ago this nation, by the voice and action of its Parliament, declared its belief that they held.

Upon a strict re-examination of the language, as a part from the substance of my fourth Proposition, I find it faulty, inasmuch as it seems to imply that a "convert" now joining the Papal Church, not only gives up certain rights and duties of freedom, but surrenders them by a conscious and deliberate act. What I have less accurately said that he renounced, I might have more accurately said that he forfeited. To speak strictly, the claim now made upon him by the authority, which he solemnly and with the highest responsibility acknowledges, requires him to surrender his mental and moral freedom, and to place his loyalty and civil duty at the mercy of another. There may have been, and may be, persons who in their sanguine trust will not shrink from this result, and will console themselves with the notion that their loyalty and civil duty are to be committed to the custody of one much wiser than themselves. But I am sure that there are also "converts" who, when they perceive, will by word and act reject, the consequence which relentless logic draws for them. If, however, my proposition be true, there is no escape from the dilemma. Is it then true, or is it not true, page 24 that Rome requires a convert, who now joins her, to forfeit his moral and mental freedom, and to place his loyalty and civil duty at the mercy of another?

In order to place this matter in as clear a light as I can, it will be necessary to go back a little upon our recent history.

A century ago we began to relax that system of penal laws against Roman Catholics, at once pettifogging, base, and cruel, which Mr. Burke has scathed and blasted with his immortal eloquence.

When this process had reached the point,' at which the question was whether they should be admitted into Parliament, there arose a great and prolonged national controversy; and some men, who at no time of their lives were narrow-minded, such as Sir Robert Peel, the Minister, resisted the concession. The arguments in its favour were obvious and strong, and they ultimately prevailed. But the strength of the opposing party had lain in the allegation that, from the nature and claims of the Papal power, it was not possible for the consistent Roman Catholic to pay to the crown of this country an entire allegiance, and that the admission of persons, thus self-disabled, to Parliament was inconsistent with the safety of the State and nation; which had not very long before, it may be observed, emerged from a struggle for existence.

An answer to this argument was indispensable; and it was supplied mainly from two sources. The page 25 Josephine laws, ^* then still subsisting in the Austrian empire, and the arrangements which had been made after the peace of 1815 by Prussia and the German States with Pius VII. and Gonsalvi, proved that the Papal Court could submit to circumstances, and could allow material restraints even upon the exercise of its ecclesiastical prerogatives. Here, then, was a reply in the sense of the phrase solvitur ambulando. Much information of this class was collected for the information of Parliament and the country. ^† But there were also measures taken to learn, from the highest Roman Catholic authorities of this country, what was the exact situation of the members of that communion with respect to some of the better known exorbitances of Papal assumption. Did the Pope claim any temporal jurisdiction? Did he still pretend to the exercise of a power to depose kings, release subjects from their allegiance, and incite them to revolt? Was faith to be kept with heretics? Did the Church still teach the doctrines of persecution? Now, to no

^* See the work of Count dal Pozzo on the 'Austrian Ecclesiastical Law.' London: Murray, 1827. The Leopoldine Laws in Tuscany may also be mentioned.

^† See 'Report from the Select Committee appointed to report the nature and substance of the Laws and Ordinances existing in Foreign States, respecting the regulation of their Roman Catholic subjects in Ecclesiastical matters, and their intercourse with the See of Rome, or any other Foreign Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction.' Printed for the House of Commons in 1816 and 1817. Reprinted 1851.

page 26 one of these questions could the answer really be of the smallest immediate moment to this powerful and solidly compacted kingdom. They were topics selected by way of sample; and the intention was to elicit declarations showing generally that the fangs of the mediaeval Popedom had been drawn, and its claws torn away; that the Roman system, however strict in its dogma, was perfectly compatible with civil liberty, and with the institutions of a free State moulded on a different religious basis from its own.

Answers in abundance were obtained, tending to show that the doctrines of deposition and persecution, of keeping no faith with heretics, and of universal dominion, were obsolete beyond revival; that every assurance could be given respecting them, except such as required the shame of a formal retractation; that they were in effect mere bugbears, unworthy to be taken into account by a nation, which prided itself on being made up of practical men.

