Bismarck and the Church, BQR 1873

BISMARCK AND THE CHURCH [From Brownson's Quarterly Review for April, 1873]

We find in the New York Times, of Feb. 7, 1873, the following abstract of a lecture by the Protestant "Episcopal" bishop of Long Island in this state; which shows sufficiently what Anglicans hope and expect from the "Old Catholic Party"  and the war waged by power in Germany, Switzerland, Spain, and Italy :-

"Right Rev. A. N. Littlejohn, D.D., delivered a lecture last evening at St. Paul's Chapel, corner of Clinton and Carol streets, Brooklyn, on "The Old Catholic Movement in Europe." This subject which has recently attracted considerable attention and enlisted with the sympathies of various Christian congregations not in communion with Rome drew a large audience and Dr. Littlejohn who spent a part of last summer in Germany was in intimate relations with some of the leaders of the party. Their object he said was to reform abuses and to introduce a purer and more broad Christianity than what was professed by the party of the Vatican. The congress recently convoked in Cologne was composed of men who now rule the party of reform. That party numerically is not large but it's strength consists in the quality of it's leading men and with the lower classes of Germany the stronghold of the movement it is not very popular but then it is an appeal to the intellect and not to the untutored masses. In Germany and Austria, seventy priests and one hundred congregations had joined the reformers. It is also he said extending in Bulvaria and Switzerland and seven newspapers are acting as it's organs. Late advices from the latter country received by private parties a few days since tell of a council which assembled on the first of December at Ultan where one hundred delegates represent various districts. The program of church reform was debated and owing to the eloquence of Dr. Reikens of Breslau the departure of the papal nuncio from Berne was demanded. The dream of the Germans is to form an independent national church and in Austria, Spain, and Italy the same idea is spreading. A synod is to be organized and bishops properly chosen and a union of all sects of Christians established. The profession of faith embraces all the dogmas of the Old Catholic creed as adopted by the council of nice and the bible is accepted as the rule of faith. Enforced celibacy and auricular confession are to be abolished and service in the native tongue introduced. After reviewing the recent political changes in Europe and pointing out their bearings on the present movement, Dr. Littlejohn concluded by stating his belief in the success of the new reformation and the overthrowing of the papacy."

Dr. Littlejohn is good authority so far as relates to the purposes, plans, and designs of the "Old Catholic Party" and the European governments now waging war against the papacy denying the freedom and independence of the church and cruelly oppressing her religious orders and her devoted children. He fully confirms the statement of the Holy Father in his allocution of the 23rd of December last, and which rendered the Prussian press so frantic that the object of these governments is "the total destruction of the Catholic Church". Is unquestionably the aim of Prince Von Bismarck, chancellor of the new German empire of the council of Geneva if not of the Swiss federal council itself and of the ministers of Victor Emmanuel as it is the design of the entire revolutionary or liberal party throughout the world. Dr. Littlejohn himself says as much when he tells us that "the dream of the Germans is to form an independent national church" and that in Austria, Spain, and Italy the same idea is spreading expressing his belief that "the new reformation" favored by recent political changes in Europe will be successful in the "overthrow of the papacy." The Catholic Church is built on Peter and the overthrow of the papacy would be the subversion of the very foundation of the whole edifice; and the conversion of the one Catholic Church into independent national churches, or rather, into churches holding from the national authority and dependent on its will would be her total destruction. For as we have hereto shown national stands opposed to catholic and independent national churches necessarily exclude the very idea of one catholic church with the authority to teach and govern in spirituals all men and nations holding from God alone as completely as the assertation on the other hand of universal monarchy would be the destruction of particular independent national governments though our Protestant "Episcopal" bishop of Long Island does not appear to be aware of it for though claiming to be a churchman his ideas of Catholicity and the church are a little muddy.

