®0meII Uttirraitg ^itotg '' 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 (WlAfiii. . (i.i^Xiy^,,,lU/i^ 
 
 h,i^^^'^i^ ijl^lmi 
 
Cornell Catholic 
 Union Library. 
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 M^^^ 
 
 49m-H(l 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029392259 
 
TEMPORAL POWER 
 
 OF THB 
 
 YICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
BALLANTYNE^ HANSON AND CO. 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 
6-«8^-7->x<;^,^^ u dL^f-^^ /< t(» 
 
 THE 
 
 Cornell Catholic 
 Union Library. 
 
 TEMPORAL POWER 
 
 yiCAR OF JESUS CHEIST. 
 
 BY 
 
 HENEY EDWAED,V ^ -^^ 
 CARDINAL AECHBISHOP OP WISTMINSTEE. 
 
 Wc^ixH ffiiiitt0n, tott^f a preface. 
 
 LONDON: BUENS AND OATES. 
 1880. 
 

CONTENTS. 
 
 Preface to the Third Edition . . ix 
 General Preface . . xvii 
 
 PAET FIEST. 
 Kit ©rtgtn of t^E SEKmporal Potocr. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 The Temporal Power first shown in the Ancient Patrimo- 
 nies of the Church . ... . i 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 The Temporal Power again appears in the Formation and 
 
 Preservation of Christian Society . . . -30 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 The Dissolution of Christian Society the necessary conse- 
 quence of the Overthrow of the Temporal Power . 54 
 
 PAET SECOND. 
 Kilt Perpetual ffionfltct of tlje Uicar of 3esm ffi|jrfst. 
 
 LECTURE L 
 
 The Mystery of Iniquity, which had already begun to 
 work in the days of the Apostles, the principle of this 
 conflict ; its consequences, the denial of the Incarna- 
 tion and of Authority .81 
 
vm CONTENTS. 
 
 PAOB 
 
 LECTUEE 11. 
 
 The Person of Antichrist the last Head of the Mystery of 
 
 Iniquity 103 
 
 LECTUEE III. 
 
 The Vicar of Jesus Christ in his twofold sovereignty the 
 Supernatural Antagonist of the Mystery of Iniquity 
 and of Antichrist 117 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 The Persecution of the Head of Iniquity against the Vicar 
 of Jesus Christ, and the Destruction of the Mystery of 
 Evil and its Head 142 
 
 PAET THIED. 
 3Ci[)e last <3laxizs at tfje l^alg See greater tfjan tlje first. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 The Glory of the Supernatural Life and Constancy of the 
 Holy See always more clearly proved in the Height of 
 Persecutions 177 
 
 LECTURE IL 
 
 The Present Time, which seems darkest by Persecutions, 
 
 will appear in the result brightest in Glory . . .196 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 The Future Glories of the Pontificate of Pius IX. . .218 
 
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION 
 
 The following pages were first published in separate 
 parts about i860. They were collected and repub- 
 lished in a second edition in 1861. 
 
 I. When they were written, Pius IX. held Eome 
 and the States of the Church in their integrity ; but 
 he was already hemmed in by revolutions and con- 
 spiracies. France and Italy had invaded Lombardy. 
 Tuscany, Parma, and Modena, and a little later the 
 kingdom of Naples, were in the hands of the Eevo- 
 lution. It was evident that, by fraud or by force, or, 
 as it ended, by both, Eome would be entered and 
 usurped. Nevertheless, the hopes of some were 
 stronger than their foresight; and we were told 
 that it would never be. But others thought that 
 what had happened already nine times might 
 happen once more. 
 
 2. The history of the ten years between 1 860 and 
 1 870 is marked by a series of political and diplo- 
 matic frauds unequalled in history. The seizure 
 
 of Ancona and the Marches, of Bologna and the 
 
 I 
 
X PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. 
 
 Eomagnas; the Convention of 1864 between France 
 and Italy, by whicli Italy bound itself to respect, 
 and even to protect, the Holy See ; the G-aribaldian 
 conspiracies and invasions; the duplicity of Sar- 
 dinia ; the complicity and countenance of Napoleon 
 III., are all too well known to need more than 
 recital. 
 
 3. The French Empire was then in its pride of 
 place in Europe. Austria had failed before it. 
 Italy was its ward, and Eome was under its pro- 
 tection. The military power of France was believed 
 to be the greatest in the world ; but there were those 
 who foretold its downfall. It had presided over 
 the undermining of the temporal sovereignty of the 
 Vicar of Jesus Christ. While apparently protecting 
 Eome, Italy was permitted by French statesmen, 
 and even countenanced, in a policy which had pub- 
 licly claimed Eome for capital. 
 
 4. On the 20th of September 1870, the Italian 
 armies bombarded and entered Eome, but on the 4th 
 of the same month the French Empire had already 
 ceased to be, and Napoleon III. was a prisoner in 
 Germany. Twice in this century France has had 
 to learn this lesson : No man who lays hand on the 
 Vicar of Christ has ever prospered ; has ever escaped 
 the rod. 
 
 5. What is sketched out in the two earlier parts of 
 
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. XI 
 
 these pages is already fulfilling. The usurpation of 
 Eome has sent disturbance throughout the continent 
 of Europe. Italy first, and above all, feels the recoil 
 of its violence. Every political question is compli- 
 cated with a religious contention. Its unity as a 
 nation is hindered by its divisions in religion and 
 conscience. It was forced into Eome by a revolu- 
 tion, and the Eevolution holds the gates so that it 
 cannot withdraw. The old and solid monarchy of 
 Savoy is trembling to its fall in Eome. The Eevolu- 
 tion which brought it there is its master.* Germany 
 committed the same folly. In the hour of its politi- 
 cal unity it divided itself by a religious conflict with 
 the Catholic Church. It was beguiled and driven 
 into the Falk Laws, which, after persecuting the 
 weak, can only bring defeat and shame to the 
 German Empire. In Switzerland, the so-called 
 Liberal party of infidels and "Old Catholics" has 
 persecuted and spoiled the Church. In France, the 
 Eepublic has been growing every year more anti- 
 Catholic, and now the Ferry Laws have brought it 
 into direct collision with the Church. The period 
 of indifference is already passing into the period of 
 coercive or penal legislation. Liberals are now per- 
 secutors, and republican freedom refuses liberty to 
 
 * See "The Independence] oi the Holy See,'' chap. iv. Kegan 
 Paul, London. 
 
xii PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. 
 
 conscience. Whether this will pass away, no man 
 knoweth. All things point to another and a violent 
 issue. It is more likely that a collision between the 
 revolutionary policy of the Continent and the Catholic 
 Church will follow after these preludes of unjust 
 repression and petty persecution. In Italy, Ger- 
 many, Switzerland, and France, the Governments 
 have entered upon the period of conflict. 
 
 6. And this disturbance will last and become more 
 intense so long as the Head of the Christianity of the 
 world is violently thrust from his place among the 
 nations and powers of Christendom. Eome was 
 never yet usurped but the whole of Europe was 
 shaken; and peace has never been restored in 
 Europe but Eome has returned again to the Vicar 
 of Jesus Christ. At this moment every country in 
 Europe is threatened by revolution ; and the revolu- 
 tions of Europe, from the Communism of France to 
 the Nihilism of Eussia, are becoming one and uni- 
 versal. Their confluence wUl probably be in the 
 Socialism of Germany. Against these dangers at 
 home, and against armed invasions from abroad, 
 all the powers of Europe are under arms. Eleven 
 millions of armed men are draining every country 
 of its industry and of its youth. A voluntary dis- 
 armament is as hopeless as the return of the reign 
 of Astraea upon earth. They will never lay down 
 
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. Xlll 
 
 their arms till they have disarmed each other on 
 the fields of battle. They have heaped up judg- 
 ment against themselves, and they will be left to 
 execute it. Every man's sword shall be against his 
 brother. As the moral power which governed Europe 
 becomes less, the material force becomes greater. 
 Faith and love and right are pushed aside, and an 
 age of iron reigns in their stead. I laid no claim 
 to be a prophet in forecasting what has come to 
 pass ; but I little thought twenty years ago to live 
 to see so many of these foresights already fulfilled. 
 
 7. There is one point in which the present crisis 
 of the Holy See and of the Christian world differs 
 from all that has gone before it. Always in the ages 
 past, when one or more of the European powers 
 were in conflict with the Holy See, one or more of 
 the other powers were friendly and gave it protec- 
 tion. Now not one stands in its defence. They 
 have all, with one accord, hid their faces from the 
 Vicar of our Lord. Some have violently wronged 
 him ; others have connived, through fear or com- 
 plicity, and all are like Saul, who kept the clothes 
 of those who stoned Stephen. They are all consent- 
 ing in the deed : some by expressed assent, others 
 by silence when they ought to speak. Of the hire- 
 ling St. Gregory the Great says, "Fugisti quia 
 tacuisti." The prince^ and rulers of Christendom 
 
xiv PEEFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. 
 
 have forsaken their master, and their silence iri the 
 hour of danger is flight. 
 
 Never till now have all the nations of Europe 
 consented in the deed of those V7ho have usurped 
 Eonie. Never till now has the public law of Europe 
 been changed to sanction the usurpation. For the 
 first time the Head of Christendom is excluded from 
 the Senate of Christian sovereigns. 
 
 This universal abandonment, and common acqui- 
 escence in the wrongs of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, 
 is the characteristic of the present crisis. And as 
 it is the climax of the wrong, so it will be the 
 decisive point in the conflict, and in the restitution 
 of Christian Europe, if indeed its Christian order 
 shall ever be restored. Of this I know nothing. 
 It may be that as the dispensation of grace to the 
 nations of the East ran out when Mahometanism 
 came in like a flood over the four schismatical 
 Patriarchates and four hundred Christian Sees, so it 
 may be the times of grace may be running out to 
 the nations of the West for their rebellion against 
 the Church and the Vicar of our Lord. But these 
 things are not for us to reason about. 
 
 8. In reading over these pages, I have been con- 
 scious that at times I have used words of stronc 
 condemnation, and a tone sharper than I believe I 
 have usually adopted. But when it is borne in 
 
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. XV 
 
 mind that at the time I wrote only ten years had 
 passed since the tempest about Papal Aggression ; 
 that a new penal law had been enacted against 
 the Bishops of the Catholic Church; that the lan- 
 guage of controversy was fierce and contemptuous 
 on all sides of me ; that hardly a week passed with- 
 out some denunciations of the Pontifical Govern- 
 ment in the press or in Parliament; that the 
 influence of England, by its diplomacy and by its 
 statesmen, was driving and cheering onward the 
 Sardinian, Mazzinian, Garibaldian revolution against 
 Eome ; that any one who stood and spoke for the 
 temporal power, or even for the spiritual aiithority 
 of the Pope, was assailed and derided by name — a 
 fate which, to my consolation then and now, largely 
 befell me ; when all these things are calmly and 
 fairly weighed, I think I shall not be censured as 
 having exceeded the measure of ineulpata tutela, or 
 of legitimate self-defence which the law of nature 
 gives to every man in behalf of himself and of his 
 duty. There is not, I believe, from first to last, to 
 be found a word that is personal to any man, nor 
 an assault against anything that lies out of the 
 reach of fair public conflict. 
 
 9. Lastly, I cannot fail to note the change which 
 has passed over England in these last twenty years. 
 Then its attitude towards the Catholic Church 
 
XVI PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. 
 
 abroad and at home was sensibly hostile, and the 
 utterances of its public opinion were unjust. Now 
 it has returned to itself. It is not the nature of 
 Englishmen to be little, bitter, or unfair. The public 
 feeling of England towards the Catholic Church, by 
 twenty years of experience and better knowledge, is 
 now fair and kindly. I do not say that the people 
 of England are nearer to the Catholic faith ; but I 
 am sure that they have learned to know more truly 
 what we believe, and are half amused and half 
 ashamed at themselves for believing in the scares 
 and the superstitions of their fathers as to the 
 idolatries of our faith and the conspiracies of our 
 practice. 
 
 If I had to speak again on these things now, I 
 could say much which then would not have been 
 true. If I had spoken then as it would be possible 
 to speak now, I should have failed in fidelity, for 
 plain-speaking is fidelity to truth. 
 
 HENEY EDWAED, 
 
 Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. 
 
 Westminster, 
 
 March 14, 1880. 
 
GENERAL PREFACE. 
 
 In reprinting the three small Treatises which form 
 the present volume, it may be well to prefix a few 
 words to excuse their insufficiency as compared 
 with the great subject of the Temporal Power, — of 
 which no one is more aware than I am. I am not 
 ashamed of saying, that when this, which has be- 
 come the leading and critical question of these 
 times, not only for Catholics, but for the nations of 
 Europe, first was forced upon us, I was but little 
 prepared to conceive its vast extent and its vital 
 importance. I had been used to regard it as a 
 sacred institution of Divine Providence, related 
 chiefly to the beautiful confederation of Europe in 
 the ages of Faith, surviving into present times as 
 an object of veneration rather than as a vital power 
 of government. It seemed rather to be a monu- 
 ment of the majesty, beauty, and splendour of the 
 past, than an instrument of energy in the present, 
 fitted for the vehement action of our modern world, 
 and mingling with all the conflicts of the nineteenth 
 
XVUl GENERAL PREFACE. 
 
 century. Neither am I ashamed to confess that I 
 did not apprehend the reasons of the Divine con- 
 duct in its institution, nor its titles of just and 
 sovereign right, nor its relation to the future action 
 of the Church upon the world, as I have learned to 
 perceive them now. They grew upon me as I read, 
 and have manifested themselves with such a light 
 of evidence and such a continually increasing im- 
 portance, that I had hardly finished any part of the 
 following pages without at once feeling dissatisfied. 
 And when I had reached the end, I wished that I 
 might have begun- all over again. I believe, how- 
 ever, that in the following pages the full outline 
 of the subject is described, and that no error in 
 principle wiU be found. But that everything ought 
 to be treated with a far greater fulness of illustra- 
 tion, expansion, and detail, I am altogether aware. 
 Nevertheless, such as they are, I am compelled to 
 let them stand, forasmuch as I see no hope of find- 
 ing the leisure necessary to begin them afresh. AU 
 that I can now do, is to prefix a few words in which 
 I may in some degree supply what is wanting. 
 
 , I have therefore reviewed, in a summary way, 
 the periods of the formation of the Temporal 
 Power, tracing out its attitude under Paganism, 
 and under the Byzantine Emperors and the aban- 
 donment of Italy, from which dates its proper 
 
GENERAL PREFACE. XIX 
 
 manifestation. It was then finally liberated from all 
 civil subjection, and left to be the sole occupant of 
 Eome ; until it was clothed by the necessity of events 
 with a supreme administration, and finally by the 
 voice of the people with a proper sovereignty. Now 
 although this is but a tracing in outline, it indi- 
 cates the points and the connection of the evidence. 
 But, in treating of this subject in the present day, 
 it is necessary to bear in mind the condition of the 
 social and political system of Europe, and to meet 
 the modern theories of revolution and of popular 
 rights. To do so, as it ought to be done, single 
 paragraphs in the following lectures would become 
 treatises, and single lectures volumes. Neverthe- 
 less, I have endeavoured to bear these points in 
 mind, touching them as I could by the way, and 
 not losing sight of them even when not explicitly 
 stated. 
 
 Inasmuch as they were addressed to English- 
 men, it was necessary that certain matters and 
 modes of speech should be admitted which would 
 be hardly intelligible in Catholic or in other coun- 
 tries. There is perhaps no people in the world 
 among whom it is more difficult to speak of the 
 Temporal Power of the Pope than among English- 
 men. The first axioms of the Christian ecclesias- 
 tical polity, which in Catholic countries all men 
 
XX GENERAL PREFACE. 
 
 believe, in England have been simply effaced by 
 the Eeformation. The state of political opinion in 
 England is even more opposed to it than that of the 
 United States : for among us there is not only less 
 indifference, but there is a traditional animosity 
 against the Holy See, especially in its relations to 
 Temporal Power, which Englishmen draw with their 
 first breath, and cherish by all their education, lite- 
 rature, and prejudice. 
 
 But besides these special features of the political 
 condition of this country, there is also a general 
 law in the history of Christian and Catholic truth 
 which must be taken into the account. 
 
 There is a certaia progression in the manifes- 
 tation of error. The Gnosticism of the East per- 
 vaded the early ages, and threw out a whole line 
 of heresies in opposition to the mysteries of the 
 Holy Trinity and of the Incarnation. The Councils 
 of Mce and of Florence may be taken as the two 
 wings of the Church's array against the heresies 
 of the East. The materialism of the "West has 
 occupied the later ages with a line of heresies, 
 all of which more or less deny the supernatural 
 order. Pelagianism and Protestantism may be 
 taken as the two extremes, and the Councils of 
 Orange and of Trent as the right and the left of 
 the Catholic Theology, by which the Church has 
 
GENERAL PREFACE. XXI 
 
 defined and manifested the presence and action of 
 the supernatural order. 
 
 Now this seems to me to give a fair indication 
 of the kind of errors with which we have to deal in 
 England. They are by no means Oriental, that is, 
 speculative, subtil, metaphysical, or abstract; but 
 emphatically Western, that is, material, sensuous, 
 rationalistic, and secular. Protestantism is a revolt 
 against the supernatural, against sacramental grace, 
 against the jurisdiction of the Church over souls, 
 against the transmission of its Divine of&ce, against 
 the power of binding and loosing, against the abid- 
 ing Presence of Jesus in the Holy Sacrament and 
 Sacrifice of the Altar, against the supernatural 
 unity and endowments of the Mystical Body, against 
 the office of the Vicar of the Incarnate Word in the 
 spiritual and temporal prerogatives conferred upon 
 his person. 
 
 Ifow all these are kindred errors, the offspring 
 of one stem. They are no more than so many de- 
 tailed denials of the supernatural order, and of the 
 presence and operation of the powers of the Incar- 
 nation upon man and upon society. Pelagius denied 
 the presence of interior supernatural grace in our 
 regeneration; Luther in our justification; modern 
 Protestantism in the Church; and in Christendom 
 which is its creation and its product. 
 
XXU GENERAL PREFACE. 
 