But it was unquestionably felt that something more than the renunciation of these particular opinions was necessary in order to secure the full concession of civil rights to Roman Catholics. As to their individual loyalty, a State disposed to generous or candid interpretation had no reason to be uneasy. It was only with regard to requisitions, which might be made on them from another quarter, that apprehension could exist. It was reasonable that England page 27 should desire to know not only what the Pope^* might do for himself, but to what demands, by the constitution of their Church, they were liable; and how far it was possible that such demands could touch their civil duty. The theory which placed every human being, in things spiritual and things temporal, at the feet of the Roman Pontiff, had not been an idolum specÛs, a mere theory of the chamber. Brain-power never surpassed in the political history of the world had been devoted for centuries to the single purpose of working it into the practice of Christendom; had in the West achieved for an impossible problem a partial success; and had in the East punished the obstinate independence of the Church by that Latin conquest of Constantinople, which effectually prepared the way for the downfall of the Eastern empire, and the establishment of the Turks in Europe. What was really material therefore was, not whether the Papal chair laid claim to this or that particular power, but whether it laid claim to some power that included them all, and whether that claim had received such sanction from the authorities of the Latin Church, that there remained within her borders

^* At that period the eminent and able Bishop Doyle did not scrapie to write as follows: "We are taunted with the proceedings of Popes. What, my Lord, have we Catholics to do with the proceedings of Popes, or why should we be made accountable for them?"—'Essay on the Catholic Claims.' To Lord Liverpool, 1826, p. 111.

page 28 absolutely no tenable standing-ground from which war against it could be maintained. Did the Pope then claim infallibility? Or did he, either without infallibility or with it (and if with it so much the worse), claim an universal obedience from his flock? And were these claims, either or both, affirmed in his Church by authority which even the least Papal of the members of that Church must admit to be binding upon conscience?

The two first of these questions were covered by the third. And well it was that they were so covered. For to them no satisfactory answer could even then be given. The Popes had kept up, with comparatively little intermission, for well-nigh a thousand years their claim to dogmatic infallibility; and had, at periods within the same tract of time, often enough made, and never retracted, that other claim which is theoretically less but practically larger; their claim to an obedience virtually universal from the baptised members of the Church. To the third question it was fortunately more practicable to prescribe a satisfactory reply. It was well known that, in the days of its glory and intellectual power, the great Gallican Church had not only not admitted, but had denied Papal infallibility, and had declared that the local laws and usages of the Church could not be set aside by the will of the Pontiff. Nay, further, it was believed that in the main these had been, down to the close of the last century, the pre- page 29 vailing opinions of the Cisalpine Churches in communion with Rome. The Council of Constance had in act as well as word shown that the Pope's judgments, and the Pope himself, were triable by the assembled representatives of the Christian world. And the Council of Trent, notwithstanding the pre-dominance in it of Italian and Roman influences, if it had not denied, yet had not affirmed either proposition.

All that remained was, to know what were the sentiments entertained on these vital points by the leaders and guides of Roman Catholic opinion nearest to our own doors. And here testimony was offered, which must not, and cannot, be forgotten. In part, this was the testimony of witnesses before the Committees of the two Houses in 1824 and 1825. I need quote two answers only, given by the Prelate, who more than any other represented his Church, and influenced the mind of this country in favour of concession at the time, namely, Bishop Doyle. He was asked, ^*

"In what, and how far, does the Roman Catholic profess to obey the Pope?"

Such is the opinion of the dead Prelate. We shall presently hear the opinion of a living one. But the sentiments of the dead man powerfully operated on the open and trustful temper of this people to induce them to grant, at the cost of so much popular feeling and national tradition, the great and just concession of 1829. That concession, without such declarations, it would, to say the least, have been far more difficult to obtain.

Now, bodies are usually held to be bound by the evidence of their own selected and typical witnesses. But in this instance the colleagues of those witnesses thought, fit also to speak collectively.