The establishment of independent national churches that is ecclesiastically independent and politically dependent implies the annihilation of the Catholic Church. Rightly then is the aim of the movement said by the Holy Father to be the total destruction of the church or the visible kingdom of God on Earth. It is well that Catholics should understand this that they may not be deceived in any respect as to the real nature of the controversy now raging or the momentous consequences involved in the issue. It is well that they should see clearly in this controversy that there can be no compromise no halting between two opinions no neutrality. The question is one of life or death and the issue is the church or the world Christ is the light of the universe or the prince of darkness, God or the devil, heaven or hell. This is the momentous issue between the Holy Father and his enemies. The issue is squarely made and must be squarely met. Who is on the Lord's side must be on the side of the Pope, the vicar of Christ, and whoever takes sides against the pope, or does not take sides for him, takes sides with the prince of darkness, and serves Baal, not the Lord, the devil, not God, and exposes himself to the doom pronounced against the devil and his angels. There can, we repeat, be no neutrals. Whoever in this fearful struggle not on the side of the pope and the church of which he is visible head is on the side of Satan, and aiding and abetting those who are fighting to exclude Christ the Lord from all authority in human affairs, and to liberate all men and nations from every obligation to consult any power or authority above themselves. Catholics should feel that there is no evading the issue; and we are sure none, except a handful of liberal Catholics, every day losing their prestige, have any desire to evade it. It is wonderful how the faith and courage of Catholics have revived and been strengthened since the Holy Father has been despoiled of his temporal possessions and imprisoned in the palace of the Vatican. Catholic honor comes to invigorate Catholic faith and courage for what man with a man's heart in his bosom will desert his flag in the heat of battle and go over to his enemy?

The theological leader and instigator of the war against the papacy or the Catholic Church, is Dr. Dollinger of Munich once held in high esteem by Catholics in Germany and England though we must say distrusted by us years ago. His pride seemed to us to surpass his learning and his learning to surpass his judgement. It was he and a small number of his friends that got up the conspiracy against the council of the Vatican before it assembled and in order to prevent it from denying the infallibility of the pope and endorsing the syllabus in which some propositions of his own were censured. He introduced prince Hohenlohe then prime minister of Bulvaria to address a circular probably written by himself to the diplomatic agents of the Buvarian government at the several European courts setting forth the danger to the secular powers and to modern civilization to be apprehended from the probable action of the council and suggesting the propriety of the several powers uniting in a protest against any endorsement of the syllabus or declaration of papal infallibility. Either it contended would have a grave political bearing and the latter would clothe the pope with political supremacy over all the secular powers of the Earth.

The circular which the archbishop of Westminster has recently published is an important introduction to a volume of "Sermons on the Ecclesiastical subjects," plausibly and skillfully drawn up was not without effect and had led several European governments the French and Austrian especially and that of Sardinia as a matter of course to threaten the council in case that it did such things that they would resist it. It also made many eminent prelates in view of the threatened hostility of the secular powers it had stirred up doubt the prudence of pressing the question of infallibility to a decision and indeed oppose it as everybody knows as inopportune.

The theological leader had treacherously and by plausible but wholly false statements called to his aid the secular powers as always more or less jealous of the papal authority; but his conspiracy failed. No pressure brought to bear on the council no threats or intimidation singularly enough resorted to under pretense of maintaining its freedom against the tyranny exercised over it by the pope and Jesuits could move it or hinder the Holy Ghost from from making it's voice heard in its decisions. The papal infallibility was proclaimed by the Holy Father the council approving the syllabus by implication as the act of the infallible pope was endorsed; Dr. Dollinger's propositions remained condemned and German professordom was not recognized as infallible or permitted to claim immunity from error. This was too humiliating. It was a triumph of Rome over Munchen of the Roman curia over German professordom. Could German professordom be expected to submit?

The theological leader had failed and as a theological movement the conspiracy came to naught but it had gained political significance; and prince von Bismarck who through an alliance with anti-papal Italy had crushed Austria at Sardwa and by the aid of Catholic Germany  had conquered France and reduced her for the present at least to impotence and had turned everything topsy turvy in Spain with the secret connivance of Great Britain and Russia both for the present Prussianized came forward as the political leader of the movement and pitted not for the first time in history the empire against the church, Caesar against Peter. Dollinger had told him in Prince Hohenlohe's circular that the definition of the council was political rather than theological encroached upon the rights and prerogatives of the sovereigns and though there was not a shadow of truth in it he could use it as a pretext for war which as a protestant he felt authorized to commence against the catholic church in favor of the modern doctrine that rejects all law all authority above the empire and suffers to exist in the empire only national churches. Or churches holding from and subject to the national authority. To carry out this doctrine became his fixed purpose.