 To a Catholic the Holy Sacraments and the 
 Church are consequences of the Incarnation, — 
 virtues and creative powers which go forth from 
 the Person of our Incarnate Lord. We cannot con- 
 template them except in union with Him and by 
 the light of Divine Faith. They are facts and pheno- 
 mena of the supernatural order. We cannot treat 
 them by any natural calculus, or test them by 
 chemistry or by physical analysis. Though they be 
 in contact with the natural order, there is in them a 
 supernatural element which transcends all natural 
 tests. In their contact with the natural order they 
 may be contemplated in part by the instruments of 
 evidence and the criteria of historical truth. But 
 such tests are partial, and such appreciations are 
 inadequate. For instance, be it reverently said, 
 the Presence of our Incarnate Lord on earth was 
 an object of sense to the Jews, who called Him the 
 Son of the Carpenter ; and of reason to Nicodemus, 
 who inferred from His works that He was a Teacher 
 sent from God ; but of faith to St. Peter, to whom 
 a light was given to see the presence of One of whom 
 flesh and blood can make no revelation. 
 
 In like manner, in the perpetuity of this same 
 Divine Presence in the Holy Eucharist sense may 
 contemplate the species, and reason define the fact 
 of this supernatural change of substance; but the 
 
GENERAL PEEFACE. XXIU 
 
 manner of tlie Divine action transcends the natural 
 order, and can be contemplated alone, as the holy 
 Council of Trent teaches,* " though we can scarcely 
 express it in words, by the understanding illumi- 
 nated by faith." 
 
 So also in the Church, which — with its four notes 
 of unity, sanctity, universality, and apostolicity ; its 
 three properties of unity, visibility, and perpetuity ; 
 and its three endowments of indefectibility, infalli- 
 bility, and authority — constitutes an object of sense 
 in its visible presence, of ■ reason in its history and 
 action on the nations of the world, and of faith in its 
 supernatural powers and divine commission on earth. 
 
 And if this be so of the whole Body of the 
 Church, it is so eminently and emphatically of its 
 Visible Head; for the endowments of the Body 
 are the prerogatives' of the Head, and what is to 
 be found pervading the body and its members, is 
 to be found, by way of eminence and of excellence, 
 and as it were typically, in the Head ; for the Head 
 not only bears a proportion of eminence and excel- 
 lence to the whole Body, but also a relation of pro- 
 portion and representation to the unseen Head, in 
 whom all fulness dwells. 
 
 * " Etsi verbis exprimere vix possumus, possibile tamen esse 
 Deo cogitatione per fldem illustrate assequi possumus, et constan- 
 tissime credere debemur." S. Concil. Trid. sess. xiii. c. 1. 
 
XXIV GENERAL PREFACE. 
 
 And therefore, in contemplating the history of 
 the Holy See, and of the line of Pontiffs who unite 
 us with the Presence of the Incarnate Word mani- 
 fested on earth, and also with the Sovereignty of the 
 same Lord now reigning at the right hand of God, 
 sense and reason have their proper sphere ; but there 
 is a sanctuary into which they cannot enter, and a 
 presence which determines all, and is the substance 
 and the life of the whole supernatural fact, of which 
 Paith alone has cognizance. 
 
 Now, as this appears to me to be the particular 
 truth which the progression of human error has at 
 this day especially assailed, and as it seems also 
 that our Divine Lord, who at other times has been 
 pleased, to use the language of men, to accept the 
 battle with the perverse will and perverted reason 
 of man, — sometimes on one side of His indivisible 
 truth, and sometimes on another ; in one age upon 
 His Godhead coequal with the Pather, in another 
 upon His true and proper manhood taken from His 
 Immaculate Mother ; now upon the mystery of the 
 Altar, which most nearly represents the action and 
 proportions of His Incarnation ; and now upon the 
 whole order and action of His Church upon the 
 world ; — so now at last, it would seem, for reasons 
 partly, no doubt, as yet inscrutable, but partly 
 even at this time, already most evident, He has 
 
GENERAL PREFACE. XXV 
 
 accepted the whole combat upon one point, the key 
 and centre of all His supernatural action among 
 men, namely, on the Sovereign Pontificate of His 
 Vicar upon earth. 
 
 It is needless to point out how, in this one 
 truth, all are contained ; how the whole order, 
 constitution, office, and endowments of the Church 
 are summed up, concentrated, perpetuated, and ex- 
 ercised by its Head ; how, without its Head, the 
 Body would cease to cohere, that is, to exist ; and 
 how, in the existence and action of the Church, the 
 whole Faith, with its aureola of theology around 
 it, and the action of sacramental grace, with all 
 its laws of divine precision, are vitally contained 
 and manifested to the world. It was no exaggera- 
 tion of St. Ambrose to say, " Ubi Petrus, ibi Eccle- 
 sia ; " nor of St. Avitus, " If the Pope of the City (i.e. 
 of Kome) be called into doubt, it is no Bishop, but the 
 Episcopate at once, which will be seen to waver." * 
 
 And if the subject of the Sovereign Pontificate 
 be essentially and in itself vital to the Church and 
 to the Paith, certainly it is one which ought to be in 
 the front of our teaching. I think I may say that if 
 there be a subject which fulfils all the tests, both 
 
 * " Si Papa TJrbis vocatur in dubium, Episcopatus jam yidebitur, 
 non Episcopus, vaoillari." — Bibl. Max. — Gallandii torn. x. — St. 
 Ayiti Ep. xxxi. 
 
 c 
 
xxv! GENERAL PREFACE. 
 
 general and particular, of what is seasonable and 
 necessary in this land and at this moment, it is 
 that which, arising a few years ago no larger than " a 
 man's foot," and despised then, as the extravagance 
 of Canonists or the dream of Theologians, and thrust 
 aside by the boastful confidence of Protestantism, 
 and denounced by politicians, and derided by the 
 thousand tongues of public opinion, has risen and 
 spread until it has overcast the whole of Europe as 
 the one ultimate and critical question of our state 
 and time. Wot only do we, as Catholics, perceive 
 that in it is summed up the whole presence of the 
 supernatural order, but even men of the world have 
 likewise become aware that the whole natural order 
 of political society, as it has hitherto existed in 
 Christendom, is tied by this single keystone. They 
 know as well as we that the political question of the 
 day is not between degrees of more or less in the 
 same order, but between two social systems : the old, 
 which created Christendom ; and the new, whioh let 
 loose the Eevolution. The most antipapal, anti- 
 catholic, and antichristian among us does not affect 
 to deny that the whole order of Christian society in 
 Europe arose from the action of the Church, and 
 therefore of its Head, upon the nations of the 
 world. 
 With a lively sense that so great a matter ought 
 
GENERAL PREFACE. XXVU 
 
 to have fallen into stronger and better hands, I 
 ■will endeavour to mark out what I hope may indi- 
 cate at least the line and the divisions of this vast 
 subject. 
 
 And here I would lay down three principles which 
 are of vital importance in treating of the Temporal 
 Sovereignty of the Holy See. 
 
 1. The first is, never to lose sight for a moment 
 of the supernatural character of the subject matter. 
 It is not so much the stratagem of the antagonists of 
 this day, for they know no better, but their inevit- 
 able necessity, that, having lost faith in the super- 
 natural, they must themselves treat, and challenge 
 or invite us also to treat, the subject of the Sove- 
 reign Pontificate in the order of history, that is, on 
 the mere level of nature. We can consent so to deal 
 with it in so far as we might also deal with the fact 
 of the Incarnation or of the Holy Eucharist in the 
 order of nature. But in these and in the Supreme 
 Poiftificate there is, as I have said, a supernatural 
 element, which not only refuses the test and the 
 treatment of the natural order, but so predomi- 
 nates over the whole subject, as the greater over 
 the less,' and as the substance over the accessories, 
 that all such treatment becomes partial, inadequate, 
 and useless. This I shall hope to explain here- 
 after. 
 
XXVIU GENERAL PREFACE. 
 
 2. The second principle is, to tear in mind that, 
 in dealing with the historical evidences of this suh- 
 ject, it is necessary not only to examine the several 
 and detailed facts, but to collect and to appreciate 
 the whole cumulus of the evidences in one view. 
 They who have been used to examine the historical 
 proofs of the most certain events and facts — such as 
 the succession of monarchies, the lives and actions 
 of the most notorious men, as weU as such vital 
 matters as the canonicity of inspired Books, and the 
 extrinsic evidence of the Christian revelation — well 
 know that the evidence arising from the summing-up 
 of all its detailed proofs is distinct from them all, 
 and forms a separate and higher kind of proof, both 
 convincing and persuasive. Such is enjinently the 
 case here ; as we shall see, on finally collecting into 
 one focus all the lights of history which surround 
 the path and the presence of the Pontificate and the 
 Sovereignty of the Vicars of Jesus Christ. 
 
 3. The third principle is, always to maintaia the 
 indivisible unity of the subject ; and as we refuse to 
 treat it in the natural order alone, so never to dis- 
 tinguish, except in thought, the Pontificate and the 
 Sovereignty Spiritual and Temporal of the Vicariate 
 of Jesus Christ. As in treating of human nature 
 we may contemplate the body and the soul, the in- 
 tellect and the will, the expansion of life in child- 
 
GENERAL PREFACE. Xxix 
 
 hood, its wider range in youth, its sway and matu- 
 rity in manhood, and yet we are only distinguish- 
 ing without dividing the integral and inseparable 
 perfections and properties of one individual life ; so 
 it is with the Sovereign Pontificate of the- Vicars 
 of Jesus Christ, whether contemplated lineally in 
 the progressive manifestation of its prerogatives 
 along the whole line of Pontiffs, or in the person 
 of Pius IX., in whom all the inheritance of the 
 Vicariate of the Son of God, both as Pontiff and as 
 Sovereign, resides in full. . It is one of the tactics 
 of our adversaries to profess that they do not attack 
 the Spiritual Supremacy, but only the Temporal 
 Sovereignty of the Pope.- By offering battle upon 
 this ground, many are tempted to leave their true 
 and sure position, and to give away, with their 
 eyes shut, the key of their entrenchment, namely, 
 that both the Spiritual and the Temporal, though 
 given in different ways and at different times, 
 are yet both gifts of the same Divine Lord, and 
 both inhere at this time, by the Divine will, in 
 the person of his Vicar. If it be conceivable that 
 He should have given the one without the other, now 
 that He has given both, it is not for us to conceive 
 that they should be parted. The Sovereign Ponti- 
 ficate is conceivable to us only as God has mani- 
 fested it. We receive its image from its manifesta- 
 
XXX GENERAL PREFACE. 
 
 tion. We have no other conception of it except as 
 He has revealed it by His action upon the world. If 
 it be said, We can conceive it as it once existed 
 before the Temporal Power was known to this world ; 
 we answer, We may conceive it for that time, be- 
 cause God so manifested it then ; we cannot conceive 
 it for this, because God has manifested it otherwise 
 now. But this manifestation is the will of God. 
 We cannot conceive a retrogression in the works of 
 God ; as if His Church, the tree of Life, should fall 
 into decay and cast its branches. We know it as 
 God has matured it. We have no better reason to 
 conceive of the Church now as it was in the Cata- 
 combs, than to conceive it as it was in the syna- 
 gogue or in the wilderness. The works and the 
 ways of God are onward to perfection ; " sine poeni- 
 tentia enim sunt dona et vocatio Dei," * " the gifts 
 and the calling of God are without repentance." 
 To us the Spiritual and the Temporal Powers of 
 the Supreme Pontiff have gradually become integral 
 and inseparable ideas in the same divine order and 
 creation. 
 
 In this sense, then, the Temporal Sovereignty of 
 
 the Supreme Pontiff is of divine institution. It was 
 
 inherent in the Pontificate, which was conferred by a 
 
 direct act of our Divine Lord ; it was called out into 
 
 * Rom. xi. 29. 
 
GENERAL PREFACE. XXXI 
 
 exercise by Divine providence as soon as Cliristen- 
 dom arose ; it has been confirmed and sustained by 
 the same Divine providence over its local territory 
 for more than a thousand years. In this sense, then, 
 it is divine ; and though not necessary in any abso- 
 lute way to the spiritual office of the Church, which 
 for centuries accomplished itself without a territory, 
 it is necessary 'to the perfect and peaceful discharge 
 of its mission to the world. When we see that the 
 Divine predestination has willed it, and the Divine 
 providence has constituted it, we are unable to 
 contemplate it in any other light than that of the 
 Divine will ; or to regard it in any way but as, next 
 to the institution of the Church on earth, the crea- 
 tion which is most visibly and emphatically divine 
 in its origin, character, and operation. 
 
 The Pontificate and the Sovereignty of the Vicar 
 of Jesus Christ was fully and perfectly, that is, either 
 actually or potentially, conferred upon the person 
 of St. Peter in the moment when he received of the 
 Son of God the keys of the kingdom of heaven. 
 The whole power of supernatural government, with 
 all its principles, prerogatives, and sanctions, was 
 conveyed to him by that one act of investiture. 
 No new accessions have been made to it ; no further 
 grants or enlargements of jurisdiction have been 
 bestowed upon him or upon his successors. It has, 
 
XXXU GENERAL PREFACE. 
 
 indeed, required a succession of two hundred and 
 fifty Pontiffs to bring fortli and to exercise all the 
 fulness of this original commission. If the Apostle 
 does not hesitate to call the Church by the name of 
 Christ,* I need not fear to draw a parallel between 
 the unfolding of the mystery of the Incarnation in 
 the Person of Jesus from the moment of the Annun- 
 ciation to the hour of the Ascension, and the pro- 
 gressive manifestation of His Priesthood and His 
 Eoyalties in the person of His Vicar upon earth. 
 Two points of precise analogy exist in this parallel. 
 First, the full and perfect presence of these two 
 supernatural facts from the first moment of their 
 constitution ; and next, the progressive manifestation 
 and exercise of their power in the order of time and 
 of events. 
 
 Now the spiritual mission of the Church, and 
 the state of the heathen world, demanded by strict 
 necessity that the Spiritual Supremacy and Ponti- 
 ficate of the Vicars of Jesus Christ should be first 
 exercised, and therefore be first manifested to the 
 nations and races of mankind. 
 
 It is not my intention, for it is not necessary, 
 that I should offer proofs of the original plenitude 
 of the Pontificate from the beginning of the Church 
 Nevertheless, what I purpose to offer wiU, I believe, 
 
 * I Cor. xii. 27. 
 
GENERAL PREFACE. XXXIU 
 
 "be found to be a full and complete proof of what I 
 may assume. 
 
 I would propose to any one, who either desires 
 evidence or explicit illustration of this fact, to 
 take as the two terms of his inquiry into this 
 question, first, on the one extreme, the well-known 
 passage of Eusebius, describing the attitude of St. 
 Victor in the middle of the second century, in the 
 Paschal controversy with the Asiatic Churches, and 
 the intercession of St. Irenseus, praying the Eoman 
 Pontiff to refrain from the act of cutting them off by 
 excommunication (atroKOTrTeiv) ; together with the 
 words of TertuUian, fifty years later, in which he 
 rails with the wounded pride of a Montanist against 
 the sovereign power which had already passed sen- 
 tence on him. " Audio etiam edictum esse propo- 
 situm, et quidem peremptorium, Pontifex scilicet 
 Maximus, quod est Episcopus Episcoporum edicit, 
 Ego," * &c. And on the other extreme I would re- 
 quest him to place — no inconsiderable landmark — 
 the twenty-one folio volumes of the Billiotheca Pon- 
 tificia of Eoccaberti. 
 
 Now, what a forest of fifteen hundred years is 
 
 to the first acorn which struck its root in the soil, 
 
 in lineal descent, unity of substance, legitimacy of 
 
 multiplication, identity of kind, continuity of exist- 
 
 * tertuU. de Pud. c. i. 
 
XXXIV GENERAL PREFACE. 
 
 ence, maturity of nature, harmonious expansion, and 
 perfect symmetry of structure, such is the Sovereign 
 Pontificate of Eoccaherti's one-and-twenty folios 
 compared with that of Eusebius and Tertullian. 
 
 My object in this example is to point out one 
 only fact, which will throw much light upon the 
 subject properly before us. 
 
 What was it that, out of the simple fact de- 
 scribed in the narrative of Eusebius and the in- 
 vectives of Tertullian, elicited so vast a body of 
 scientific and exact treatises on the Sovereign 
 Pontificate ? What defined and elevated it into a 
 province of theology, and gave to it a definition 
 among the doctrines of Christianity ? 
 
 It needs no learning to answer, that this slow but 
 vast process was the result of the antagonism which 
 from Tertullian to Cerularius, from Cerularius to 
 Huss, and from Huss to Luther, has demanded the 
 exercise and expression of the Supreme Pontificate. 
 The Bihliotheca Pontificia is the record and the sum- 
 mary, the retrospective estimate and the resulting 
 expression, of this divine institution of supernatural 
 power, as manifested by the antagonism which has 
 unceasingly contended against the Vicars of Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 Now any one who will turn over the volumes 
 of Eoccaberti will perceive at once that they are 
 
GENERAL PREFACE. XXXV 
 
 almost exclusively filled with treatises upou the 
 Spiritual Supremacy of the Sovereigu Pontiffs. The 
 subject of the Temporal Power comes in most spar- 
 ingly, and, as it were, incidentally, by the way. I 
 doubt if there be one whole treatise on this subject. 
 A chapter extracted from the larger treatises of 
 Dominicus Soto and of Bellarmine, a passage from 
 Stapleton, and one fuller treatment of the subject by 
 Suarez, constitutes nearly all that is to be found in 
 a direct or substantive form throughout the one-and- 
 twenty volumes. How are we to account for this 
 fact ? And what are we to infer from it ? 
 
 The answer does not appear to me to be difficult 
 to find. 
 
 I would venture to reply, that as in science, so 
 also in theology, and in the history of cA'^ery truth, 
 certain periods are to be traced : first, the period of 
 conception ; secondly, of definition ; and lastly, of 
 application and of scientific manifestation. It ap- 
 pears to be the will and order of the Divine Head 
 of the Church, that the Spiritual Sovereignty of His 
 Vicar should be fu'st exercised and resisted, affirmed 
 and denied, contested and defined; and that with- 
 out the schisms of the East and West the Bibliotheca 
 Pontificia would not as yet have reached its com- 
 pletion. 
 