First let us quote from the collective "Declaration," in the year 1826, of the Vicars Apostolic, who, page 31 with Episcopal authority, governed the Roman Catholics of Great Britain.

"The allegiance which Catholics hold to be due, and are bound to pay, to their Sovereign, and to the civil authority of the State, is perfect and undivided. . . . .

"They declare that neither the Pope, nor any other prelate or ecclesiastical person of the Roman Catholic Church . . . . has any right to interfere directly or indirectly in the Civil Government . . . . nor to oppose in any manner the performance of the civil duties which are due to the king."

Thus, besides much else that I will not stop to quote, page 32 Papal infallibility was most solemnly declared to be a matter on which each man might think as he pleased; the Pope's power to claim obedience was strictly and narrowly limited: it was expressly denied that he had any title, direct or indirect, to interfere in civil government. Of the right of the Pope to define the limits which divide the civil from the spiritual by his own authority, not one word is said by the Prelates of either country.

Since that time, all these propositions have been reversed. The Pope's infallibility, when he speaks ex cathedrâ on faith and morals, has been declared, with the assent of the Bishops of the Roman Church, to be an article of faith, binding on the conscience of every Christian; his claim to the obedience of his spiritual subjects has been declared in like manner without any practical limit or reserve; and his supremacy, without any reserve of civil rights, has been similarly affirmed to include everything which relates to the discipline and government of the Church throughout the world. And these doctrines, we now know on the highest authority, it is of necessity for salvation to believe.

Independently, however, of the Vatican Decrees themselves, it is necessary for all who wish to understand what has been the amount of the wonderful change now consummated in the constitution of the Latin Church, and what is the present degradation of its Episcopal order, to observe also the change, amount- page 33 ing to revolution, of form in the present, as compared with other conciliatory decrees. Indeed, that spirit of centralisation, the excesses of which are as fatal to vigorous life in the Church as in the State, seems now nearly to have reached the last and furthest point of possible advancement and exaltation.

When, in fact, we speak of the decrees of the Council of the Vatican, we use a phrase which will not bear strict examination. The Canons of the Council of Trent were, at least, the real Canons of a real Council: and the strain in which they are promulgated is this:—Hæc sacrosancta, ecumenica, et generalis Tridentina Synodus, in Spiritu Sancto legitimè congregata, in eâ præsidentibus eisdem tribus apostolicis Legatis, hortatur, or docet, or statuit, or decernit, and the like: and its canons, as published in Rome, are "Canones et decreta Sacrosancti ecumenici Concilii Tridentini,"^* and so forth. But what we have now to do with is the Constitutio Dogmatica Prima de Ecclesiâ Christi, edita in Sessione tertiâ of the Vatican Council. It is not a constitution made by the Council, but one promulgated in the Council. ^† And who is it that legislates and decrees? It is Pius Episcopus, servus

^* 'Romæ: in Collegio urbano de Propaganda Fide.' 1833.

^† I am aware that, as some hold, this was the case with the Council of the Lateran in a.d. 1215. But, first, this has not been established: secondly, the very gist of the evil we are dealing with consists in following (and enforcing) precedents from the age of Pope Innocent III.

page 34 servorum Dei: and the seductive plural of his docemus et declaramus is simply the dignified and ceremonious "We" of Royal declarations. The document is dated PontificatÛs nostri Anno XXV: and the humble share of the assembled Episcopate in the transaction is represented by sacro approbante concilio. And now for the propositions themselves.

Will it, then, be said that the infallibility of the Pope accrues only when he speaks ex cathedrâ? No doubt this is a very material consideration for those, who have been told that the private conscience is to derive comfort and assurance from the emanations of the Papal Chair: for there is no established or accepted definition of the phrase ex cathedrâ, and he has no power to obtain one, and no guide to direct him in his choice among some twelve theories on the subject, which, it is said, are bandied to and fro

^* 'Constitutio de Ecclesiâ,' c. iv.

page 35 among Roman theologians, except the despised and discarded agency of his private judgment. But while thus sorely tantalised, he is not one whit protected. For there is still one person, and one only, who can unquestionably declare ex cathedrâ what is ex cathedrâ and what is not, and who can declare it when and as he pleases. That person is the Pope himself. The provision is, that no document he issues shall be valid without a seal: but the seal remains under his own sole lock and key.