To effect this purpose it is necessary to overthrow the papacy for as long as the papacy stands the Catholic Church stands as St. Ambrose says: Ubi Petrus, ibi ecclesia. The chancellor of the new German empire and champion of the kingdom of darkness in laboring to this end proceeded with considerable skill and ability. He first makes sure of Italy and takes all possible precautions against any conscientious scruples that might be awakened in the mind of Victor Emmanuel and induce him to relax his hold on the patrimony of St. Peter, liberate the pope, make his peace with the church, and restore it to its rightful sovereign. This must not be on any account whatever and should France or any other power offer to interfere in behalf of the rights of the pope it must reckon for its audacity with Germany. Should the Italians the greatest majority of whom are still Catholics attempt any measures likely to restore the holy father to his rights Italy at once must be made a German or rather a Prussian province. Secured on this side the next step was to relax the hold of the papacy on convictions, affections, and consciences, of the Catholic people.

Here the Dollingerites or Alt-Katholiken could serve him and therefor against all law, all rights, and common sense the chancellor insisted on treating them as Catholics and defending for them all rights secured to Catholics by the concordant. Recognized by the empire and the Catholic prelates forbidden to subject them to discipline enjoined by the canon law it was thought that they would be efficient agents in undermining the papacy in the faith and love of the Catholic people. They were to set up the liberty of conscience against the authority claimed by the pope over it. Professor Reinkens as represented by the churchman a Protestant Episcopalian sheet published in Hartford, Conn. and in this city puts a case with tolerable cleverness though we suspect the churchman has added a few of its own blunders to those of the German professor.

After giving the Catholic side of the question as presented in our article on "Dollinger and the papacy" the churchman proceeds to give the "other side" condensed from Professor Reinkens:--

"Professor Reinkens begins by affirming that the Old Catholic Movement is a war of conscience against compulsion in matters of religion. Before July 18th, 1870 it was still possible for the individual Catholic to save his conscience. This is indeed denied by Protestants who refer to the fact that the pope has exercised the function of infallible teacher since the council of Trent. The infallibilits also say that always the individual conscience was subject to the general conscience of the episcopate.

But up to 1870 the real position was this, that the pope had through persistent usurpations become the judicatory from which no appeal and the individual conscience was silenced. The papal decisions were accepted, not as necessarily right but because there was no power to resist them. But the authority did not affect the conscience. Everyone was at liberty as he submitted to a papal decree to deny the truth and justice of it before men and god. He might be compelled to obey it as one obeys the decision of a civil court but he was not compelled to believe it was true and just. Thus the individual believer could still save his conscience.

The Vatican council has changed all of this. It has transferred to the church the fundamental idea of the "Society of Jesus" that it is necessary to sacrifice to authority not only the will but the understanding also. As in that society no one must think or judge otherwise than as the superior directs so it is in regards in the church with regard to the pope. There must be more than an external submission to his decrees. Whatever a man's individual knowledge and conscience teach him; he must judge and be convinced that these decrees are just and true,--that they are the word and law of god.

Thus the voice of conscience ceases to be the voice of god: the pope is higher than the conscience. What he says must be believed; what he commands or forbids binds the conscience. The individual reason and freedom must be sacrificed. There is no room even for reasoning or reflection. God dwells in the pope and he thinks for us. Whatever he declares in faith or morals is to be received as divine truth.

It is against this teaching of Jesuitism being made the law of the church that the Old Catholics rebel. They affirm that all authority which we are to receive as divine must rest upon the conscience. It must be in harmony with the internal voice of god. Anything else leads to the worst hypocrisy. We are now tending to a fearful moral abyss. Jesuitical morality has fearfully spread. There are many abuses that need rectification and the Vatican council has a noble work before it but its action may be summed up in a sentence: It is infallibly declared that a council is not infallible. And the infallible utterances of a fallible council are expected to be believed."

The Churchman is mistaken in saying, "The Infallibilits hold that the individual conscience was always subject to the general conscience of the episcopate." They hold no such thing nor do they pretending any sense whatever that the conscience of the Catholic is subject to the conscience of the pope. The conscience of the pope is his own affair which he equally with the simplest believer must regulate with his confessor and answer for to god the supreme lawgiver. Catholics distinguish between the legislature that ordains the law and the judiciary that declares and applies it. The pope binds the conscience not as lawgiver but as judge under the law which god has ordained.