 And in this I seem to see a reason why as yet 
 
XXXVl GENERAL PREFACE. 
 
 the subject of the Temporal Power or prerogatives of 
 the Supreme Pontiff are still waiting for a Biblio- 
 theca. The Regalia Petri are now in turn the 
 subject of a world-wide and unceasing antagonism. 
 From generation to generation throughout the king- 
 doms of modern Europe, and especially wheresoever 
 the poison of Machiavelli in the fifteenth century, 
 and the anarchy of Protestantism in the sixteenth, 
 has entered into political society, the main subject of 
 jealous legislation, of railing controversy, and some- 
 times of more grave and respectable error, has been 
 the position of Eome in Italy, and the Temporal 
 Power of the Sovereign Pontiff. From which fact, 
 so far from believing that the temporal prerogatives 
 of the Vicar of Jesus Christ are entering on the period 
 of their decline, I rather infer that they are already in 
 the period of their fuller appreciation and manifesta- 
 tion. The materials of a Bibliotheca Pontificia have 
 long been collecting ; but the time of digesting and 
 defining appears not even yet to be come. The line 
 of Pontiffs from St. Gregory the Great to Pius IX. 
 have vindicated and exercised the temporal prero- 
 gatives of their Pontificate; a host of theologians 
 in all languages have defended and justified it ; ten 
 Councils, of which two are General, have recognised 
 it; a multitude of lesser writers, during the last 
 three hundred years, have treated it in its relation 
 
GENERAL PREFACE. XXXVU 
 
 to modern society; and now at last, in the great 
 Pontificate of our Holy Father, who is a Confessor 
 for these prerogatives of the Holy See, the whole 
 Episcopate of the universal Church has given, in all 
 its tongues, an unanimous suffrage and testimony. 
 The " magisterium juge Ecclesise " has spoken, as it 
 only speaks in prelude of an authoritative defini- 
 tion.* All these things would lead us to expect 
 anything rather than the disappearance from the 
 face of the earth of a power to which the whole 
 world, "some, indeed, even out of envy and con- 
 tention, but some also for goodwill," i* are turning, 
 as to the one object which fills the whole field of 
 vision, the one presence which either sustains or 
 obstructs the whole wiU of two great antagonist 
 arrays. It is surely not paradoxical rather to say 
 that this is the period of the manifestation and 
 justification of the Temporal Power of the Sovereign 
 Pontiffs; that what the Arian period was to the 
 doctrine of the Holy Trinity, and the Protestant 
 period to the doctrine of justification, such the 
 present period is to the full manifestation of the 
 Supreme Pontificate in its twofold relations to the 
 spiritual and political order of the world. 
 
 * This great authority has already hecome a rule to govern the 
 judgment of Ecclesiastical bodies, 
 t Philipp. i. 15. 
 
XXXVlii GENERAL PREFACE. 
 
 Inasmuch as it is better to err by excess of cau- 
 tion than by defect of explicitness, I wlII here say 
 what I must ask all Catholics to pardon as needless 
 to them, but necessary perhaps for those that are 
 without. 
 
 In the parallel I have drawn between the gra- 
 dual definition of the doctrines of the Holy Trinity 
 and of the Immaculate Conception, and the subject 
 of the Temporal Power of the Sovereign Pontiffs, I 
 have in no way and in no sense expressed or im- 
 plied that the Temporal Power constitutes the mate- 
 rial object of a dogma of Faith. 
 
 The first of the two conditions of a dogma of 
 Faith is, that it was revealed by God to the 
 Apostles. 
 
 The local sovereignty of the Vicar of our Lord 
 over Eome and the Marches was a fact in Provi- 
 dence many centuries afterwards, and as such can 
 form no proper or direct matter of a dogma of 
 Faith. The instinct of a Catholic child would per- 
 ceive this ; and Catholics will forgive my pointing 
 it out only for the sake of those who either have not 
 the light of faith, or who are given to the spirit of 
 contention. 
 
 Nevertheless, the Temporal Sovereignty affords 
 abundant and proper matter for a definition, or judg- 
 ment, or authoritative declaration of the Church, 
 
GENERAL PREFACE. XXXIX 
 
 like the disciplinary decrees of General Councils, 
 or, finally, the authoritative sentences in the Bulls 
 of Pontiffs — as, for instance, in the Bull Auctorem 
 fidei — of which many relate to discipline, to eccle- 
 siastical and mixed questions bearing on temporal 
 things. 
 
 And to such an authoritative utterance, under 
 anathema, and by the voice of the whole Church 
 through the Supreme Pontiff, the subject of the 
 Temporal Power of the Vicar of Jesus Christ may 
 legitimately, and not improbably, attain ; and such a 
 judicium, ecclesice, or authoritative sentence, would 
 be binding on the consciences of all the faithful, 
 and the contrary would be noted as " propositio 
 falsa, juribus Concilium Generalium et summorum 
 Pontificum laesiva, scandalosa, et schismati f ovens."* 
 And yet the subject matter may not be among the 
 original articles of revealed doctrine, but of the 
 nature of a dogmatic fact attaching to a Divine doc- 
 trine and institution, viz., the Vicariate of St. Peter 
 and his successors ; and therefore, after declaration, 
 it would be of incontrovertible certainty and uni- 
 versal obligation, so that the denial of it would 
 involve grave sin. 
 
 That I may make this progressive manifestation 
 more evident, I would briefly draw out the periods 
 * In Bulla "Auctorem fidei," 74. ' 
 
xl GENERAL PREFACE. 
 
 through which the Temporal Sovereignty of the 
 Vicars of Jesus Christ appears to have passed to- 
 wards its present form. 
 
 1. It is self-evident that the Temporal Sove- 
 reignty of the Popes is a power relative to Christian 
 peoples and princes, forasmuch as it is by baptism and 
 regeneration alone that men, and therefore nations, 
 become subjects of the Church. In the first period 
 of three hundred years, while as yet the civil powers 
 of the world were pagan, these prerogatives of the 
 Vicars of Christ had no subject matter for their 
 exercise. They existed in the plenitude of their 
 office ; but they were related to an order to be after- 
 wards created. They were inherent, as the sacra- 
 mental power resides in the priest to whom no 
 " materia apta " for consecration is present, or as 
 the habitual power of absolution while as yet he has 
 no jurisdiction over souls. 
 
 It is therefore vain and senseless to q[uote ex- 
 amples of obedience in the Pontiffs to heathen em- 
 perors and to a heathen senate, as a proof of their 
 obligations towards Christian princes and Christian 
 legislatures. By the grace of Christianity Chris- 
 tian princes and legislators stand to the Church in 
 other and higher relations than the heathen. If 
 they would claim with the heathen, they renounce 
 their Christianity. Doubtless the Pontiffs would 
 
GENERAL PREFACE. xli 
 
 act towards heathen powers now as the Pontiffs 
 acted then; but no Christian prince, or people, 
 can claim the obedience exacted by the heathen 
 without apostasy from the Christian name. This 
 iirst period, then, was one not of sovereignty or 
 order, but of patience and of martyrdom, and is no 
 precedent and gives no principles. 
 
 2. The second period may be called the period 
 of liberation. To the least discerning it must be 
 manifest that G-od had some purpose of His divine 
 wisdom in the migration of Constantino and of the 
 Empire from Eome to Byzantium. "What could be 
 more improbable than that an emperor should for- 
 sake the imperial city of a thousand years ; or that 
 a Christian prince should, in the very fervour of his 
 conversion, depart from the Vicar of Jesus Christ ? 
 Surely it was in the Divine Will to show to the world 
 that His Church has no need of human support; 
 that the stone " cut out without hands," * " without 
 hands" also was to fill the whole earth; and like- 
 wise to reveal, by a melancholy history of ambition, 
 heresy, tyranny, and schism, to what a Christian 
 people, by disobedience to the Vicars of His Son, 
 may fall. 
 
 But this is too large a subject. It is enough for 
 our present purpose to point out that the migration 
 * Dan. ii. 34. 
 
xlii GENERAL PREFACE. 
 
 of the Empire was an abandonment of Eome and of 
 Italy. The Emperors ceased to be lords by occupa- 
 tion ; they ceased to exercise the duties, and there- 
 fore the rights, of sovereigns ; they could no longer 
 even defend Eome against the Barbarian invasions ; 
 probably, to buy them off from attacking Constanti- 
 nople, they connived at their irruptions into Italy. 
 If, as Aristotle says, property consists in the KTrja-i<; 
 Kal ■xprjai';, in the possession and the use of anything, 
 then the Byzantine Emperors ceased to be pro- 
 prietors of Italy and of Eome. Nay more, they lost 
 their rights, not only by abandonment, but by abuse, 
 by tyranny, by heresy, by schism, by persecution, 
 by the meanest vexation, and by the guilt of assas- 
 sination, attempted even against the person of the 
 Pontiffs, as in the case of St. Martin I., of Sergius, 
 and of Gregory II. 
 
 Now the abandonment of Eome was the libe- 
 ration of the Pontiffs. Whatsoever claims to obe- 
 dience the Emperors may have made, and whatso- 
 ever compliance the Pontiff may have yielded, the 
 whole previous relation, anomalous, and annulled 
 again and again by the vices and outrages of the 
 Emperors, was finally dissolved by a higher power. 
 The providence of God permitted a succession of 
 irruptions, Gothic, Lombard, and Hungarian, to de- 
 solate Italy, and to efface from it every remnant of 
 
GENERAL PREFACE. xliii 
 
 the Empire. The Pontiffs found themselves alone ; 
 the sole fountains of order, peace, law, and safety. 
 And from the hour of this providential liberation, 
 when, by a Divine intervention, the chains fell off 
 from the hands of the successor of St. Peter, as once 
 before from his own, no sovereign has ever reigned 
 in Eome except the Vicar of Jesus Christ. The 
 moral import of this Divine action must be ade- 
 quately appreciated. It cancelled, abolished, and 
 extinguished finally and for ever the right of con- 
 quest, possession, occupation, and property claimed 
 by the Emperors over Italy and Eome. The throne 
 of sovereignty was vacant by the visitation of God. 
 It reverted to its primitive rights as a virgin soil, 
 the title and inheritance of which is inherent in the 
 people who possessed it by birth, by toil, and by 
 burial. They once more became and assumed the 
 style of the Eoman Eepublic. It has been argued, 
 with great learning and apparent reason, by a dis- 
 tinguished Italian writer,* that the Eoman Senate 
 was always the true and legitimate sovereignty ; and 
 that as the presence of the Empire did not consti- 
 tute, so neither did the translation of the Empire 
 diminish, the rights of the Senate in Eome. There 
 existed, therefore, the fuU and independent popular 
 sovereignty of the Eoman people in all its material 
 * Troya. See Civilt^ Cattolioa, quad. 265, p. 53. 
 
xliv GENERAL PREFACE. 
 
 completeness, lacking only form and manifestation 
 in the person whom it should invest with its exe- 
 cution. 
 
 3. The interval between the failure of the Em- 
 pire in Italy and the confirmation of the Temporal 
 Sovereignty of the Pontiffs was an interregnum. 
 
 4. E"or was it of long duration. In the three 
 hundred years before the translation of the Empire 
 a power had grown up far more imperial over the 
 reason and will of man than the iron despotism of 
 the Eoman. It had pervaded the intelligence of 
 men with truth, and their hearts with a law of life. 
 It had subdued them by convictions of the reason 
 and persuasions of the moral nature, and won to 
 itself the whole confidence and attachment of their 
 wiU, with all its freedom and powers. And this 
 interior and supernatural power of direction and 
 government over the actions and hearts of men 
 flowed from one centre, and was embodied in one 
 person, the Bishop of Eome. On him devolved, by 
 the inevitable operation of a moral and political 
 necessity, the chief authority to sustain, protect, and 
 uphold the broken and abandoned social order of 
 Eome and Italy. The floods which swept all other 
 authorities away threw out into bolder relief and 
 more conspicuous prominence the Supreme Pastoral 
 authority of the Vicars of Jesus Christ. To whom 
 
GENERAL PREFACE. xlv 
 
 else should the people go 1 for they alone had not 
 only the words of eternal life, but the sole and 
 supreme moral power to support and to reorganise 
 the shattered society of Kome. Political necessity, 
 which is the highest natural law in human society 
 (forasmuch as it is the voice and the finger of 
 Divine Providence), pointed to the successors of St. 
 Peter as the only judges, lawgivers, and protectors 
 of the people. They were the saviours of the city 
 and of the Eoman republic. I forbear to narrate, 
 what all will at once remember, how this was lite- 
 rally verified in St. Leo the Great, and in others. 
 It is no figure of speech, but a strict historical 
 event. 
 
 Now, by all the laws which govern the political 
 changes of governments and people, if the Pontiffs 
 had put forth their hands to take the sovereign 
 power which was thus laid upon them, they might 
 most justly have done so. All laws, human and 
 divine, would have confirmed and consecrated their 
 act. But they did not so. It was thrust upon them, 
 and they put it from them. Like as our Divine 
 Lord, when He saw that the people would come 
 to take Him and make Him a King, fled into the 
 mountain Himself alone,* so His Vicars declined the 
 character of sovereignty, and lamented the distrac- 
 * St. Johnvi. 15. 
 
xlvi GENERAL PREFACE. 
 
 tions and burdens of their secular care. Such was 
 their state from the fifth to the seventh century. 
 It was the political necessity of saving an aban- 
 doned and afflicted people from sufferings by war, 
 by famine, by pestilence, of which the world has no 
 parallel either for intensity or duration, that first 
 invested the Eoman Pontiffs with what has been 
 well described as " a Sovereign Prefecture, and the 
 Dictatorship of a Father." * 
 
 5. And here we meet with a new and still more 
 explicit title to the sovereignty of Eome, — the ex- 
 press demand, suffrage, and vote of the people. It 
 will be observed that this election was not the 
 hasty and turbulent act of an intimidated and men- 
 aced population, drilled and driven to poU-booths 
 in a crisis of excitement, and with the precipitate 
 violence of a revolution and an invasion at their 
 back ; but the calm, prolonged, spontaneous, and de- 
 liberate action of many successive generations, all 
 conspiring for ages in the one ardent desire to shel- 
 ter themselves and their children under the sove- 
 reignty of the Eoman Pontiffs. It would be too 
 long to transcribe the evidences of this fact. It 
 win be enough to remind you of the words of St. 
 Leo the Great, who excused himself to the Empress 
 Pulcheria for not leaving Eome, because " the cha- 
 
 * Civilta Cattolica, quad. 262, p. 446. 
 
GENERAL PKEEACE. xlvii 
 
 rity he bore to the public safety, and the prayers 
 of the citizens, who would have risen tumultuously 
 and in despair at his departure, prevented him ; " * 
 and, again, of the popular rising in Eome, in Ea- 
 venna, and in the whole of Italy, to protect Pope 
 Sergius from an attempted assassination ; or, again, 
 of the devotion of both the Eomans and the Lom- 
 bards, who surrounded Gregory II., to protect his 
 person against the Emperor Leo the Isaurian; or 
 of the union of the Duchies of Spoleto and Bene- 
 vento, to protect Gregory III. against the attacks of 
 Luitprand ; or of Pope Zachary, who for ten years 
 ruled over Eome beloved by the people, who under 
 his government lived, as we read, " in magn§, secu- 
 ritate et Isetiti^, ; " or of Pope Stephen II., who, 
 when he returned from France after the alliance of 
 Quiersy with Pepin, was received by the people of 
 Eome with the salutation, "Pater noster, et post 
 Dominum salus nostra." For three hundred years 
 before this event the Pontiffs had reigned supreme 
 over the political and social order of Eome ; and 
 that not only without opposition or jealousy from 
 the people, but with a long tradition of loving and 
 grateful attachment. Of which no better expres- 
 sion can be found than in the letter of the Eoman 
 people to Pepin; in which the Senate and the whole 
 * S. Leo M., ep. xxvii. 4. 
 
xlviii GENERAL PKETACE. 
 
 people of Eome declare themselves as follows : " We 
 are tlie firm and faithful servants of the Holy 
 Church of God, and of the thrice-blessed Prelate, 
 your spiritual Father in the Gospel, our Lord, Paul, 
 Supreme Pontiff and universal Pope, because he is 
 our Father and best of Pastors, who ceases not daily 
 to toil and contend for our safety, as did also his 
 brother of holy memory, our most blessed Lord Pope 
 Stephen." 
 
 I will add only one more fact. In the life of 
 Pope Adrian, given by Anastasius, we read that the 
 people of Spoleto and Eieti, and all the rest of the 
 Duchy of Spoleto, " ardently desired (ardenter desi- 
 deravire) to deliver themselves over to the service of 
 Blessed Peter and the Holy Eoman Church. But 
 fearing their king" (that is, the Lombard invader 
 Desiderius), " they dared not to do so." Wherefore, 
 after he had been overthrown by Charlemagne at 
 Chiuse, " confestim, generaliter ad prsef atum almifi- 
 cum Pontificem confluentes adveneiunt," " imme- 
 diately and in a body they came in streams from 
 every side to the forenamed merciful Pontiff," — 
 "ejusque provoluti pedibus obnixe sanctam ipsius 
 ter beatitudinem deprecati sunt, ut eos in servitio 
 B. Petri Sanctseque ejus Eomanse Ecclesise susci- 
 peret, et more Eomanorum tonsurari faceret,"* — 
 * Civilti Cattolica, q^uad. 265, p. 66. 
 