Again, it may be sought to plead, that the Pope is, after all, only operating by sanctions which un-questionably belong to the religious domain. He does not propose to invade the country, to seize Woolwich, or burn Portsmouth. He will only, at the worst, excommunicate opponents, as he has ex-communicated Dr. von Döllinger and others. Is this a good answer? After all, even in the Middle Ages, it was not by the direct action of fleets and armies of their own that the Popes contended with kings who were refractory; it was mainly by interdicts, and by the refusal, which they entailed when the Bishops were not brave enough to refuse their publication, of religious offices to the people. It was thus that England suffered under John, France under Philip Augustus, Leon under Alphonso the Noble, and every country in its turn. But the inference may be drawn that they who, while using spiritual weapons for such an end, do not employ temporal means, only page 36 fail to employ them because they have them not. A religious society, which delivers volleys of spiritual censures in order to impede the performance of civil duties, does all the mischief that is in its power to do, and brings into question, in the face of the State, its title to civil protection.

Will it be said, finally, that the Infallibility touches only matter of faith and morals? Only matter of morals! Will any of the Roman casuists kindly acquaint us what are the departments and functions of human life which do not and cannot fall within the domain of morals? If they will not tell us, we must look elsewhere. In his work entitled 'Literature and Dogma,'^* Mr. Matthew Arnold quaintly informs us—as they tell us nowadays how many parts of our poor bodies are solid, and how many aqueous—that about seventy-five per cent, of all we do belongs to the department of "conduct." Conduct and morals, we may suppose, are nearly co-extensive. Three-fourths, then, of life are thus handed over. But who will guarantee to us the other fourth? Certainly not St. Paul; who says, "Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." And "Whatsoever ye do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus." ^† No! Such a distinction would be the unworthy device of a

^* Pages 15, 44.

^† 1 Cor. x. 31; Col. in. 7.

page 37 shallow policy, vainly used to hide the daring of that wild ambition which at Rome, not from the throne but from behind the throne, prompts the movements of the Vatican. I care not to ask if there be dregs or tatters of human life, such as can escape from the description and boundary of morals. I submit that Duty is a power which rises with us in the morning, and goes to rest with us at night. It is co-extensive with the action of our intelligence. It is the shadow which cleaves to us go where we will, and which only leaves us when we leave the light of life. So then it is the supreme direction of us in respect to all Duty, which the Pontiff declares to belong to him, sacro approbante concilio: and this declaration he makes, not as an otiose opinion of the schools, but cunctis fidelibus credendam et tenendam.

But we shall now see that, even if a loophole had at this point been left unclosed, the void is supplied by another provision of the Decrees. While the reach of the Infallibility is as wide as it may please the Pope, or those who may prompt the Pope, to make it, there is something wider still, and that is the claim to an absolute and entire Obedience. This Obedience is to be rendered to his orders in the cases I shall proceed to point out, without any qualifying condition, such as the ex cathedrâ. The sounding name of Infallibility has so fascinated the public mind, and riveted it on the Fourth Chapter of the Constitution de Ecclesiâ, that its near neighbour, the page 38 Third Chapter, has, at least in my opinion, received very much less than justice. Let us turn to it.

"Cujuscunque ritÛs et dignitatis pastores atque fideles, tam seorsum singuli quam simul onmes, officio hierarchicæ subordinationis veræque obedientiæ obstringuntur, non solum in rebus, quæ ad fidem et mores, sed etiam in iis, quæ ad disciplinam et regimen Ecclesiæ per totum orbem diffusæ pertinent. . . . . Hæc est Catholicæ veritatis doctrina, a quâ deviare, salvâ fide atque salute, nemo potest. . . .