It would be difficult to compress a greater amount of ignorance, sophistry, and nonsense, not to say malice, into the same space, than is done in the Churchman's summary of Professor Reinken's discourse or tract. No one was ever free to question a papal decision internally while he offered no external opposition; for every Catholic was required to give his consent ex animo as all know who are aware of the bull condemning the "respectful silence" of the Jansenists. There can be no war for conscience against the papacy without or against that law.  Conscience is a man's own interior judgement of what the law of god does or does not prescribe, permits, or prohibits. Deny the law of god and you deny the existence and even the possibility of conscience for you have no law for which it can be subject.  Conscience is free only when it is subjected to the law of god it is not free when it is subjected to any human authority or when the individual has no infallible authority by which to form his interior judgement of what the law of god does or does not prescribe, permit, or forbid. The papal infallibility in teaching then so far from denying, abridging, or restricting the freedom of conscience is its indispensable condition and support. Catholics and Catholics alone have true liberty of conscience and the liberty of conscience Professor Reinken demands is liberty from conscience not liberty of conscience is simply the suppression of conscience itself and emancipation of men and nations from all law except such as they impose upon themselves which is simply no law at all. But the liberty of conscience which the professor asserts really means liberation from conscience and freedom to power to govern as it pleases without any regard to eternal and immutable justice and to individuals to live as they list. But it is a good war cry and if people can be made to believe that the papacy instead of sustaining suppresses it they are prepared to help on the war against the pope and church. The so called Old Catholics then though of no account theologically are of some importance to Bismarck and able to aid him in a very necessary part of his great work of destroying and making an end of the Catholic Church and suffering only national churches subjected to the national authority to exist.

But this is not enough. It is necessary not only to open the mouths of Old Catholics that is nationalists falsely pretending to be Catholics but to close the mouth of all earnest and efficient defenders of the pope and church among the people. Bismarck’s third step was therefore to silence Jesuits and kindred religious orders that is missionary and teaching orders and congregations to suppress their houses and banish them from the empire.  This review has not ever been noted for it's devotion or subservience to the Society of Jesus and at times it has even been hostile to them probably very much for the reason that the Athenians wished to ostracize Aristides; that is because he was "tired of hearing them called just. The injudicious praise of them by their friends as if they were the only true Catholics in the church was little fitted to exalt them in estimation of a man of our taste and temperament. The society is not absolutely free from imperfection but the review was wrong and opposed them for things for which it should have commended and defended them. The estimate in which the society should be held by loyal catholic is easily determined by the fact that when anyone would strike a blow at the heart of the church he begins whether a private or public person by attacking the Jesuits feeling instinctively that he must get them out of the way before he can render his blow effective. When an attack is to be made on the religion they are the first to repel it. Their simplicity and deficient worldly wisdom leave them sometimes to be imposed upon by the cunning and designing but their catholic instincts may always be implicitly trusted. Bismarck knows it and thus makes them his first victims. For the same reason he attacks all the teaching and missionary orders. He knows that if they have the ears of the people-and have them wherever they go-and the charge of the schools and the training of the children and the youth  it is idle to dream of detaching the people to any great extent from the church or of her destruction. What can Dollinger and his seventy apostate and excommunicated priests even if recognized and sustained as Catholics by the  civil power  do against the science, virtue, devotion, to the holy see of a half a dozen Jesuits, redemptionists, lazarists, or even sisters of charity? It was absolutely necessary if Bismarck would overthrow the papacy and destroy the church to begin making away with the Jesuits and other living religious orders and congregations. An obedient and servile Reichsrath carries out his wish in the empire and a submissive Italian parliament meekly receives and executes his orders to the same effect in the newly stolen states of the church: and all in the name of liberty of conscience and modern civilization.

Bismarck is no fool in his generation and can see as clearly as any Catholic does or can that if children are trained to believe in god and in the obligation to know, reverence, and obey divine law as taught declared and applied by the church governed and taught by the infallible vicar of Christ it is in vain that statesmen labor to emancipate conscience from the law of god and to bring people to reject in the interior of their souls the entire moral order and cast off without compunction all authority but that of the secular government based on might or force alone. So as his fourth step for which he is sure in advance of all the applause of the sectarians and seculars of both the old world and new he prohibits priests from being school inspectors and does whatever is in his power to exclude catholic religion from schools designed especially for Catholics and to prevent catholic parents from bringing up their children in their own religion. How destroy the church and secularize the entire the entire catholic community if you permit Catholicism to be taught in schools? Bismarck's protestant brethren and infidel admirers in this country  understand this as well as he does and therefor turn a deaf ear  to the protest of Catholics against the injustice of taxing them to support schools of which they cannot with a good conscience send their children. And why should they not? Are they not of the modern world which excludes justice or measures it by utility? Do they not follow the spirit of the age which Mr. Henry ward Beecher's Christian Union takes as a manifestation of divine will and ridicules the Holy Father because he refuses to yield to it but steadily resists it as our lord and his apostles did the spirit of their age and nation?