GENERAL PBEFACE, xlix 
 
 " and, prostrate at his feet, urgently prayed his Holi- 
 ness to receive them into the service of Blessed Peter 
 and his Holy Eoman Church, and to order them to 
 he tonsured after the manner of the Eomans." And 
 finally, the people of Istria, in like manner, fled for 
 refuge to the Pontiff, praying him to afford them 
 " redemptionem et protectionem a Deo et B. Petro 
 per vestram Apostolicam dispositionem." * 
 
 With these facts before us, which are but a 
 handful gleaned from the abundant field of the four 
 centuries from the translation of the Empire to the 
 formal manifestation of the Temporal Sovereignty of 
 the Pontiffs, it is abundantly evident that while the 
 Divine Will declared itself by the two great facts 
 of the liberation of the Popes from all civil subjec- 
 tion, and by the political necessity which, whether 
 they would or no, clothed them with the attributes, 
 if it did not also confer the name, of Sovereignty, 
 the will also of the people of Eome and of Italy 
 declared itself with a deliberation, a persistence, 
 and a uniformity which rendered it imperative 
 and inevitable that the Prefecture and Dictatorship 
 of the Pontiffs should become in name, what the 
 providence of God had already made it in fact, a 
 true and proper Sovereignty. 
 
 And here I cannot forbear, in passing, to point 
 * Civiltk Cattolica, quad. 265, p. 67. 
 
1 GENERAL PREFACE. 
 
 out the fact that the invasions of the Lomhards 
 were with the avowed intention of forming a united 
 Italy, under their own northern sovereignty; and 
 that the main obstacle and chief object of their 
 ambition was Eome. The intervention of Char- 
 lemagne put an end to the Barbarian invasions, 
 and to the experiments at an armed Italian unity, 
 renewed, from time to time, by the Emperors of 
 Germany, and now in our days by Sardinia. The 
 situation, as the phrase is, has nothing new in it, 
 and its issue bids fair, in the end, to be the same. 
 
 After the restitution by Pepin and Charlemagne 
 of the states which the Lombards had usurped, the 
 Pontiffs Stephen III. and St. Leo III. exercised the 
 most explicit power of sovereignty, in creating them 
 Patricians of Eome, a civil office deriving its exist- 
 ence from the Pontiffs. In afterwards consecrat- 
 ing Charlemagne to the Empire, St. Leo did not 
 extinguish his own independence, nor create one 
 superior to himself. 
 
 6. To this must be added further, that which 
 is held to be an axiom in jurisprudence, — the right 
 arising from possession. It would not be an ade- 
 quate appreciation of this fact if we were to date it 
 only from the period of its peaceful confirmation 
 under Pepin and Charlemagne. The possession of 
 the Pontiffs commences with the abandonment of 
 
GENERAL PREFACE. li 
 
 Eome by the Emperors ; and ttie abandonment by 
 the Emperors begins not from the time when they 
 ceased to claim it, as our kings claimed the king- 
 dom of France for centuries after they had lost all 
 possession, but from the time when they ceased to 
 exercise the highest of a sovereign's duties — that 
 of protection. Many generations must pass away, 
 many old traditions must wear out, many customs 
 of thought and language must become obsolete, and 
 many claims once valid must by desuetude become 
 pretensions, before the Empire could become ex-" 
 tinct in Italy. It took ages to strike its roots, and 
 ages to pull them up again. No human agency 
 could have so soon brought it to pass that the 
 Empire of Eome should vanish away, as if it had 
 never been. Its complete dethronement is visibly 
 the work of God. From the time, then, which may 
 be put, at latest, in the age of St. Leo the Great, 
 the Pontiffs have been the only rulers in Eome. 
 Fourteen hundred years of possession, reaching not 
 only beyond all royalties in the world, but beyond 
 even the existence of Christian Europe, confirms 
 the title of Sovereignty in the Vicars of Jesus 
 Christ. The Count de Maistre, with his wonderful 
 felicity of expression, has said, "There is not a 
 sovereignty in Europe more easily to be justified, 
 if I may use the word, than that of the Sovereign 
 
Hi GENERAL PREFACE. 
 
 Pontiffs. It is like the Law of God, justificata in 
 semetipsd." * 
 
 Such, then, are its successive epochs : first, its 
 liberation from all civil subjection; secondly, its 
 passive occupation of the abandoned government of 
 Eome ; thirdly, the political necessity which forced 
 its exercise upon the Pontiffs; fourthly, the free 
 fee i»ii suffrage and el ection of the people, conscious of its 
 benign and beneficent protection; and finally, the 
 unbroken possession of more than a thousand years. 
 • I have thus far endeavoured to treat this ques- 
 tion as one of evidence and of history, and there- 
 fore within the jurisdiction of sense and of reason. 
 But I cannot consent to treat the Temporal Sove- 
 reignty of the Vicars of Jesus Christ in the light of 
 the natural order alone, as the history of the Cali- 
 fate or of the twelve Caesars. There is a superna- 
 tural element in the subject, never for a moment 
 to be eliminated. The creation and existence of 
 Christendom, that is, of the mixed and complex 
 spiritual and civil order of Christian nations, is a 
 part of the predestination of God; and God, who 
 willed it, has also accomplished it ; and, in accom- 
 plishing it, has employed the instnmient which 
 He had prepared for that end, the Pontificate of 
 the Vicar of His Incarnate Son. The Temporal 
 * Du Pape, 1. ii. c. 6. 
 
GENERAL PREFACE. liii 
 
 prerogatives of the Pontificate are the divine con- 
 ditions whereby the Christian order of this world 
 has been created and sustained. 
 
 It is therefore neither reasonable nor possible to 
 discuss the question of the Temporal Sovereignty as if 
 it were a mere accident of the Spiritual Supremacy, 
 not united with it in the first centuries, and separable 
 from it now. What was united in the predestina- 
 tion of God may not be separated in the speculations 
 of men. It seems also to betray a superficial ap- 
 prehension of the work of the kingdom of God upon 
 earth, to confine its action to individuals, and to 
 exclude it from the sphere of government, legisla- 
 tion, law, public order, social progress, and from the 
 direction of nations, races, peoples, and the organised 
 and continuous life of human society. I can see 
 little signs of depth, or reflection, or maturity, or 
 comprehensiveness in such reasonings. Neither can 
 I find any evidence of spiritual intuition, or of illu- 
 mination, in those who can discover from the history 
 we have been reviewing no higher sentiment in the 
 Christian peoples of Eome and Italy than a desire 
 to shelter themselves under a rich and easy, or a 
 merely powerful and successful, ruler. There was 
 assuredly a profounder instinct and a more super- 
 natural impulse moving them to cast themselves at 
 the feet of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, and praying 
 
liv GENERAL PREFACE. 
 
 him to be their king. It is the reversal of the 
 sin of those who clamoured to the Lord for a king 
 like the other nations. Of them the Lord said to 
 the Prophet, "They have not rejected thee, but 
 Me, that I should not reign over them." * So would 
 He say to His Pontiffs, "They have not chosen 
 thee, but they have chosen Me, that I should 
 reign over them." If the Jewish people cried, 
 "Non habemus regem nisi Caesarem," -f- the Chris- 
 tian people answered, " Non habemus regem nisi 
 Christum.":!: In voluntarily subjecting themselves 
 to His Yicar, they chose Him for their King. 
 Faith in the Incarnation would inspire this choice, 
 and devotion to the presence of the Incarnate 
 Word, iu the person of His Vicar, would make 
 the inspiration a dictate of the conscience and of 
 the heart. It was the common sense of the faith- 
 ful which moved them to place themselves under 
 the government of one who governed in the name 
 and by the laws of the Divine Eedeemer of man- 
 kind. Is it wonderful that the people of Italy 
 fled from the Pharaos of Constantinople to the 
 "Pontifices almificos," meekest rulers upon earth? 
 In so doing they sought not only a political justice, 
 but the most intimate relation they could attain to 
 
 * I Kings vlii. 7. t St. John xix. 15. 
 
 J St. Iren. iv. 21. 
 
GENERAL PREFACE. Iv 
 
 the person of their unseen Lord and Judge : they 
 had made trial of imperial decrees, and in exchange 
 they sought for the equity, stability, and clemency 
 of the Evangelical Law. They sought the sove- 
 reignty of the Pontiffs, not only for reasons of a 
 natural prudence, but of a supernatural faith, be- 
 lieving that of all sovereigns they would be the most 
 just and benign, and of all legislation, that of the 
 Vicars of Christ would be the most pure and 
 beneficent to individuals and to society. They 
 knew them to be the guides of men in the way of 
 eternal life, and the guardians and expositors of the 
 only law of peace. Faith and love towards the 
 Divine Eedeemer of mankind taught them to desire 
 to be the subjects of the only person who ruled 
 supremely in His name. This I conceive to be the 
 ultimate title of the Temporal Power of the Sove- 
 reign Pontiffs over the people whom God had pro- 
 videntially enabled to place themselves under their 
 rule and protection. 
 
 And this is a principle pregnant with great 
 moral truths. For certainly such a popular election 
 as this, so free and so deliberate, so illuminated in 
 prudence natural' and supernatural, and so governed 
 by the highest instincts of faith in the revelation 
 and will of God, is not to be revoked by a sedition, 
 or by a rebellion, or by any act of the popular will 
 
Ivi GENERAL PREFACE. 
 
 less in kind or lower in its moral dignity than that 
 which in the beginning elicited and formed it. If 
 the original election was a great popular act of faith, 
 how shall the revocation of it be less than a com- 
 mensurate act of popular impiety ? The Sovereignty 
 iiui It can of the Pontiffs cannot be dissolved by the popular 
 tecica-rca I vote, like the sovereignties of France and England. 
 Eevolutions against our princes violate the consti- 
 tution ; but a tevolution against the Vicar of Jesus 
 Christ is a violation of high and deep instincts of 
 Christianity. It may be even lawful and justifiable 
 to be weary of Stuarts or of Capets ; but it cannot 
 be either lawful or sinless to be weary of the Vicar 
 of Jesus Christ. With us a revolution might be a 
 just impatience of unlawful acts ; with the subjects 
 of the Vicar of Christ it must be a " tsedium de 
 Deo." For let it not be said that such a revolution 
 can be justified by a political necessity, or by the 
 law of social self-defence ; for it would be an easy 
 task to show that no Pontiff, in aU the line from 
 St. Peter to Pius IX., has ever given cause for a just 
 resistance of his subjects, or has ever, in his civil 
 government, violated the laws of his state, or the 
 relations between him and his people. Yet such a 
 cause as this alone can clear a revolution of the sin 
 of rebellion before God. And rebellion against the 
 Vicar of the Incarnate Word is in the same order as 
 
GENERAL PREFACE. Ivii 
 
 the rejection of his Master. The question, then, is 
 not between two dynasties, or two princes, or two 
 political constitutions ; but between the natural and 
 supernatural societies ; between the civilisation of 
 the mere human will, and the civilisation which is 
 perfected and sustained by grace. Christian society 
 sprung from the revealed faith and law of God. It 
 was moulded by the unity of the Church, inspired 
 and tied, as with a keystone, by the Pontificate of 
 the Vicars of Jesus Christ. When political society 
 revolts from him, it revolts also from the Faith, the 
 Law, the Sacraments, and the Supremacy of the 
 Church of God. Witness all Protestant countries; 
 witness also the inchoate schisms of Portugal and 
 Sardinia. Civilisation in revolt from the Christian 
 Church is Christian only by accident, or by lingering 
 tradition, or in name; in its essence and principle 
 it is mere natural society, the creature of the human 
 will, in the order of nature alone. To what social 
 and political disorder such a people must descend, 
 the religious conflicts, and the history of divorce in 
 Germany, America, and England, suffice to show. 
 To this state also Italy, goaded on by England, 
 seems passionately bent on reducing itself. 
 
 The latest and perhaps the most considerable 
 example of the fallacy of treating the question of 
 the Temporal Sovereignty of the Pope on the basis 
 
Iviii GENERAL PKEFACE. 
 
 of the mere national order, is to be found in a recent 
 pamphlet, L' Empereur, Rome, et le Boi d'ltalie. 
 
 The writer argues that all nations have from 
 God the power of disposing of themselves by their 
 own free will ; that the Temporal Power of the Pope 
 rests upon their free choice, and that they are com- 
 petent to retract what once they gave ; that to deny 
 this would be to declare them " adscripti glebae," and 
 therefore slaves; that the argument used by the 
 Spanish Government, that Eome belongs not to the 
 Romans, but to the Catholics throughout the world, 
 disfranchises and expatriates the Eomans, and re- 
 duces them to slavery. 
 
 Now to those who deny the Christian and Ca- 
 tholic order in the world, this argument may have 
 its force. To those who believe in the Divine insti- 
 tution of the Catholic Church, and the creation of 
 Christian Europe, it has little. If we believe that 
 God has instituted His kingdom upon earth, and 
 fixed the head and centre of it in Eome, as of old in 
 Jerusalem, it is God Himself who by His divine 
 action has taken Eome out of this category of mere 
 natural societies. He has conferred upon the Eo- 
 mans a trust, a privilege, a prerogative, a glory, 
 far above all people. He has elevated even their 
 natural state to a supernatural condition and office. 
 In the early centuries they so well perceived this 
 
GENERAL PKEFACE. lix 
 
 truth, that they freely chose the Pontiffs as their 
 sovereigns. The lower order ascended into the 
 higher : it -was not ahsorbed, but perfected in it. 
 It is neither expatriation nor slavery to be the 
 subjects of a person who bears the Vicariate of the 
 Eedeenaer of mankind; neither is it disfranchise- 
 ment to deny to the caprice of individuals, en- 
 couraged and goaded by sedition, and armed with 
 violence, both the right and the power to revoke 
 and undo what the deliberate and unanimous wills 
 of ages and generations accomplished. If I may 
 reverently use the illustration, in the Person of our 
 Divine Lord the Humanity became sacred by union 
 with His Godhead. It lost none of its perfection by 
 having no human personality ; rather, its very per- 
 fection is in this, that humanity became divine, and 
 was elevated above its own to a higher order. The 
 liberty and perfection of our manhood in all its 
 powers and functions were secured and sustained 
 by this union and elevation. To claim for it a 
 human independence, would be to reduce it from 
 the divine to the natural order. So of the people 
 whom He has chosen to be the guardians of the 
 throne of the Vicar of His Incarnate Son. They 
 once knew their true glory, which was equally their 
 true interest. They once chose it by the most per- 
 fect and illuminated act of the popular wlU, under 
 
Ix GENERAL PREFACE. 
 
 a visible and direct leading of the providence of 
 God. It is waste of vfords to urge, that the most 
 perfect administration of the Christian law cannot 
 cross or prejudice the social or political welfare of 
 a people, and that the most perfect administration 
 of the Christian law is to be found in the action 
 of the Supreme Pontiffs, not only upon their own 
 subjects, but also upon the world. I can conceive no 
 ground on which they can claim to rescind this act 
 of God's providence and this wise election of their 
 forefathers, but the assumption that the Christian 
 law is at variance with social prosperity ; or that the 
 Christian law is not duly administered by the Vicar 
 of Jesus Christ ; or that the Pontiffs have violated 
 not only the Christian law, but political justice, by 
 acts of tyranny. The two first are absurd ; the last is 
 demonstrably false. "We may boldly challenge them 
 to allege an act in the whole history of the Pontiffs 
 which would clear revolution against the Temporal 
 Power from the guilt of rebellion. 
 
 The people of the Eoman States, therefore, are 
 neither expatriated nor enslaved by being called 
 to a higher mission and office than other nations, 
 but rather by failing to recognise their elevation and 
 their dignity. By this they expatriate themselves 
 of the highest citizenship, and enslave themselves to 
 the lowest conditions of political revolution. 
 
GENERAL PREFACE. Ixi 
 
 Deeply as every Catholic must deplore the con- 
 tinual advance of these disorders, driven onwards 
 by the power of prejudice, which reigns absolute in 
 the public opinion of England, no success, victory, 
 or triumph can cause us more than a transient suf- 
 fering, except only for the souls that perish in this 
 warfare against the Vicar of our Lord. Again and 
 again these floods of evil have swept over the Holy 
 See. It has been submerged for a moment, and has 
 risen again resplendent and powerful as before. The 
 weakness of God is stronger than men. Though 
 natural society, with the tide and impetuosity of 
 four hundred years of departure from God, precipi- 
 tate itself upon the Pontificate of Jesus Christ, we 
 believe that it will stand when the kingdom of 
 Italy, and the empires of France and Britain, will 
 be a mere epoch in history, taught to children in a 
 Christian world, to which Europe, though it be the 
 centre, will be but a point of space. The writers 
 and readers of newspapers believe us to be out of 
 date and behind our time. The boastful and con- 
 temptuous civilisation of the 19th century cannot so 
 much as perceive that which to us is the only vital 
 element of the question. For this reason they are 
 incapable of comprehending the attitude and con- 
 duct of the Holy Father in this long crisis. 
 
 During his Pontificate of fifteen years Pius the 
 
Ixii GENERAL PREFACE. 
 
 Ninth has borne the assault of the whole tide of 
 revolution. It is a majestic spectacle, which reminds 
 us of the Temptation of his Master. Every form of 
 compromise, concession, and traffic has been pro- 
 posed to the Vicar of Jesus Christ to induce him to 
 betray his divine and providential trust. The two- 
 fold Sovereignty committed to him is the type, em- 
 bodiment, and guarantee of the Christian social 
 order, and of the consecration of the civil powers of 
 the world. To separate them would be to desecrate 
 the government of nations. And therefore it is that 
 the whole weight of the assault, both by force and by 
 feint, is made upon this point alone. The Vicar of 
 Jesus Christ is the living witness of the consecra- 
 tion of the civil powers to the law and kingdom of 
 God. He holds, as it were, the divine principle in 
 his person. If only he could be induced to give it 
 away, the civil power of the world would descend to 
 the order of nature. Therefore it is that all who desire 
 to exclude the action and supremacy of the Christian 
 faith and of the Christian Church from the sphere of 
 government, aim at the overthrow of the Temporal 
 Power of the Pope. Therefore, after railing upon 
 the obstinacy of Pius IX. in the presence of danger, 
 they have endeavoured to lure him to a compromise 
 by the visions of an Italian Confederation under his 
 presidency, or of " a free Church in a free State," 
 
GENERAL PREFACE. Ixiii 
 
 with guarantees for his person and his purely spiri- 
 tual authority. " All these things will I give thee, 
 if, falling down, thou wilt adore me." * The Vicar 
 of Jesus Christ knows too well the trust committed 
 to him, the sacredness of his twofold sovereignty, 
 and the mind of his Master, to yield a jot or a tittle 
 of his prerogatives. To lose them by force would 
 be simply spoliation, which would be endured once 
 more, as often already before; but to give them 
 away would be to betray his divine commission, 
 and to throw down what the providence of God has 
 built up. This is the true solution of the concen- 
 trated hostility and activity of the world against the 
 Temporal Sovereignty of Pius IX. So long as the 
 Vicar of Jesus Christ continues to be a Temporal 
 Sovereign, the duty of all Temporal Eulers to con- 
 secrate their power by submission to the Christian 
 faith and Christian law, is recorded in the public 
 jurisprudence of the world, and inscribed upon the 
 face of the earth. He sits as a Sovereign among 
 Sovereigns, and as a Sovereign of higher jurisdic- 
 tion, as the guardian of the Christian faith and law 
 among the people of other sovereignties. It is an 
 amiable but not a wise enthusiasm to say that, if he 
 sat as an Apostle among Sovereigns, he would exert 
 a greater power. As an Apostle only, the Vicar of 
 * St. Matt. iv. 9. 
 