"Docemus etiam et declaramus eum esse judicem supremum fidelium, et in omnibus causis ad examen ecclesiasticum spectantibus ad ipsius posse judicium recurri: Sedis vero Apostolicæ, cujus auctoritate major non est, judicium a nemine fore retractandum. Neque cuiquam de ejus licere judicare judicio." ^*

Even, therefore, where the judgments of the Pope do not present the credentials of infallibility, they are unappealable and irreversible: no person may pass judgment upon them; and all men, clerical and lay, dispersedly or in the aggregate, are bound truly to obey them; and from this rule of Catholic truth no man can depart, save at the peril of his salvation. Surely, it is allowable to say that this Third Chapter on universal obedience is a formidable rival to the Fourth Chapter on Infallibility. Indeed, to an observer from without, it seems to leave the dignity to the other, but to reserve the stringency and efficiency to itself. The Fourth Chapter is the Merovingian Monarch; the third is the Carolingian Mayor of the Palace. The fourth has an overawing splendour;

^* 'Dogmatic Constitutions,' &c., c. iii. Dublin, 1870, pp. 30-32.

page 39 the third, an iron gripe. Little does it matter to me whether my superior claims infallibility, so long as he is entitled to demand and exact conformity. This, it will be observed, he demands even in cases not covered by his infallibility; cases, therefore, in which he admits it to be possible that he may be wrong, but finds it intolerable to be told so. As he must be obeyed in all his judgments though not ex cathedrâ, it seems a pity he could not likewise give the comforting assurance that, they are all certain to be right.

But why this ostensible reduplication, this apparent surplusage? Why did the astute contrivers of this tangled scheme conclude that they could not afford to rest content with pledging the Council to Infallibility in terms which are not only wide to a high degree, but elastic beyond all measure?

Though they must have known perfectly well that "faith and morals" carried everything, or everything worth having, in the purely individual sphere, they also knew just as well that, even where the individual was subjugated, they might and would still have to deal with the State.

In mediæval history, this distinction is not only clear, but glaring. Outside the borders of some narrow and proscribed sect, now and then emerging, we never, or scarcely ever, hear of private and personal resistance to the Pope. The manful "Protestantism" of mediæval times had its activity almost page 40 entirely in the sphere of public, national, and state rights. Too much attention, in my opinion, cannot be fastened on this point. It is the very root and kernel of the matter. Individual servitude, however abject, will not satisfy the party now dominant in the Latin Church: the State must also be a slave.

Our Saviour had recognised as distinct the two provinces of the civil rule and the Church: had nowhere intimated that the spiritual authority was to claim the disposal of physical force, and to control in its own domain the authority which is alone responsible for external peace, order, and safety among civilised communities of men. It has been alike the peculiarity, the pride, and the misfortune of the Roman Church, among Christian communities, to allow to itself an unbounded use, as far as its power would go, of earthly instruments for spiritual ends. We have seen with what ample assurances^* this nation and Parliament were fed in 1826; how well and roundly the full and undivided rights of the civil power, and the separation of the two jurisdictions, were affirmed. All this had at length been undone, as far as Popes could undo it, in the Syllabus and the Encyclical. It remained to complete the undoing, through the subserviency or pliability of the Council.

And the work is now truly complete. Lest it

^* See further, Appendix B.

page 41 should be said that supremacy in faith and morals, full dominion over personal belief and conduct, did not cover the collective action of men in States, a third province was opened, not indeed to the abstract assertion of Infallibility, but to the far more practical and decisive demand of absolute Obedience. And this is the proper work of the Third Chapter, to which I am endeavouring to do a tardy justice. Let us listen again to its few but pregnant words on the point:

"Non solum in rebus, quæ ad fidem et mores, sed etiam in iis, quæ ad disciplinam et regimen Ecclesiæ per totum orbem diffusæ pertinent."