Still this is not enough: Bismarck has taken a fifth step. This last step taken as our liberal journals assure us in behalf of civil and religious liberty is to place the discipline of the church in regards to her own members under the supervision and control of civil authority. It prohibits the church from excommunicating or interdicting a priest guilty of heresy or of any other ecclesiastical; or moral affluence without the consent of government. The principle asserted here if carried out destroys at once the freedom and independence of the church and results in her total destruction by the German empire. It takes away her authority to govern her own numbers in purely theological and ecclesiastical matters according to her own laws and deprives her of all power to purge her own body of unworthy members or to maintain purity of doctrine and discipline. At one time it sweeps away all the laws of the church for the government of the faithful and subjects the church absolutely to the imperial or national authority. She can exist only by the total loss of her unity and catholicity and by being turned into a national establishment like the Church of England which must be distinguished from the church in England. This with the overthrow of the papacy would be the complete destruction of the Catholic Church which the point is aimed at.

Now if we look at these several steps or measures we shall see they are devised with consummate skill and taking Bismarck's point of view that the papal church is a human institution and under purely human control it is difficult to conceive why they should not prove efficient in the hands of such a leader as Bismarck and be successful as Dr. Littlejohn thinks and hopes they will be in overthrowing the papacy. How can it be otherwise? Bismarck controls Germany and Germany has prostrated Austria holds her foot on the neck of France and dictates the policy of Italy who holds the pope a prisoner of Bismarck and is ready to order close all communication with the pope and the faithful; Russia is schismatically and will not interpose on behalf of the pope nor will England; America cannot and would not if she could for she upholds Bismarck with all her sympathies and earnestly wishes for his success. And why should he not succeed with all the odds humanly speaking in his favor?

Suppose now that he succeeds and the church is swept away and there are no more pope’s bishops or priests. What is to follow? there will no longer be a voice to be raised on behalf of outraged justice or violated rights no longer a power on Earth to assert supremacy of the moral order or to vindicate the law of nations. Caesar triumphs and the secular order is supreme. Well has Bismarck ever asked himself have his pets with the Italian robbers and assassins worthy descendants of those who upheld the Hohenstaufen against the vicar of Christ and against the glory and independence of their country ever asked themselves if the secular can stand on secular alone or civil or civilized society without moral order without religion as the lex suprema of the nation? And when the church is gone and might takes the place of right who is to assert the moral order or sustain religion save as a vague sentiment without moral force or as a degrading superstition? When conscience is destroyed by being emancipated from the law of god what is to sustain government and law to save society from the most absolute and grinding despotism or to save men from becoming downright savages or a herd of wild beasts? It is strange how men lose their faculties and into what wild theories they can rush when once they give way to their evil passions and suffer Satan to bewilder and blind them by his delusions.

But we dare tell Dr. Dollinger, Dr. Littlejohn, and the Churchman, and the Italian robbers and assassins that all powerful as he seems Prince von Bismarck will not succeed. We disguise not from ourselves or others the gravity of the situation nor the apparent helplessness of the Holy Father. Human help for him so far as we can see there is none and he is apparently left as he whose vicar he is to tread the wine press alone. Power, wealth, fashion, literature, science, public opinion, the very spirit of the age-all, all are against him and yet without any hesitation we tell von Bismarck as Mr. Ward Beecher's journal flippantly told the pope the other day that "he has undertaken a job too big even for him". Satan has been trying his hand at it for eighteen hundred years and more and with kings and Kaisers princes and people to help him he has not been able to succeed and I do not think that Bismarck is stronger than Satan or able to command more efficient allies. Satan has seemed on the point of succeeding  and flattered himself that he was just a going to succeed as a lady said that "it always seemed to her when eating vegetable oysters that she was just a going to taste a real oyster" but he never gets any further. At that point he always fails, fails shamefully and leaves his friends in the lurch. The simple fact is that the church is not a purely human institution; man has not made her and man cannot unmake her. If Bismarck and his allies had studied and understood history they would know this and know that no weapon forged against her can prosper that his dart will barely strike the boss of her shield and fall harmlessly at her feet or rebound and pierce his own heart.