Ixiv GENERAL PREFACE. 
 
 Jesus Christ never did, never could sit among Sove- 
 reigns as their judge. Would he sit there as the 
 subject of any one of them, or of all together ? And 
 if he be not subject, he, ipso facto, becomes sovereign. 
 The negation of subjection is the affirmation of 
 Sovereignty. And therefore among the Sovereigns of 
 the nations he presides as one over vrhom none has 
 power, as one who has power over all ; for to him is 
 divinely committed the custody of the new law, and 
 the judgment of all, whether princes or people, who 
 by baptism are subjects of that law. And if he be 
 Sovereign, then the possession of a sphere or terri- 
 tory within which to dwell is a necessity of logic 
 and of fact. And the Divine Wisdom has foreseen 
 this need, and the Divine Providence has supplied 
 it. I say it is an amiable enthusiasm, because some 
 who use this language love the Church well, and 
 think to magnify its spiritual powers by using as a 
 counsel of filial confidence the language which ene- 
 mies use as a taunt. The enemies of the Holy Father 
 are now taunting him to throw himself, like Hil- 
 debrand, upon his spiritual powers, and to become 
 a great Pope by recognising and supplying what 
 Europe in the nineteenth century demands. But 
 the Vicar of Jesus Christ knows well enough what 
 Europe in the nineteenth century demands. He 
 knows that the days of St. Gregory VII. were not 
 
GENERAL PREFACE. IxV 
 
 the days of Pius IX. He knows that the conflicts 
 and the victories of St. Gregory VII. are incorporated 
 in the conflicts and certain victories, whichsoever 
 way the issue may be, of his own time ; that he is 
 stiU the guardian of the same law, which by heresy, 
 schism, simony, spoliation, and divorce is violated 
 now on a wider scale than in the eleventh century ; 
 and that, in conflict with the empires, kingdoms, 
 legislatures, and nations of the world, it is his Sove- 
 reignty, recognised and venerated for a thousand 
 years by the whole Christian world, which invests 
 him with the traditional powers and rights, not only 
 of remonstrance, but of judgment and of execution. 
 His verdicts are solemn acts of Christendom, public 
 events recognised in the jurisprudence of Europe, 
 on which the eyes of the Christian world are set. 
 None know this better than they who desire to de- 
 throne the Vicar of Jesus Christ from this supremacy 
 among Christian Princes; to destroy the power of 
 the Church in the sphere of government ; and to re- 
 duce it from a kingdom and sovereignty to a school 
 of religious philosophy, and an association for charit- 
 able works. 
 
 I know full well that the argument which I 
 have hitherto endeavoured to state is as powerless 
 and as unintelligible to those who are without, as 
 the supernatural element in the doctrine of the Holy 
 
Ixvi GENERAL PREFACE. 
 
 Eucharist, or of the mystical Body. How can they 
 otherwise than gainsay what they neither believe 
 nor understand ? For this reason they invite us to 
 discuss the question on their own level, and to place 
 it among the problems of the natural order ; for this 
 reason, also, they are unable to comprehend the cu- 
 mulus of proof on which as Catholics we confidently 
 repose ; for this cause, too, they invite us to divide 
 the Temporal from the Spiritual Sovereignty, be- 
 cause they cannot apprehend the complex and ever- 
 enlarging work of the Divine action through the 
 Church upon the world. Some even of ourselves 
 have at times been led to forget the obvious axioms 
 with which we started, and have indulged in a 
 kind of appeal to antiquity, that is, from the pre- 
 sent mature and complex office of the Pontiffs to 
 a supposed period of apostolical simplicity, when as 
 yet Christendom had not been created. But God 
 does not return upon His steps ; and the Church, 
 which is His manifestation upon earth, lives not in 
 the past, but in the present, and her course is not 
 backward on the dial, but onward to the fulness of 
 time. If God predestinated Christendom, they who 
 now imagine the Vicar of Christ divested of his 
 Temporal Sovereignty, surely cannot read Hi a divine 
 providence. They turn backward from its conduct 
 in the world. The destinies of the Church are. 
 
GENERAL PREFACE. Ixvii 
 
 as yet, only in part revealed. It has accomplished 
 its past, and it is working out its present mission 
 to mankind. Its future we know not yet; but it 
 win be accomplished, be that destiny and mission 
 what it may, with the. same divine certainty and 
 unerring facility as in the past. It may be that 
 the Vicars of Jesus Christ have only begun their 
 toil and their tutelage of the monarchies and 
 dynasties of princes and their royal houses ; that 
 a wider, larger, and weightier mission is before 
 them to -the nations and confederation of com- 
 monwealths, and to the wayward turbulence of the 
 popular will. The Gospel of the Kingdom has not 
 yet been preached to all nations. The Christian 
 family has not yet assimilated to itself more than 
 one-third of the human race. The leaven is in the 
 meal, but it has, as yet, penetrated only a portion. 
 "We know that " the whole must be leavened." * The 
 Christendom of to-day may be no more than the 
 blade, or at most the stalk, to the full corn in the 
 ear, which shall be hereafter. The Pontificate and 
 the Sovereignty of the Vicars of Jesus Christ will 
 then reign with their divine authority over a fold 
 which shall enclose nations as yet neither Christian 
 nor civilised, to which all the Christendom of the 
 past is but as the first-fruits to the harvest. With 
 * St. Matt. xiii. 33. 
 
Ixviii GENERAL PREFACK 
 
 what reason, then, do these admirers of antiquity 
 propose to us that the Sovereign Pontiff should ab- 
 dicate the manifold prerogatives which St. Gregory 
 VII, St. Pius v., Benedict XIV., and Pius IX., 
 have held in their hands to check or to guide the 
 powers and movements of Christian monarchies and 
 Christian nations, and should return to the patriarchal 
 simplicity of St. Gregory the Great, reigning over the 
 patrimonies of the Church, because as yet no Europe 
 existed for him to guide and to sustain ? Surely this 
 implies no depth of insight and no breadth of know- 
 ledge, not only of the Christian, but even of the civil 
 history of the world. 
 
 But it is time that I should bring this Preface 
 to an end ; and I know not how I can better sum 
 up the purport of what I have said than by re- 
 cording the words of one of the most apostolical 
 pastors and most devoted princes of the Church, 
 who was last year called from the midst of these 
 perturbations to his eternal rest. In the summer 
 of last year I had the happiness to see, though for 
 the last time, the Cardinal Feretti, the much-loved 
 kinsman of our Holy Father. It was at Porto 
 d'An2do, where he was awaiting the end of his 
 lingering illness. He was speaking, with the faith 
 of a Eoman, and we may believe also with the 
 prophetic light of a dying man, of the rising of the 
 
GENERAL PREFACE. Ixix 
 
 world against the Holy Father, and of the miseries 
 which are falling upon the nations. But, he said : 
 all will be for the furtherance of the Faith, and for 
 the greater glory of the Holy See. By these very 
 tumults and persecutions of the Vicar of Christ, 
 " 1 orbe Cristiano diventera piii Cattolico, e Eoma 
 piu Pontificia," " the Christian world will become 
 more Catholic, and Eome more than ever united to 
 its Pontiffs." 
 
 (Si. Mary's, BaysioaUr, 
 Feast of St. Charles, 1861. 
 
PART FIRST. 
 
 W(it ©risitt of tfie SCemiiaral Poiwer, 
 
LECTUEE I. 
 
 "Let every soul be subject to higher powers: for there is no 
 power but from God ; and those that are, are ordained of 
 God. Therefore, he that resisteth the power, resisted the ordi- 
 nance of God. And they that resist, purchase to themselves 
 damnation." — Romans xiii. i, 2. 
 
 These words of the Apostle lay down a broad prin- 
 ciple, which covers the constituted order of the whole 
 world. There is no power but of God ; the powers 
 that be are ordained of God. I shall not, however, 
 offer proof of this principle ; for it is enough that we 
 read it in Holy Writ. The Apostle applies this prin- 
 ciple to a heathen empire, to a heathen prince, and 
 to a Christian people ; he commands the Christians of 
 Home to be subject to a heathen empire. 
 
 I intend to speak on the subject of the temporal 
 power of the Holy Father, the Vicar of Jesus Christ. 
 And in so doing, I shall take my point of departure 
 from this broad principle, which the Holy Ghost by 
 the Apostle has declared to the world, and has applied, 
 as you have seen, to the case of a Christian people, 
 and a heathen emperor. I do not intend to enter into 
 any subtilties of theology, nor into the remote and 
 complex legislation of the Church, nor into any large 
 details of hist6ry. These three sources would, indeed, 
 
2 TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 give me abundance of matter ; but they would give 
 more than I need ; for I mean to treat this subject as 
 simply and as practically as I can, to present it as far 
 as is necessary to the intelligence, but chiefly to the 
 conscience. I shall, therefore, confine myself strictly 
 to three propositions, and to three consequences which 
 follow from them. 
 
 The first proposition is this : that the temporal 
 power of the Pope is ordained of God. The second : 
 that the temporal power of the Pope has been the 
 root, and the productive and sustaining principle of 
 Christian Europe. And, thirdly : that the dissolution 
 of the temporal power of the Pope would bring with 
 it the dissolution of Christian Europe. And from 
 these three propositions I shall draw three plain con- 
 clusions. The first is this : that he who resists the 
 temporal power of the Pope, resists the ordinance 
 of God. Secondly : that he who lends a hand or a 
 tongue to the dissolution of that power, helps, so far 
 as his hand or his tongue can, to the dissolution of 
 Christian Europe. And thirdly : that he that does 
 it. dawjiafiin so will purchase judgmen t to himself. Which propo- 
 sitions, I think, fall within the limit of the words of 
 St. Paul, speaking by the inspiration of God. 
 
 Now, these are days in which two things are 
 eminently wanted among us. The first is an accu- 
 rate and large knowledge of history. For anything 
 more insular, partial, and incorrect than the histories 
 
Lect. I.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 3 
 
 of the Catholic Church which are in the hands of 
 Englishmen is hardly to be found. It is remarkable 
 that some of the most fair,* impartial, and truthful 
 histories of the Catholic Church, written of late years, 
 have been written by persons who rejected the doc- 
 trines of Christianity, or at least were not members 
 of the Church. For instance, in Germany, such 
 writers as Eanke and Hurter ; in France, Michelet, 
 who renounced his faith, and Guizot; and in this 
 country, such writers as Macaulay, Hallam, and the 
 like. And yet these are not the books which are 
 preferred by the people of this country. "With a great 
 avidity they read every anti-catholic history they can 
 find, like Eobertson, Gibbon, and works that retail 
 their statements from them, in which are to be found 
 nothing but a tradition of incorrect statements and 
 misquoted authorities, handed from one to the other 
 without so much as a verification of the text. 
 
 But there is something far more wanted amons; 
 us still, and that is, first principles. For a man that 
 reads history without first principles, is like a man 
 that launches upon the sea without a compass. The 
 lack of first principles is the main cause of the con- 
 fusion which is around us. In these three lectures, 
 then, I purpose to dwell chiefly on first principles; and 
 I will assume, first, that you believe in the Incarna- 
 tion ; and next, that you believe in a visible Church 
 which is the prolongation of the visible manifestation 
 
4 TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 of the Incarnation. If any one does not hold these 
 two propositions, some part of the argument which I 
 shall use will perhaps be inapplicable ; yet I believe 
 that the greater part will be inevitable even to those 
 who believe in nothing more than a Divine provi- 
 dence. 
 
 I. Now the first proposition on which I have to 
 speak is this : that the temporal power of the Pope is 
 ordained of God. 
 
 God has two ways in which He ordains the powers 
 of the world — direct and indirect ; direct by revealed 
 interposition, indirect by Divine providence. I mean 
 to show that the power of the Pope, spiritual and 
 temporal, taken in its complex, is an ordinance partly 
 direct, and partly indirect, and yet in both characters 
 divine. 
 
 Now in proof of this proposition I may affirm, 
 that our divine Lord Jesus Christ, being God and 
 man, has in that twofold character all sovereignty 
 in heaven and earth. As God from all eternity, and 
 as Creator of the world. He is sovereign over all things 
 He has made. But He has not only this eternal sove- 
 reignty. He has also a temporal sovereignty ; and that 
 temporal sovereignty began when the Son of God was 
 incarnate, when the Eternal came into time, and be- 
 came subject to the successions of time. Therefore, I 
 would first observe here, that the distinction between 
 spiritual and temporal is a secondary and less accu- 
 
Lect. I.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 5 
 
 rate one. The first true distinction is between eternal 
 and temporal. The Son of God, then, has an eternal 
 sovereignty as God ; and He has also a temporal sove- 
 reignty as the incarnate God, because the eternal God 
 entered into the sphere of time by incarnation. When 
 He was manifested as God incarnate, the world was 
 redeemed, and the laws of nature yielded to the pres- 
 sure of His hand. When He wrought miracles, the 
 sovereignty of the incarnate God was manifested. 
 When He had redeemed the world, and when, as 
 mediator, He ascended to His Father's throne. He was 
 fully invested with the sovereignty purchased by His 
 precious blood. 
 
 II. Again, this temporal sovereignty of the Son of 
 God, that is, the sovereignty which He has over time 
 and that which is done in time, and over the world 
 and that which is in the world, again divides itself 
 into two branches. First, into that which is natural ; 
 and secondly, into that which is supernatural. 
 That branch of his temporal sovereignty which is 
 in nature consists in His providence ; for He who 
 wrought miracles when He was visible in the world, 
 continues invisibly, by the acts of His divine provi- 
 dence, to dispose all things. ISTo one but a deist will, 
 I think, deny this principle. The other branch of His 
 temporal sovereignty is supernatural, and consists in 
 the power which, by the Holy Ghost, from the day 
 of Pentecost, He has exercised over the whole world 
 
6 TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OE THE POPES. 
 
 through His mystical hody the Church. The Church 
 of God is the kingdom of Jesus Christ, a supernatural 
 kingdom, resting indeed upon the basis of the natural 
 "world, but verifying our Lord's own words when He 
 said, "My kingdom is not of this world. If My 
 kingdom were of this world. My servants would 
 certainly strive that I should not be delivered to the 
 Jews : but now My kingdom is not from hence."* 
 The foimtain and source of His sovereignty is in the 
 eternal order; and the operations, and powers, and 
 prerogatives of His kingdom are supernatural. Our 
 divine Lord, therefore, is invested with the fulness 
 of all sovereign prerogatives, eternal and temporal, 
 natural and supernatural. This, I think, no one will 
 dispute who believes iu Christianity. 
 
 But, secondly, our divine Lord communicated to His 
 Church upon earth, and pre-eminently to His Vicar, 
 the Head of the Church on earth, the chief of His 
 twelve Apostles, a portion of His sovereignty. His 
 eternal sovereignty He did not communicate. This 
 no creature is capable of wielding. Nor even the 
 whole of His temporal sovereignty did He communi- 
 cate ; for He has reserved to Himself exclusively the 
 administration and government of His own provi- 
 dence. All that divine action of our Lord which is 
 manifested in the operations of Providence, attaches 
 to Him as God, and, although exercised in time, 
 * St. John xviii. 36. 
 
Lect. I.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. ^ 
 
 belongs exclusively to His Person. But the spiritual 
 and supernatural sovereignty of His kingdom He 
 vested in His Church on earth, in His Apostles, and 
 above all in him who was the chief of the Apostles. 
 First of all, He established upon earth a jurisdiction 
 which has a divine fountain, and that fountain is the 
 Person of the incarnate Son of God, who said, " I 
 dispose unto you a kingdom, as My Father hath dis- 
 posed unto Me." * And again, " All power in heaven 
 and earth is given unto Me," that is, the incarnate 
 Son : " going therefore, teach ye all nations, baptiz- 
 ing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and 
 Holy Ghost : teaching them to observe all things, 
 whatsoever I have commanded you:" -f thus imposing 
 upon mankind a law of obedience. He gave the 
 Apostles, therefore, a .twofold jurisdiction : first, a 
 jurisdiction over His sacramental and natural body, 
 by virtue whereof they consecrated and constituted 
 His eucharistic presence perpetually in His Church ; 
 and secondly, a jurisdiction over His mystical body ; 
 for when He breathed on them and said, " Eeceive 
 ye the Holy Ghost; whose sins ye shall forgive, 
 they are forgiven them, and whose sins you shall 
 retain, they are retained ;"| this is a jurisdiction over 
 souls. And that gives us the interpretation of the 
 words which He spoke to Peter : " I say to thee, 
 
 * St. Luke xxii. 29. + St. Matt, xxviii. 19, 20. 
 
 J St. John XX, 23. 
 
8 TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build 
 My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail 
 against it. And I will give to thee the keys of the 
 kingdom of heaven ; and whatsoever thou shalt bind 
 upon earth it shall be bound also in heaven, and what- 
 soever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also 
 in heaven." * In these words He gave to His Church 
 a power, first to interpret and illustrate His law ; 
 then to execute and enforce the obligations of that 
 law ; and further, judicially to try the souls of men 
 according to that law, and coercively to bind them to 
 obedience to that law. He thereby constituted a real 
 and proper sovereignty on earth, spiritual, super- 
 natural, and He committed it to His Church. 
 