Absolute obedience, it is boldly declared, is due to the Pope, at the peril of salvation, not alone in faith, in morals, but in all things which concern the discipline and government of the Church. Thus are swept into the Papal net whole multitudes of facts, whole systems of government, prevailing, though in different degrees, in every country of the world. Even in the United States, where the severance between Church and State is supposed to be complete, a long catalogue might be drawn of subjects belonging to the domain and competency of the State, but also undeniably affecting the government of the Church; such as, by way of example, marriage, burial, education, prison discipline, blasphemy, poor-relief, incorporation, mortmain, religious endowments, vows of celibacy and obedience. In Europe the circle is page 42 far wider, the points of contact and of interlacing almost innumerable. But on all matters, respecting which any Pope may think proper to declare that they concern either faith, or morals, or the government or discipline of the Church, he claims, with the approval of a Council undoubtedly Ecumenical in the Roman sense, the absolute obedience; at the peril of salvation, of every member of his communion.

It seems not as yet to have been thought wise to pledge the Council in terms to the Syllabus and the Encyclical. That achievement is probably reserved for some one of its sittings yet to come. In the meantime it is well to remember, that this claim in respect of all things affecting the discipline and government of the Church, as well as faith and conduct, is lodged in open day by and in the reign of a Pontiff, who has condemned free speech, free writing, a free press, toleration of nonconformity, liberty of conscience, the study of civil and philosophical matters in independence of the ecclesiastical authority, marriage unless sacramentally contracted, and the definition by the State of the civil rights (jura) of the Church; who has demanded for the Church, therefore, the title to define its own civil rights, together with a divine right to civil immunities, and a right to use physical force; and who has also proudly asserted that the Popes of the Middle Ages with their councils did not invade the rights of princes: as for example, Gregory VII., of the Emperor page 43 Henry IV.; Innocent III., of Raymond of Toulouse; Paul III., in deposing Henry VIII.; or Pius V., in performing the like paternal office for Elizabeth.

I submit, then, that my fourth proposition is true: and that England is entitled to ask, and to know, in what way the obedience required by the Pope and the Council of the Vatican is to be reconciled with the integrity of civil allegiance?

It has been shown that the Head of their Church, so supported as undoubtedly to speak with its highest authority, claims from Roman Catholics a plenary obedience to whatever he may desire in relation not to faith but to morals, and not only to these, but to all that concerns the government and discipline of the Church: that, of this, much lies within the domain of the State: that, to obviate all misapprehension, the Pope demands for himself the right to determine the province of his own rights, and has so defined it in formal documents, as to warrant any and every invasion of the civil sphere; and that this new version of the principles of the Papal Church inexorably binds its members to the admission of these exorbitant claims, without any refuge or reservation on behalf of their duty to the Crown.

Under circumstances such as these, it seems not too much to ask of them to confirm the opinion which we, as fellow-countrymen, entertain of them, by sweeping away, in such manner and terms as they may think best, the presumptive imputations which page 44 their ecclesiastical rulers at Rome, acting autocratically, appear to have brought upon their capacity to pay a solid and undivided allegiance; and to fulfil the engagement which their Bishops, as political sponsors, promised and declared for them in 1825.

It would be impertinent, as well as needless, to suggest what should be said. All that is requisite is to indicate in substance that which (if the foregoing argument be sound) is not wanted, and that which is. What is not wanted is vague and general assertion, of whatever kind, and however sincere. What is wanted, and that in the most specific form and the clearest terms, I take to be one of two things; that is to say, either—

I. A demonstration that neither in the name of faith, nor in the name of morals, nor in the name of the government or discipline of the Church, is the Pope of Rome able, by virtue of the powers asserted for him by the Vatican decree, to make any claim upon those who adhere to his communion, of such a nature as can impair the integrity of their civil allegiance; or else,

II. That, if and when such claim is made, it will even although resting on the definitions of the Vatican, be repelled and rejected; just as Bishop Doyle, when he was asked what the Roman Catholic clergy would do if the Pope intermeddled with their religion, replied frankly, "The consequence would be, that we should oppose him by every means in page 45 our power, even by the exercise of our spiritual authority." ^*