We have seen that the church in as great straights as she is in now more than once. She was so under the Arian emperors when in the strong language of St. Jerome “the world awoke one morning astonished to find itself Arian." Bismarck does little else than copy the astute policy of Julian the apostate and we see no reason he should succeed in the 19th century any better than Julian did in the 4th. After the Arian heresy came resuscitated paganism. So after the protestant heresies we may have revived paganism for which every heresy is a preparation but after paganism came orthodoxy in the fourth century and the most glorious epoch in the church's history. Then came the basils, the Gregory’s, the Chrystoms, the Hilarys, the Ambroses, the Jeromes, the Augustines, in the splendor of whose virtues the names of the champions of Arianism and paganism have become invisible. The Italians would do well to remember Arnoldo of Brescia who held Rome for ten years and yet effected nothing against the papacy. Their ancestors drove the popes from Rome and forced them into what the romans call the Babylonian captivity at Avignon and occasioned the great schism of the west and yet aided as they were by secret societies which covered all of Europe then as now, Paulicians, Albigenses, Paterini and others that still survive in some degree of freemasonry they did not succeed in overthrowing the papacy or destroying the church any more than had done Kaiser Frederic Barbarossa whose crushing defeat by Pope alexander III. The city of Alessandria in the subalpine kingdom was built to commemorate. When Innocent III was elected pope, Rome was barred against his entrance and all the great powers of Europe as now were in schism and hostile to the papacy and yet at the close of his pontificate which lasted sixteen years all the powers had become submissive to his authority and never before had the papal throne been more wonderful perhaps so powerful throughout the Christian world.  His pontificate was the age of great men and saints. Nor did Frederic II who included in his empire all of Germany, all Italy, except Venice and Florence and a considerable portion of what is now France during fifty years of struggle against the papacy marked on his part great ability finesse treachery of every species, lying, pertidy and cruelty not surpassed if equaled by the most profligate of the pagan Caesars succeed any better than had done his ancestor Frederic Barbarossa. All Europe at length rose against him. the holy father 4 if we recollect aright in a general council by virtue of his apostical authority the council approving excommunicated deprived him of his imperial dignity absolved his subjects from their oath of loyalty to him and he died heartbroken in an obscure village deserted by all his friends except one bishop implicated in his condemnation who it is said gave him in extremis the last sacraments.

Luther has raised what has been called the standard of reform which was soon favored openly by some and secretly by nearly all the sovereign princes of Europe and he felt sure of his victory aided as he was by the Turks then a great power and at war with Christendom over the pope and declared the papacy was at an end the reign of the antichrist finished. Yet as though the tail of the apocalyptic dragon he drew after him a third part of the stars of heaven or states of Christendom the papacy survived and he left his reform to devour his own children. The church was also in as great a straight as at the close of the last century as now. There was not a catholic power that stood by her there was less faith in the European populations than even what is present  the French revolution everywhere victorious swept as a tornado all over Europe throwing down temples and palaces, thrones and altars and carrying everything before it and leaving only ruins in its track. France beheaded it's king, massacring it's nobility or forced them to emigrate, abolished the church, established a constitutional or national church such as the old Catholics dream of for Germany suppressed the religious orders and sent the religious to prison or the guillotine butchered drowned or deported her faithful bishops and priests invaded by her victorious armies the Italian peninsula took possession of Rome, dragged the pope from his throne and hurried him off a prisoner to France where he soon died at Valence, broken by grief, by age, and by physical suffering; yet the papacy was not overthrown. Hardly less near to victory did Satan seem to victory when Napoleon I bestrode all of Europe as a conqueror and dreamed of universal monarchy or at least of making all the princes of Europe vassals of the French empire. He founded the kingdom of Italy for his step-son, placed a brother, and then a brother in law on the throne of Naples, transferred the brother to a throne in Spain, crushed Prussia, rendered Austria powerless, formed the confederation of the Rhine with himself at its head despoiled the pope of his temporal possessions and held him a prisoner at Savona and then at Fontainebleau; and all the world rushed to do him homage. I remember the exultation of the protestant preachers and their triumphant air with which when he cast the pope into prison they cried out "Babylon is fallen, the reign of the antichrist is over, the mystery of iniquity is ended."