 Now, this second principle I conceive no one will 
 dispute who believes in the institution of the visible 
 Church. No Catholic can hesitate for an instant in 
 professing his faith that these supernatural and 
 spiritual prerogatives which were wielded by the 
 Son of God in person, attach to His Vicar on earth. 
 
 III. Then, thirdly, this spiritual sovereignty of 
 His Church entered into the Eoman empire. It 
 came, as it were, like a life from heaven, to animate 
 the vast political organisation which God in His divine 
 providence had already established in the world. 
 Perhaps you will say, that then the Church was sub- 
 ject to the empire. It is exactly to this point that 
 * St. Matt. xvi. 1 8, 19. 
 
Lect. I.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 9 
 
 St. Paul speaks when he says, " Let every soul be 
 subject to the higher powers." It was at the very 
 time when this Church of God entered into the 
 Eoman empire, that St. Paul met the conscience by 
 declaring as the law of God, that every power is 
 ordained of God, and that every soul should be sub- 
 ject to a higher power. Tertullian, writing in the 
 second century, says, that the emperor was " a man 
 only less than God Himself." * The early Christians 
 obeyed the Eoman emperors, and paid tribute. Per- 
 haps it may seem as if these facts were contrary to 
 the argument I am about to use. Not so ; they form 
 the very basis of the argument. For three hundred 
 years, while the empire was heathen, the Church was 
 what was called an unlawful society,-|- prohibited by 
 
 * Tertull. ad Scapulam, § 2 : " Colimus ergo et imperatorem 
 sic, quomodo et nobis licet et ipsi expedit, ut homineni a Deo 
 secundum : et quicquid est, a Deo consecutum et solo Deo minorem. 
 Hoc et ipse volet : sic enim omnibus major est, dum solo vero Deo 
 minor est." 
 
 t Analeeta Juris Pontificii, livraison 35, ch. ii. : "tin ^dit de 
 Jules-C&ar, confirm^ par les empereurs qui r^gn^rent apres lui, 
 avait pour objet de prosoire d'une mani^re g^n&ale tout college ou 
 toute communaut^ non-approuvd par le s^nat et par les empereurs. 
 Or, voici en pen de mots le parti que les legistes ont os^ tirer de 
 ce fameux ^dit. i. Les dglises ou les colleges chr^tiens constitu- 
 aient des compagnies des corps distincts du commun des citoyens, 
 d'aprfes ce principe du Digeste (liv. xlvii. tit. 22, de collegiis) : ' So- 
 dales sunt qui ejusdem collegii sunt, quam Grseci hseteriam vocant. ' 
 2. Les ^t^ries furent prohib^es par Jules-C&ar (voir Josepbus, lib. 
 xiv. Antiq.), puis par Trajan (v. Baronius ad ann. 100, n. 8 et 9), et 
 enfin au nom de 1' empire tout entier par Septime-Sevfere qui fut 
 
10 TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 the laws of the empire. The laws of the empire for- 
 bade the existence of any society or corporation not 
 recognised by its own legislation. Nevertheless, for 
 three hundred years the Church of God existed, in 
 virtue of its own spiritual sovereignty, in the face of 
 the imperial laws. Again, it was forbidden by the 
 laws of the empire that any society not recognised 
 by those laws should hold property. Nevertheless, 
 for three hundred years the Church continued to 
 possess. The laws of the empire forbade any worship 
 other than that of the recognised religions.* Never- 
 theless, for three hundred years the Christian wor- 
 ship existed, and that through the whole circumfer- 
 ence of the Eoman empire, and even in Rome itself. 
 The Church, therefore, was on three points in direct 
 
 proclam^ Auguste vers I'an 195 d'apr&s la chronologie dn Cardinal 
 Baronius. D'oi il r&ulte qu' aucune soci^t^ ne pouvait etre re- 
 gardee comme lieite, et devait au contraire 6tre dissoute, si eUe 
 n'avait pas ^t^ autoris^e a se constituer par autorit^ du senat ou 
 de I'emperevir. Par consequent durant les trois premiers sifeeles 
 les colleges ou, en d'autres termes, les ^glises ou, reunions des 
 cliretiens furent entiferement iUicites, et par consequent incapables 
 d'acquerir des biens. Pour avoir la capacity d'acquerir des im- 
 meubles, il aurait faUu que ces reunions fussent declarees vrais 
 colleges et reunions legitimes par le pouvoir sfeulier, mais cela 
 n'eut lieu que sous le r^gne de Constantin. 3. Durant les premiers 
 siecles les Chretiens u'eurent en leur faveur k diverses reprises, 
 qu'une simple tolerance, pour I'exercice prive de leur religion : 
 sans que cela put les rendre capables de posseder des biens comme 
 societe. 
 
 * Gosselin, Power of the Pope in the Middle Ages, voL i. p. 22, 
 and notes. 
 
Lect. I.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 1 1 
 
 and diametrical disobedience to this sovereign power 
 which was ordained of God. And why ? Because 
 the empire had exceeded its limits. The Church has 
 a sovereignty of its own. The Christians paid tribute 
 to the emperor, as our Lord paid tribute, " that we 
 may not scandalise them." * They honoured this 
 great principle of obedience to a power which de facto 
 — that is, as a matter of providential fact — existed. 
 For three hundred years, almost every Pontiff 
 that ascended the throne of St. Peter sat on a 
 throne steeped in blood. Submissively and patiently, 
 " as sheep for the slaughter," f as the Apostle says in 
 this same epistle, they gave themselves to die for the 
 faith. They offered no active resistance to the laws 
 of the empire ; but they could not obey, and were 
 resigned to suffer. For three hundred years, then, 
 the Church had over it, in Eome itself, a temporal 
 power, to which it rendered obedience in all things 
 that were lawful. In this it only obeyed the precept, 
 " Eender unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, 
 and unto God the things that are God's." % 
 
 But from the hour when Constantine, in the lan- 
 guage of the Eoman law, § " Deo jubente," by the 
 command of God, translated the seat of empire to 
 Constantinople, from that moment there never reigned 
 
 * St. Matt. xvii. 26. t Eom. viii. 36. J St. Lute xx. 25. 
 § Dominicus Soto, De Potestate Ecclesiastica, — Bibliotheca 
 Pontif. Roccaberti, torn. x. p. 136. 
 
12 TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 jn Eome a temporal prince to whom the Bishops of 
 Eome owed a permanent allegiance. From that hour 
 God Himself liberated His Church.* It was from 
 the first involved in the principles of the supernatural 
 sovereignty of the Church on earth, that it should be 
 one day free from all temporal allegiance, though as 
 yet its liberation was not accomplished. David pos- 
 sessed the promise of the kingdom of Israel ; but he 
 waited long. Jeroboam had the promise of the ten 
 tribes ; but he was a usurper, because he grasped it 
 before the time. The Church followed not the ex- 
 ample of Jeroboam, but that of David, whose Son is 
 its own divine Head. It waited until such time as 
 God should break its bonds asunder, and should libe- 
 rate it from subjection to civil powers, and enthrone 
 it in the possession of a temporal sovereignty of its 
 own.-[- Therefore, in that day when the first Christian 
 emperor withdrew himself into the far East, he aban- 
 doned Eome and Italy ; and the " donation " of Con- 
 stantino, as it is called, expresses not a fact, but a 
 principle. Constantine signed no instrument of dona- 
 tion ; but the manner of conceiving and of speaking 
 in those simple ages, so represented the providential 
 
 * Suarez, Opusoula, De Immunitate Ecclesiastica, lib. iv. 3 : 
 " Dicendum ergo est summum Pontificem ex divino jure habere 
 exemptionem et immunitatem. ab omni judicio ac Jurisdictione 
 sseculari etiam imperatorum et regum." 
 
 t The temporal power belongs to all Christians. 
 
Lect, I.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 1 3 
 
 fact of the donation of God. God gave to the Vicar 
 of His Son the possession of the city in which thirty 
 of his predecessors had sealed their testimony with 
 their blood. The donation of Constantino consisted 
 in the simple providential fact, that he departed 
 from Eome to Constantinople, moved by an inipulse 
 from God Himself. It would delay me too long to 
 dwell upon the motives which God implanted in the 
 first Christian emperor, to impel him to abandon his 
 sovereignty in Rome. They were motives of a super- 
 natural origin, and he was but obeying a supernatural 
 impulse. The donation was of God, and not of man. 
 Simple ages have supposed that the great act was 
 engrossed upon a parchment, illuminated, sealed, and 
 signed, and laid upon the altar of St. Peter. This, 
 as a fable, represents most truly the act of Divine 
 Providence. Now, perhaps in some histories you 
 wUl be told that the Greek emperors used still to 
 claim possession over Italy; that they sent their 
 exarchs and their armies to Ravenna and to Rome. 
 You will be told also, that afterwards the kings of 
 Prance claimed it ; that the Prench emperors, Pepin 
 and Charlemagne, claimed Italy and Rome as their 
 own. So the world writes history. Such is not the 
 fact. Would any man maintain that Britain was part 
 of the Roman empire when the Roman legions aban- 
 doned it, to be trodden down by hordes of pagans 
 and steeped in its own blood ? Does any man 
 
14 TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 who reads the history of Britain maintain that Bri- 
 tain was a province of the empire of Constantinople ? 
 From the moment when the last Eoman legion with- 
 drew its foot from the shores of Britain, it was libe- 
 rated by the providence of God, and possessed an 
 independence of its own. From that day spring up 
 the first blades of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, the 
 English monarchy, and the empire of Great Britain. 
 Just as the liberated and independent sovereignty of 
 Britain is related to the withdrawal of the last Eoman 
 legion that left its shores, so the independence of Italy 
 and Kome dates from the moment when the emperors 
 of the East abandoned it. From that time there 
 never was a moment when the emperors of the East 
 could so much as protect Eome. Italy and Eome 
 were given over providentially to the purgation of 
 fire and of blood. A sea of blood mingled with 
 fire descended from the steeps of the Alps when 
 Goths, Yandals, Visigoths, Huns, and Lombards in 
 successive generations poured over the plains of Italy. 
 Eome itself was saved again and again only by the 
 fortitude of the Eoman Pontiffs, by a Divine pre- 
 sence, and by supernatural protection, which turned 
 back the barbarian chiefs Attila and Genseric and 
 others when within the very sight of its waUs. 
 
 Again, when Pepin descended into Italy to de- 
 liver the exarchate of Eavenna, the capital of that 
 very Eomagna which is now the centre of discord ; 
 
Lect. I.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 15 
 
 when he drove out the Lombards who had usurped 
 the patrimony of the Church, we are told that he 
 again made a donation to the Church. Not so ; the 
 very word in his act was this, that he made " res- 
 titution to the Church and to the (Eoman) re^ 
 public." * — that is, the commonwealth of the people 
 and city of Eome — of that portion of territory which 
 had been usurped from them by the Lombards. 
 Again, when Charlemagne once more deKvered 
 Eavenna, and even Eome itself, he at the same time 
 declared that he made a restitution, not a donation.f 
 
 * Anastasius, Vita S. Stephanill. Papse, p. 1623. " Porr6 chris- 
 tianissimus Pippinus Francorum rex, ut vere beati Petri fidelis 
 [i.e. defensor] atque jam tanti sanctissimi pontiiicis salutiferis 
 obtemperans monitis, direxit sues missos Aistulpho nequissimo 
 Longobardorum regi, propter paois fcedera, et praefatae sanctse Dei 
 Ecclesice ac rdpnilicce restitvenda jura : atque bis et tertio eum 
 deprecatus est, et plura ei pollicitus est munera, ut tantummodo 
 paciiice propria rcsHiwret propriis " ... p. 1626. " Spopondit ipse 
 Aistulpbus cum universis suis judicibus [i.e. magnatibus] sub 
 terribUi et fortissimo sacramento, atque in eodem pacti foedere per 
 scriptam paginam affirmavit, se illicb redditurum, civitatem Ra- 
 vennatium cum aliis diversis ciyitatibus." Labbe, Concil. viii. 
 Epist. T. Stephani Papse II. ad Francos : "Sin autem quod non 
 credimus et aliquam posueritis moram aut adinventionem minime 
 velociter banc nostram adimplendam adhortationem, ad liberandam 
 banc meam civitatem Jtomanam et populum in ea commorantem, 
 sanctam Dei apostolicam ecclesiam a Domino mihi commissam 
 simul et ejus prsesulem : sciatis vos ex auctoritate sanctse et 
 unicse Trinitatis per gratiam Apostolatus quae data est mihi a 
 Christo Domino vos alienari pro transgressione nostrae adhorta- 
 tionis a regno Dei et vita aeterna. " 
 
 t Anastasius, Vita Adriani I. p. 1735. " Ipsi Francorum missi, 
 
1 6 TEMPORAi SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 Though included nominally for a time, Central Italy 
 and Eome were providentially and in fact eliminated 
 and excluded from all civil dominion ; from the mo- 
 ment the empire was translated, they have stood out 
 from the circle of all other sovereignties, resting on 
 a sovereignty of their own ; and neither the empire 
 of the Franks, nor the empire of the Germans, much 
 less the empire of the Greeks, has ever included 
 Eome within 'its circumference from that hour. 
 
 I say, then, that it was God's own act which libe- 
 rated His Vicar upon earth from subjection to tem- 
 poral power ; and that for twelve hundred years the 
 Bishops of Eome have reigned as temporal princes. 
 They have possessed their own. No man has given 
 to them their sovereign rights. They reign there as 
 Christian princes by the providence of God. They 
 are the first example of a Christian monarchy, the first 
 seed of Christian Europe, the first roll of Christian 
 sovereigns. When France was yet distracted by con- 
 
 properantes cum apostolicse sedis missis, declinavemnt ad Desi- 
 derium : qui et constanter eum deprecantes adhortati sunt, sicut 
 illis a suo rege prseceptum exstitit, ut antefatas, quas abstulerat 
 civitates, pacifice beato Petro redderet, et justitias parti Romano- 
 rum faceret : sed minime quidquam horum apud eum obtinere 
 valuerunt, asserentem se minima quidquam redditurum, .... sed 
 dum in tanta duritia protervus ipse permaneret rex Desiderius, 
 cupiens antedictus christianissimus Francorum rex pacifice justi- 
 tias beati Petri recipere, diresit eidem Longobardorum regi, ut 
 solummodo tres obsides Longobardorum judicum filios iUi tradi- 
 disset, pro istis restituendis civitatibua.'' 
 
Lect. I.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 17 
 
 flicting races, when England was divided by the Heptr 
 archy, when Germany was a forest, and when Spain 
 was a desolation, the Vicar of Christ already reigned 
 as a sovereign prince in Eome. 
 
 IV. Another principle, then, which I affirm is 
 this : that God, who providentially liberated the Vicar 
 of His Son from subjection to any civil power, did by 
 the same Divine Providence bestow on him the right 
 to what he holds. In order to make clear what I 
 mean, let me call your attention more particularly to 
 three points. The first is this : that the possession of 
 the patrimony, as it is called, of the Church, is by 
 Divine right on the part of him who receives it; 
 secondly, on the part of Him who gives it; and thirdly, 
 on the part of him who holds it. If there be any pro- 
 perty sacred upon earth, — if there be any property on 
 earth which is constituted by Divine Providence, — it 
 is the patrimony of the Church, on the part of him 
 that receives, on the part of Him that gives, and on 
 the part of him that possesses. 
 
 I have said already, that during the three hundred 
 years while it was forbidden by the imperial laws that 
 any society should hold property except such corpo- 
 rations as were recognised by those laws, the Church, 
 as a society and as a corporation, did hold houses, 
 lands, and goods.* And why ? Because the Church 
 of God is not a society put together by a human legis- 
 * Analecta Juris Pontifioii, lib. xxxv. c. 2. 
 
1 8 TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 lature. It is not a corporation of voluntary indivi- 
 duals, who unite themselves by their free •wUl, to 
 dissolve themselves to-morrow. It is a society of 
 divine origin, and a corporation of a supernatural 
 institution. It has its being, its unity, its construc- 
 tion, and all its properties, from a power which is 
 divine. Therefore, as a society of divine institution, 
 it is possessed of rights higher in kind than any 
 human society ; and among those rights it has the right 
 of holding property. They who in the beginning be- 
 lieved, sold their houses and lands, and laid the price 
 at the Apostles' feet.* And the price which was laid 
 at their feet the Apostles held as their own by a divine 
 right. No man could have taken it away without 
 sacrilege. So, in after ages, lands and houses (which 
 became the first Christian churches) were given to 
 the Church throughout the whole of the Eoman 
 empire. The church of St. Pudentiana was the house 
 of St. Pudens, a Eoman senator. So again the 
 church of St. Clement, the church of St. Caius, and 
 numberless others in Eome, were once the houses of 
 patricians. House and land, site and dwelling-place, 
 were given to the Christians, and thereby became 
 the possessions of the Church. And the Church held 
 these things by divine right ; though the laws of the 
 empire forbade it to possess. It was not a society 
 allowed by the law, but it held by a higher title. 
 'Acts iv. 34, 35. 
 
Lect. I.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 1 9 
 
 And this right of possession in the Church is inherent 
 and inalienable to this day. 
 
 Next, there is a right on the part of Him that gives. 
 Every man has a right to dispose of that which he 
 possesses. The dictum of the lawyers of this world, 
 that property is the creation of the state, is not true. 
 Property is not the creation of civil law ; it is the 
 creation of God in nature and in providence. The 
 true creator and maker of property is God, not man ; 
 and He has constituted His Church with a right of 
 receiving gifts in His name. The civil powers and the 
 civil law of the world have the right of disposal over 
 that which is their own. But the principle of pro- 
 perty lies deeper. What the Church holds, it holds 
 in its own right, as it did in the three hundred years 
 when all the imperial laws were against it. Though 
 the current of imperial laws may have run in later 
 ages in its favour, it is not the imperial legislation 
 which gives to the Church the right to possess what is 
 its own. It holds it of itself, by the providence of 
 God, of its own inherent right. The Church, there- 
 fore, possesses its patrimony by a more perfect right 
 than that of any crowned prince to the territory over 
 which he reigns. In the time of St. Gregory the 
 Great, the Church possessed many patrimonies.* We 
 hear, at this day, only of the patrimony of St. Peter. 
 But the Church called all its possessions patrimonies. 
 
 * S. Gregorii Vita, auct, Joan, Diacono, lib. ii. c. 53-55 seq. 
 
20 TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 There was also the patrimony of St. Apollinaris, at 
 Eavenna ; and the patrimony of St. Ambrose, at 
 Milan. The patrimonies of the Church of Eome were 
 twenty-three in number. They were in Calabria, in 
 Sicily, in Africa, in Sardinia, in Corsica, in Gaul, in 
 Piedmont, and in Lombardy, besides that which is 
 now called the patrimony of St. Peter. And all 
 these the Church possessed by a right higher than 
 the 'will of man. 
 
 Now, that which the Church possesses as its own, 
 the Church may give, but no man may take away. 
 The Church has power and dominion over its own 
 possessions, to hold them, or to give them ; for the 
 essence of property is enjoyment and power of dispo- 
 sition. As in times of famine and pestilence at Milan 
 St. Charles took 'the chalices from the altar, broke 
 them, and gave them among the poor for medicine 
 and for food ; so in like manner the Church might at 
 this day do as it has done before — give its patrimony. 
 But no man may take a chalice from the altar ; and 
 the man that takes it commits a sacrilege. The Pon- 
 tiffs have in all ages declared, that he who lays hands 
 by himself or by his officers on anything consecrated 
 to the Church commits a sacrilege. The bulls of 
 Popes and the Council of Trent* both launch against 
 the man who lays his hand upon the possessions of 
 the Church the sentence of excommunication. 
 * Concil. Trid. sess. xxv. o. 20. 
 
Lect. I.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 21 
 
 And now, as to the third point, namely, that the 
 line of Pontiffs hold to this day, by a right higher 
 than of human creation, the patrimony of the Church, 
 I need say no more. This principle is contained in 
 the two already proved : and the possession of its 
 patrimony is held at this hour by a divine right, 
 fenced about by the sacred sanctions of the Church in 
 its most express forms of legislation and of censure. 
 
 As God, by direct and divine providence, has be- 
 stowed possessions on the Vicar of His Son, so He has 
 also bestowed temporal power. And this temporal 
 power of the Holy See has, in a great measure, arisen 
 from the possession of extensive patrimonies. If time 
 permitted me, I would fain enter into one of the most 
 beautiful chapters of Christian history. First of all, 
 this patrimony was constituted of twenty-three* dis- 
 tinct portions, scattered all round Rome as its centre, 
 the nucleus and beginning of Christian Europe. Of 
 that I hope to speak hereafter. On these estates, each 
 of which was called a Massa, the Church placed its 
 own colonists. It was the first to send from Eome 
 Christians into Pagan lands, civilised men into bar- 
 barous lands ; and these civilised and Christian men 
 introduced the first seeds of the Christian civil order. 
 Wheresoever these Christian and civilised colonists 
 went, emancipation from slavery followed. I can 
 give only one or two instances. There are two beau- 
 * Analecta Juris Pontificii, lib. xxzv. c. 3. 
 
2 2 TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 tiful letters of St. Gregory addressed to the guardians 
 of two of the patrimonies — one in Africa, and one 
 elsewhere. In the first he begins by saying : " Our 
 Lord and God Jesus Christ, having been incarnate 
 for us, made Himself a servant, that we, through His 
 servitude, might be made free. It is not meet, there- 
 fore, that man should hold his brother in service ; 
 and I therefore hereby remit and give their freedom 
 to Montana and Thomas, two Christian slaves. To 
 Montana, whom I know to desire to be entered as a 
 religious into a monastery, I give also a sum of gold 
 left to her by Gaudiosus, a presbyter, with my free 
 permission that she shall go into the monastery of 
 Constantina. To Thomas I give also a sum of money 
 left by the same presbyter, but he will remain among 
 the order of notaries" — that is, in the civil service 
 of the Eoman See. The other example is still more 
 beautiful. There was a poor slave named Catella. 
 Catella is one of the common servile names in the 
 Latin tongue ; and this poor Catella, as St. Gregory 
 says in his letter, with prayers and tears had besought 
 her master to give her her freedom, that she might 
 become a nun. This was about a.d. 590. St. Gre- 
 gory hearing of it, directs the guardians of the patri- 
 mony to go and buy Catella, and pay to her master 
 the ransom of her freedom ; then to give her liberty, 
 that she might enter into the religious life. * 
 * Analeota Juris Pontificii, lib. xxxy. c. 6. 
 
Lect. I.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 23 
 
 Those two instances are taken out of a vast harvest 
 of acts of supernatural love and charity, whereby 
 the action of the Church on its patrimonies laid the 
 foundations of Christian Europe. It was in works 
 of mercy like these, that the political and executive 
 power of the Church arose.* 
 
 Where, I would ask, is there a power in the world 
 that holds its sovereignty by such titles as the Vicar 
 of Christ ? He holds it, as I have shown you, by the 
 direct donation of Divine Providence. He holds it 
 next by a willing conquest over loving hearts eman- 
 cipated from slavery, and from a worse bondage than 
 that of the body — from the slavery of sin and death. 
 He holds it by the very choice of those people who 
 fled to him when they had no other protector.-j- He 
 holds it by a possession which is now fifteen hundred 
 years old. He holds it by every right known in 
 divine and human law. He held it before there was a 
 Christian prince in Europe. We venerate the British 
 empire as one of which the sovereign has a right to 
 the obedience of her subjects. We render it gladly, 
 and we lift no hand against that sovereignty — no, nor 
 speak a word, nor conceive a seditious thought. Yet 
 why ? What right has she, who reigns so worthily 
 over us, to the sovereign crown she wears, but that 
 very same right which I claim for him who possesses 
 
 * Civiltk Cattolica, serie iv. vol. x. p. 67. 
 t Ibid. p. 66. 
 
24 TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 the temporal power of the Boman state ? And not so 
 much ; for he was a prince when her sovereignty was 
 unknown. She has received her sovereignty by the 
 indirect providence of God ; and he more. There is 
 no light that can he found in human or divine law 
 investing our sovereign with the sacred character to 
 which we render our obedience, which is not to be 
 found in greater fulness and in greater explicitness 
 in the Vicar of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Now, I might dwell longer upon this. We find 
 persons who are supposed to read history, ask, Where 
 was the temporal sovereignty of the Popes in the first 
 three hundred years ? I would answer by asking 
 them. Where was the British monarchy for eight 
 hundred years ? Perhaps they will say : But if it was 
 of divine institution, why was it not instituted from 
 the first ? I should say, in answer : Ask the myste- 
 rious will of God. I might further ask : Why was it 
 four thousand years before he sent His Son into the 
 world, born of a woman ? Why was it a long three 
 hundred years before He gave to His people Israel a 
 king, and established a monarchy over them ? " It is 
 not for you to know the times or moments, which the 
 Father hath put in His own power ; " * it is enough to 
 know when God acts. When God has revealed His 
 wUl in divine providence, it is enough ; what He has 
 accomplished is a power ordained of God. 
 * Acts i. 7. 
 
Lect. I.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 25 
 
 V. And now, to make an end. We say that this 
 power of the Popes is ordained of God. And it is 
 ordained for reasons which are so explicit that I can- 
 not pass them by, and yet cannot now dwell upon 
 them. I will, however, touch them, because it is at 
 this moment the fashion with some persons to use a 
 language of mockery, to address the Vicar of Jesus 
 Christ as they who in the Prsetorium said, ''Hail, 
 King of the Jews ! " When they hear it said, that 
 the temporal power is necessary to the spiritual, they 
 claim it as a concession ; as if the spiritual power 
 must be propped up by temporal power. And then we 
 are told that St. Peter had no temporal sovereignty : 
 and legislatures laugh, as if some great sally of genius, 
 or some vast success of satirical wit, had for ever 
 overthrown the temporal sovereignty of the Vicar of 
 Jesus Christ. Of the reasons why God has so or- 
 dained it, two are plainly manifest. The first is, that 
 the temporal power is the shelter of the spiritual. It 
 may be compared to what is often seen in Italy — a 
 beautiful canopy wrought out of stone over a pure 
 well. It preserves it from the intermingling of any 
 thing earthly ; and the pure fountains break forth in 
 all their brightness under this canopy of fretted archi- 
 tecture. The canopy is the work of the hand of man ; 
 but the fountain is the work of the will of God. 
 Now, this temporal sovereignty, which has arisen in 
 the direct providence of God, serves a like office. 
 
26 TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 It is in order that the Church shall va. 'perfect freedom 
 exercise its spiritual powers. I lay emphasis on the 
 words, " perfect freedom." I do not say, it is that 
 the Church may exercise its spiritual powers. For 
 three hundred years it did so in the heart of a heathen 
 empire. It did so through three hundred years of 
 martyrdom — through ten persecutions, which were 
 only ten special outhreaks of a persecution which was 
 always in activity. It is not necessary to the Church 
 to have a temporal power that it may exercise its spiri- 
 tual power. St. Gregory VII. exercised his spiritual 
 powers when he was at Salerno ; Pius VII., when he 
 was at Savona; Pius IX., when he was at Gaeta. 
 But the alternative is this : the catacombs or the 
 Vatican; martyrdom or sovereignty; warfare and 
 persecution, or civil sovereignty and its relation to 
 Christian monarchies and to Christian Europe. Choose 
 which you will. The temporal power of the Pope is 
 an integral part of that civil and Christian order 
 through which the Church exercises in tranquillity 
 and safety its spiritual office over the hearts of men, 
 wiUing in their obedience. Destroy that temporal 
 power, and the power of the Church will not be dis- 
 solved ; but as in the beginning, so now, through seas 
 of blood and waves of fire, will it have to wade its 
 way in plucking souls from the burning. The work 
 will be done, for it is the work of God ; but it wiU be 
 done so as by fire. When, therefore, it is said that 
 
Lect. I.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OE THE POPES. 27 
 
 the temporal power is necessary to the spiritual, what 
 is meant is this, — it is necessary to the free and 
 peaceful exercise of it.* 
 
 And a further reason is this : it is necessary to 
 the fulfilment of the civil mission, and to the civilis- 
 ing action of the Church in the world, that it should 
 be clothed with temporal power. This, however, is a 
 subject we shall consider hereafter. 
 
 I wiU now only very briefly point to certain other 
 reasons. The Church, being sovereign at its centre, is 
 sovereign also in all its localities; wheresoever the 
 Church of God is found throughout the world, the 
 whole sovereignty of the Church is in that portion. 
 It is, we know, the pride of the British subject, that 
 he goes into the four quarters of the world, carrying 
 with him the inherent rights of the British empire ; 
 and any man who lays a hand upon a British subject, 
 wages war against the whole British empire. So in 
 like manner the whole sovereignty of the Church of 
 God is in every portion and every locality. And the 
 poor scattered Church in England, made up of units 
 in a vast population, has in it this sovereignty, because 
 it rests upon the Holy See, and upon the twofold 
 sovereignty of Jesus Christ. And lastly, and this 
 point I can but state in a single word, the temporal 
 sovereignty of the Holy See is the perpetual testi- 
 
 * Allocution of the Holy Father Pius IX,, in Secret Consistory, 
 May 20, 1851. 
 
28 TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 mony and witness against nationalism. Our divine 
 Lord, when He redeemed mankind, extinguished 
 all national distinctions. In Christ Jesus " there is 
 neither Gentile nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircum- 
 cision, barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free." * He 
 put His royal foot, pierced on Calvary, on the nation- 
 ,alities of the world ; and from that hour, nationalism 
 in religion became schism. The principle of nation- 
 alism in the matter of religion is schism, and in poli- 
 tics revolution. 
 
 Now, it remains for me to draw only one conclu- 
 sion: "let every soul be subject to higher powers; 
 the powers that be are ordained of God. He that 
 resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God." 
 Any man that lifts a hand, and that not merely an 
 armed one, but an unarmed hand, against the tem- 
 poral sovereignty of the Holy See, not only he that 
 levies legions, but he who by thought, word, or deed, 
 helps on the dissolution of the temporal sovereignty of 
 the Pope, resists the ordinance of God. He that sows 
 in the hearts of others seeds of disloyalty towards the 
 Vicar of our divine Lord, that man is resisting the 
 ordinance of God. Any man who in his mind con- 
 ceives thoughts of disaifection, or of contempt ; who 
 with approval reads that which is every day poured 
 out like an inundation in this country, scorn and 
 hatred and satire against the old man that reigns in 
 * Col. iii. II. 
 
loot. I.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 29 
 
 the Vatican ; any man that takes into his heart those 
 disloyal and unfilial thoughts, — that man is resisting 
 the ordinance of God. The providential state in 
 which the Vicar of Jesus Christ is manifested upon 
 earth, is the work of God Himself ; and he who in this, 
 by thought, word, or deed resists him, resists the ordi- 
 nance of God. We owe to him fidelity, loyalty, and 
 love ; not only do we owe to him obedience, we owe 
 to him an interior fidelity, the loyalty of our hearts. 
 
( 30 ) 
 
 LECTUEE 11. 
 
 I NOW proceed, in pursuance of the plan I have laid 
 down, to justify, so far as my limited opportunity 
 allows, what you may consider the strong assertions 
 made m the first Lecture. 
 
 Those assertions were as follows: that the tem- 
 poral power of the Pope is ordained of God ; next, that 
 it is the productive and sustaining cause of Christian 
 Europe ; and thirdly, that its dissolution would be the 
 dissolution of Christian Europe. From which propo- 
 sitions I deduced these conclusions : first, that he who 
 resists it, resists a power ordained of God ; secondly, 
 that he who lends a hand or a tongue to its dissolu- 
 tion, does, so far as co-operation extends, help to the 
 dissolution of Christian Europe; and that all who 
 directly or indirectly contribute to that result, will, 
 according to their proportion, purchase to themselves 
 judgment. 
 
 Now, before I take up this subject, I desire, in the 
 words of St. Peter to the people of Jerusalem, to say, 
 first to any among you who may not be of the unity 
 of the Church, but of the people of this great nation, 
 
Lect. II.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 3 1 
 
 whose hostility to the temporal power of the Pope is a 
 tradition in their history, " I know, brethren, that you 
 did it through ignorance, as also did your rulers." * 
 I wish at once to declare, that I hope multitudes may 
 be innocent of the opposition which by word and 
 deed they are thus offering to the temporal power of 
 the Holy See ; because I believe that being born and 
 nurtured in a profound ignorance of the principles of 
 the Church, and of the history of Christian Europe, 
 they know not what they do. Secondly, there may 
 be among you those who are of the unity of the 
 Catholic Church, but, having been born under the 
 shadows of peaceful times, have never been compelled 
 to analyse or to study the first principles of this sub- 
 ject, and therefore are drawn — some, it may_ be, by 
 political opinions which they have inherited, or by 
 strong patriotic sentiments which may be a second 
 nature to them — if not into opposition, at least into a 
 state of doubt upon this great subject. I wish to say 
 also, that I believe their state of hesitation, and even 
 their present disposition to take the wrong side, comes 
 not from a perverseness of the will, but from an in- 
 distinctness of the intellect ; this I wish to say from 
 the outset ; because, though it has been my duty in 
 the years past often to say the strongest things in the 
 strongest language, — and such I believe to be the duty 
 of a priest of God in the world, never to flinch, or to 
 * Acts iii. 17. 
 
32 TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 explain away the message committed to him, — I have 
 ever desired to avoid the evils of controversy, or in 
 any way to tinge or to embitter the words I use with 
 anything of animosity or of personal feeling. 
 
 Now, before I begin the subject of to-day, which 
 is, that the temporal power of the Popes has been 
 the productive and sustaining principle of Christian 
 Europe, I wish to recall to you the results of the former 
 Lecture. I have set before you the first great principle 
 of the sovereignty, temporal and eternal, spiritual — 
 that is supernatural — and natural, of our divine Lord 
 Jesus Christ, who is not only " the great High Priest," 
 but " the King of kings, and Lord of lords." I set 
 also before you another great principle, namely, that 
 our divine Lord committed to His Church, and to his 
 Vicar, the Head on earth of that Church, His spiritual 
 sovereignty, reserving to Himself His temporal or 
 providential sovereignty; and that, therefore, the 
 spiritual sovereignty of the Church is a divine insti- 
 tution, and has a power directly ordained of God' 
 Thirdly, that there are other powers in the world 
 which are indirectly ordained of God; namely, all 
 temporal sovereignties. Further, I showed you that 
 St. Paul declares that even the heathen empire of 
 Eome, and the power of a heathen emperor, Nero, 
 the greatest persecutor of the Church, was ordained 
 of God ; and as such, had a claim to submission and 
 obedience. I then showed you how, by an indirect 
 
Lect. II.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. ^3 
 
 but divine providence, our divine Lord has liberated 
 His Vicar on eartli, in the plenitude of his spiritual 
 sovereignty, from all civil subjection ; first by the 
 translation to the East, and then by the eventual 
 extinction of the Eoman empire in Italy. I showed, 
 fourthly, how by the same providence, indirect indeed, 
 but nevertheless divine, our Lord clothed His Vicar 
 with the possession of a patrimony, which was as dis- 
 tinctly a donation from G-od as if he had received it 
 from His visible hand. And I showed, lastly, that 
 upon the basis of this temporal possession our divine 
 Lord has raised a temporal power by His indirect ope- 
 ration—and that therefore the temporal power of the 
 Popes is a divine ordinance, having divine sanction, 
 at least, equally with every other sovereignty in the 
 world. Therefore, all that can be claimed for our own 
 sovereign, can be claimed equally for the Supreme 
 Pontiff; and more than this, in so far as the divine 
 sanction of the temporal power is higher, in propor- 
 tion as the person who is clothed with it is a more 
 special subject of the Divine providence, and has a 
 character and a capacity of receiving sovereignty and 
 of exercising a supreme direction in the affairs of men 
 higher and greater than all the princes of the world. 
 And from this, you will remember, I deduced two 
 conclusions ; first, that the temporal power is provi- 
 dentially ordained for the free exercise of the spiritual. 
 And I there drew a further distinction, which I beg 
 
34 TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 you to bear in mind. It tas been asked, Wbere was 
 the temporal power of the Popes in the time of St. 
 Peter ? If it is necessary to the spiritual now, why was 
 it not necessary then ? To which I answered, It is not 
 necessary to the spiritual office of the Church. The 
 Church can exercise its spiritual office iu martyrdom, 
 and has done it. For three hundred years it wrestled 
 with the world, and subdued it, though under the 
 sword of the executioner. The spiritual office of the 
 Apostles is perpetual and independent, because divine. 
 It owes nothing to temporal power. But I said that 
 the temporal power of the Popes is necessary to the 
 peaceful and tranquil exercise of the spiritual power ; 
 and that the alternative is this, whether the spiritual 
 power of the Church shall be exercised through mar- 
 tyrdom and persecution, or in peace and in harmony 
 with the civil order of the world. They who desire 
 the dissolution of the temporal power, not knowing 
 what they do, would reduce the world to barbarism, 
 and the Church to a condition of persecution. The 
 Church would, notwithstanding, still exercise its 
 spiritual sovereignty and its spiritual office with the 
 same divine efficacy and power, but through perse- 
 cution, not in peace. 
 