Well they did not after all taste the oyster. They reckoned without their host. The pope returned amid the joy and acclimations of the people to Rome recovered his temporal possessions repaired to a great extent the damage done to them by the revolution resumed the free exercise of his pontifical powers to the great benefit of the church and full of years and heroic virtues he calmly and peacefully breathed his pious and noble soul into his own bed in his own palace while his persecutor strip of all his power  denied the imperial dignity was sent to fret away his life under a brutal English keeper on the barren rock of St. Helena. Bismarck is reported to have said that "the pope will find in the present war between him and the empire no Canossa." It is possible; but the few incidents of ecclesiastical history to which we have referred will suffice to prove that the church is divine, under protection, upheld by a divine arm for if she had been human standing on human wisdom and strength alone any one of these would have swept her from the face of the earth. And if our noble pontiff gloriously reigning though a prisoner finds not a Canossa he may find an angel of the lord as did St. Peter opening his prison doors, setting him free, and bringing to naught the councils of his enemies.

We tell the astute and unscrupulous chancellor who for the moment wields all the power of the empire that he will fail as his predecessors have failed. The unarmed, defenseless, and aged prisoner of the Vatican is mightier than he. He may order his obsequious allies, the Italian sacrilegious robbers and assassins to bar all communication with the Holy Father by the faithful to rack his aged limbs and even to slay him but that will avail him nothing.  Every one of the pope's predecessor's including St. Peter himself for the first three hundred years of our era suffered martyrdom; I should say received the martyr's crown always the crown of victory. Saintly prelates, faithful priests, holy and devoted religious of either sex may be put to death by the minions of power but it will avail nothing. Such things strengthen not weaken the church. We do not need to cite the promises of Christ to his spouse, promises which never have failed and never can fail. Heaven and earth may pass away but his word cannot pass away. the fair introduction from the authentic history the fair introduction from the authentic history of the church  for eighteen hundred years is that though she may encounter severe struggles and be obliged to fight terrible battles, no weapon forged against her shall prosper and that she cannot die that "the immortal years of god are hers" and she will always come forth like the three children from the fiery furnace though heated seven times hotter than it is wont to be heated without the smell of fire in her garments.

The church has stood for eighteen hundred years and more the severest tests of her divinity can be applied. She has been assailed on every side and that continually. All the human astuteness and craft, despotism and cruelty, aided by satanic malice could do against her has been done. Jew, pagan, heretic, schismatic, barbarian, Saracen, apostasy, power, wealth, fashion, science, literature, public opinion, have all without a moment's relaxation for eighteen hundred years assailed her with all their forces and have failed. What stronger proof can you ask that man has not made her and that man cannot unmake her? Why is it that the chancellor cannot see it? why is it that he fails to recognize a power in and of the universe before which the mightiest power of earth or hell is simply impotence, weakness itself and that this power has manifestly upheld and protected the church and prospered her in spite of all external assaults and internal scandals? Cannot Bismarck read his folly and madness in the fate which has invariably befallen the persecutors of the church in every age and nation? Did he not see that Pious IX the vigorous old man is outliving his persecutors and increases his vigor and courage as he increases in years and as his wrongs are multiplied? Where is Palmerston? Dead. Where is Cavour? Dead. Where is Mazini? Dead. Where is the mock hero Garibaldi? Worse than dead. He has outlived his prestige and serves to point only as a jest. Where is Napoleon 3 the professed friend and betrayer of the pope? Dead. Who then is left to the chancellor? Victor Emmanuel if he fears not god at least he fears hell and if the pressure of Prussia was removed would make his peace with the pope tomorrow and send his infidel ministers to their own place. Gambetta's influence is waning for the bonapartists have no longer any need of him to create confusion in France; the Internationale has to bear the infamy of the Paris commune and it is a dangerous ally for Bismarck whose work it will rend in pieces the moment that it sees he is not likely to succeed in destroying the church. Even he himself is checked in his attempt to Prussianize Germany, and has alarmed by his ecclesiastical policy the conservative portion of Prussian Protestants who are beginning to see that it is no less hostile to the Prussian Evangelical church than to the church of Rome.; and he must not be surprised to find himself as powerless as his protestant brother the Saxon Von Beust late chancellor of Austria or if in dying he exclaim in the words of Julian the apostate, "Galilean thou hast conquered!" Who wars against the church wars against god.