 Having thus disposed of the first part of the sub- 
 ject, the next point in order is this : that the temporal 
 power of the Pope is necessary to the civil mission of 
 the Church in the world ; that, in the discharge of 
 
Lect. II.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 35 
 
 this civil mission, the temporal power of the Holy See 
 has been the principle, first of the production, and 
 then of the maintenance, of Christian Europe ; that 
 the civil order of Christendom is the offspring of the 
 temporal power with which our divine Lord provi- 
 dentially clothed His Yicar upon earth. The time is 
 indeed short for such a subject, and therefore all I 
 can do is this : to state to you the great principles in 
 outline, and ask you to believe that I will not state 
 any fact which I have not verified, or which I am 
 not prepared to maintain by historical proofs. 
 
 I. The first principle with which I begin is this, 
 that the Son of G-od became incarnate for us. If any 
 man disbelieve this, I cannot argue with him about 
 the Vicar of Jesus Christ. If he believe this, he be- 
 lieves that our Lord came into the world to take our 
 manhood, first to unite it to the Godhead in His own 
 Person, and then to make it the instrument of the 
 elevation, the sanctification, and the perfection of the 
 human race ; — that when He came into the world, He 
 chose to Himself certain disciples, who, by converse 
 with Himself, by the illumination of His divine mind, 
 and by the charity of His sacred heart, were changed, 
 transformed, and assimilated to His own likeness ; — 
 that He then united them into one fellowship, that 
 He bestowed upon them a supernatural unity, and 
 thereby created a visible society united to His Person, 
 and united within itself : — and that He bestowed an 
 
36 TEMPORAL SOVEEEIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 organisation upon that living body of which He was 
 Himself the Head, and, as I have said, the produc- 
 tive and sustaining principle. I say, further, that 
 He opened a fountain of jurisdiction within this 
 society, and appointed it to be in the world as the 
 leaven in the meal, the regenerating principle of 
 mankind ; to be to the world what the soul is to the 
 body, that which informs it, guides it, directs it, 
 which even impresses upon the features a certain 
 countenance and character. 
 
 II. I say, secondly, that the Catholic Church, which 
 springs from the Incarnation, discharges in the world 
 the same functions in regard to the nations of the 
 world as our divine Lord in regard to His disciples. 
 It has a twofold mission : first to convert and to save 
 individuals, one by one, as by the apostolic missions ; 
 and next, having converted individuals and families, 
 cities and nations, to assimilate, to change, to trans- 
 form, to unite, to organise them like as our divine 
 Lord did with His disciples. And this it has effected 
 by the knowledge of the Word of God, which the 
 world had not before ; by the perfect law of right and 
 wrong, that is, the divine law of justice ; then by the 
 perfection of its own constitution, by its monarchical 
 form, by the spirit of liberty and freedom among 
 all its members, by the unity of its jurisdiction from 
 which all authority has issued, and by the world-wide 
 organisation which binds the nations of the world into 
 
Lect. II.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 37 
 
 one family, according to the command of our Lord, 
 " Going therefore, teach ye all nations, baptizing them 
 in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." 
 And thus has arisen Christendom, the great Christian 
 family spread throughout the world. What, then, was 
 its productive cause and root ? The Incarnation, and 
 the visible Church which springs from it. What is 
 the trunk which supports Christendom to this day 
 but that same visible Church, around which it was 
 woven and entwined ? What, then, was the seed and 
 stem of Christendom but the Holy See, the centre of 
 that Church, the source of the spiritual powers which 
 have taken to themselves and assimilated the civil 
 powers of the world. This, then, is the general prin- 
 ciple I desire now to dwell on. 
 
 III. When the Church went out into the world, it 
 found there a vast empire, which covered it with 
 a perfect organisation, social and political. It had 
 one chief city reigning over the whole world ; it had 
 one emperor, whose will was the fountain of all law ; 
 one senate, one legislature, one code of laws. It had 
 one political organisation uniting all nations, and one 
 vast military system holding all people in subjection. 
 It .had one great chart, and one .centre, the mt7^m?'mm 
 aureum, the golden mile-stone which stood by the 
 arch of Severus, upon which were marked all the 
 distances throughout the world-wide empire of Eome. 
 It was ruled by the most perfect and minute legis- 
 
38 TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 lation whicli had ever governed the natural order of 
 the world. 
 
 Perhaps you may think that it was this organi- 
 sation which the Church took possession of. No ; 
 before the Church assumed its civil mission to create 
 modern Europe, the seven vials from heaven were 
 poured out upon that empire, and the seven trumpets 
 blew, and the four winds of heaven were let loose, and 
 the great angel cast the mighty stone into the sea, 
 and said, " Babylon the great is fallen ; " for that 
 great empire was ravaged, desolated, and pillaged by 
 the invasion of barbarians, by hordes from every 
 quarter, until there remained of all its structures 
 scarcely anything but mutilated ruins of its great- 
 ness, its aqueducts, its military roads, the Flavian 
 amphitheatre, and the Pantheon. Before Almighty 
 God sent His Church out into the world on its civil 
 mission, the whole of that vast empire was burnt up as 
 by fire and deluged by blood. Italy became a desola- 
 tion, and Africa was abandoned to itself, and Britain 
 was cast off, and Spain was forgotten ; for the empire 
 departed to Constantinople : the Byzantine emperors 
 were feeble and helpless ; they were harassed by the 
 assaults of the Oriental tribes, and Italy they were 
 no longer able even to protect. This is what all his- 
 torians teU us. There w&,s a time when even Eome 
 itself is said to have been without a living inhabitant, 
 when foxes ran over the Palatine Hill, and their bark 
 
Lect. II.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 39 
 
 alone was heard in the golden house of the Caesars. 
 Such was Eome, this mighty Eome, which once had 
 some two millions of inhabitants, and twelve miles of 
 diameter stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to 
 the Sabine Hills — it was gone to desolation. And for 
 centuries after this, it was ever and again the object of 
 attack. It was besieged, it was sacked, it was ruined 
 again and again. All its civil power had departed ; 
 and its sovereignty existed no more. 
 
 IV. It was into such a world as this that the 
 Church was sent forth to do its work. Christian 
 Europe is not the remains of the old Eoman empire — 
 it is a new creation. Small portions of that empire, 
 which were cast off, took root and sprang into new 
 life ; but the structure of Christendom as a whole is 
 entirely a new world, and has been the creation of 
 Christianity. This, however, is a subject upon which 
 it is impossible for me further to dwell. I must refer 
 you to books ; and if you desire to find an unpre- 
 judiced and impartial witness for my cause, take such 
 a history as that of the infidel historian Gibbon. The 
 book indeed is one which I commend to nobody, for 
 nothing more mischievous or more poisonous can be 
 found; yet nevertheless out of his own mouth is the 
 acknowledgment to be taken. It is true that for 
 some three hundred years after the empire was trans- 
 lated to Constantinople, the Bishops of Eome con- 
 tinued nominally under the empire of the East ; just 
 
40 TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 as David, during the long years he waited for the 
 kingdom of Israel, was under the sovereignty of Saul, 
 though the rightful king, the future heir, and already, 
 I may say, invested with kingship. Though pursued 
 and fugitive, he never lifted a hand to possess himself 
 of that which God had promised him. So during those 
 three hundred years secular writers may find, and 
 make much of, instances in which the Bishops of 
 Eome published the decrees of the emperors of the 
 East, in the same way as David submitted to Saul. 
 But during those three hundred years the emperors 
 of the East not only could never effectually protect 
 Italy, they never could so much as drive out the 
 Huns, or the Vandals, or the Goths, or the Heruli, or 
 any of the hordes of invaders. Except during some 
 ten years of transitory triumph, soon to be dissipated, 
 these hordes unceasingly harassed and afflicted Italy. 
 Far from defending Eome, the heretical and schis- 
 matical spirit of Constantinople, throughout the whole 
 of Italy, divided and embroiled its civil peace. It 
 was only through the fidelity and firmness of several 
 of the Pontiffs that the people of Italy were restrained 
 from open rebellion against the emperors of Con- 
 stantinople. Then again, when the Lombards had 
 possessed themselves of Northern Italy, one of their 
 most powerful kings took possession of Eavenna and 
 Bologna, the exarchate or patrimony which is now 
 in question. The reigning Pope, Stephen II., called in 
 
Lect. II.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 41 
 
 the help of a king of France, which, during the fifth 
 and sixth centuries, had sprung up into a monarchy. 
 The letter by which he was invited is commonly 
 quoted and ridiculed for an expression which is so 
 explicit to our purpose that it seems as if it was 
 providentially used. The Pope writes : " I, Peter, call 
 upon you, my sons, to protect my city of Eome." And 
 the king of France, having crossed the Alps and van- 
 quished the Lombards, " restored," as his word is, the 
 exarchate of Eavenna, the Romagna included, to the 
 Bishop of Eome and to the Eoman commonwealth.* 
 Having restored it, he was created a patrician of 
 Eome ; that is, he received the highest civil dignity 
 under the sovereign of Eome, and he received it from 
 the hand of the Bishop of Eome. It did not make 
 him lord of Eome, nor prince of Eome, nor did it 
 involve civil subjection on the part of Eome or of its 
 Bishop. He was but the champion, as he was the 
 son ; he was the protector of the Holy See, and nothing 
 more. It was a civil creation ; the first civil office 
 conferred in Eome for the protection of Eome, was 
 a creation of 'the Pontiff. From whom, then, came 
 this power but from him, whom our Lord had already 
 -^Jothed with the temporal possession, and therefore 
 with the temporal power, of the abandoned city of 
 Eome ? In like manner, when Charlemagne again 
 delivered the same province, and again restored it 
 * Supra, p. 15 and note. 
 
42 TEMPOKAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 he also in. the same words was declared a Eoman 
 patrician. Later, he was consecrated emperor; but 
 the empire gave him no right whatever over Eome 
 as its sovereign. He was still no more than pro- 
 tector, champion, guardian of the Holy See. Rome 
 was external to the empire of Charlemagne, as it 
 was external to the empire of Constantinople ; it 
 had been abandoned and cast off in the providential 
 order, and it had risen up into a sovereignty of its 
 own. 
 
 At that time, I ask you, what was Spain ? what 
 was Germany ? M'hat was England ? what was Eu- 
 rope ? They were marshes and forests, and their 
 people were moving hordes, in a state of internecine 
 war one with another. The civil order of Europe, 
 which diplomatists consider to be a creation of their 
 own, had no existence. In those times of the fabu- 
 lous history of most states of modern Europe, the 
 Vicar of Jesus Christ was already reigning in Rome, 
 and had created patricians to protect his civil peace. 
 To put an illustration of the action of the Catholic 
 Church upon Europe at large, I take the example of 
 Spain and of England. Spain, I may say, has been 
 created by the eighteen councils of Toledo ; it was 
 a Gothic and heretical nation ; it was invaded by 
 Moors ; one-half of it was in the power of the Maho- 
 metans ; it was infected by Judaism ; it was sub- 
 divided into conflicting kingdoms. Then by the 
 
Lect. II.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 43 
 
 long line of the councils of Toledo, in which the 
 Bishops of the Church of Spain sat with the princes 
 and rulers of the land in united council, Spain 
 was organised, consolidated, and raised into a sole 
 monarchy. Take, again, the case of England ; go 
 back and read the history of the heptarchy, and of 
 the Anglo-Saxon Church after the union of the seven 
 kingdoms into one. Eead, for instance, such works 
 as Johnsons' Canons or Spelman's Councils, or the 
 greater work of Wilkins ; or, if you will, take a much 
 more famihar book, Palgrave's History of the English 
 Commonwealth ; and you will find that the whole of 
 England was organised by the united action of the 
 spiritual and civil powers sitting in councils, which 
 councUs had a twofold character, ecclesiastical and 
 civil, united in one. Indeed, as the writers of that 
 day remark, it is difficult to say whether they were 
 parliaments, or whether they were synods. So 
 in the assizes throughout the country the Bishop 
 and the Earl sat, side by side, delivering justice. In 
 truth, our whole civil system has grown up from the 
 creative power of the Church, operating on those 
 rude ages, until it arose to the maturity in which 
 we see it now. 
 
 Now what we see in regard to Spain and Eng- 
 land is precisely what the Catholic and Eoman 
 Church has effected throughout the whole world. 
 The German empire in the seventh and eighth cen- 
 
44 TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 turies, then Hungary, France, and the lesser states of 
 Europe, have slowly risen under its creative power. 
 But who, I ask, has been the leader, the guide, and 
 the legislator of this Christian Europe — ^who hut the 
 Supreme Pontiff? "What Bishop of any of the other 
 Sees can he put in comparison with any single 
 Pontiff, though he be the least powerful and illumi- 
 nated in that long line, in the action and work of 
 creating Christian Europe ? And the kingdoms, 
 which, in the first instance, rose up under the power 
 and influence of the Holy See, were consecrated, 
 concentrated, and united into one great confederacy, 
 were held together by a general law, by a transcend- 
 ent principle of community, which operated through 
 them all, and bound them aU to one centre, and gave 
 them all one arbitrator. Eead the history of St. 
 Gregory VII., or the history of Innocent III., and 
 you will see that I have understated the truth, when 
 I say that it was the special and personal action of 
 the Pontiffs which created Christian Europe. 
 
 V. Now the last point on which I wOI dwell is 
 this : that as the Church of God has created — and 
 that specially through the action of the Supreme 
 Pontiffs in their civil mission to the world — this vast 
 and fair fabric of Christian Europe, so it has per- 
 petually sustained it. I ask, what has given it coher- 
 ence ? What is it that has kept alive the governing- 
 principle among men, but that pure faith or know- 
 
Lect. II.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 45 
 
 ledge of God which has gone forth from the Holy See, 
 and has filled the whole circumference of Christen- 
 dom ? What has bound men together in the respect 
 due to mutual rights, but that pure morality which 
 was delivered to the Church as Guardian, and of which 
 the Holy See is the supreme interpreter ? These two 
 streams, which, as St. Cyprian says in his treatise on 
 the unity of the Church, are like the rays that flow 
 from the sun, or like the streams that rise and break 
 from the fountains, illuminated and inundated the 
 whole Christian world. Now, I ask, what has pre- 
 served this in security, but the infallibility of the 
 Church of God, vested chiefly and finally in the per- 
 son of the Vicar of Jesus Christ ? It will rather be- 
 long to the next Lecture to note how, by contrast, this 
 may be proved, and how those nations which have 
 separated themselves from the unity of the Catholic 
 Church, and therefore are in opposition to the tem- 
 poral sovereignty of Eome, have lost these two great 
 principles of their preservation. I ask, then, what 
 has preserved Christian Europe, but the principle of 
 obedience, the precept of submission, which has been 
 taught throughout the whole of its circuit by the 
 Church of God, especially through the mouths of its 
 Pontiffs ? By them, subjects have been taught obe- 
 dience, and rulers have learned justice. What, I ask, 
 has limited monarchy ? what has made monarchy a 
 free institution, and supreme power compatible with 
 
46 TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 the personal liberty of the people, but the limitations 
 which the Holy See, acting through its Pontiffs, has 
 imposed upon the princes of the world 1 Does any- 
 body doubt these two propositions ? To them I would 
 say, the Pontiffs, with their temporal power, have 
 been accused of despotism, at least, then, let us give 
 them the credit of having taught the people to sub- 
 mit. They have been also accused of tyranny over 
 princes ; at least, let us give them the honour of 
 having taught kings that their power is limited. The 
 dread chimera at which the English people especially 
 stand in awe, the deposing power of the Pope, — what 
 was it but that supreme arbitration whereby the 
 highest power in the world, the Vicar of the incar- 
 nate Son of God, anointed high priest, and supreme 
 temporal ruler, sat in his tribunal, impartially to judge 
 between nation and nation, between people and prince, 
 between sovereign and subject ? The deposing power 
 grew up by the providential action of God, teaching 
 to subjects obedience, and to princes clemency. 
 
 Now in this twofold power of the Popes, which 
 has been, I may say, the centre of the diplomacy 
 of Christian Europe, we see the sacerdotal and royal 
 powers vested in one person, the two powers of king 
 and priest, which are the two conservative prin- 
 ciples of the Christian world. All Christian kings 
 and all Christian priests stand related to the one per- 
 son who bears in fulness that twofold character ; and 
 
Lect.IL] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 47 
 
 it is by adherence to that one person, as the centre of 
 the civil and spiritual system, which grew up under 
 his hand, that Christian Europe is preserved. I would 
 say further, that, vast and solid as Christendom may 
 seem, like a vault of stone, — the temporal power of 
 the Pope is the keystone. Strike it out, and the 
 family of nations would at once fall in ruins. 
 
 I wiU conclude now with two remarks : the first 
 is this, that the history of civilisation is the history 
 of Christianity. The civilisation of the natural order, 
 before Christianity came into the world, has perished 
 like Ninive under the sands of the desert ; in itself it 
 was corrupt and godless : true civilisation dates from 
 the Incarnation. "We count our Christian order anno 
 Domini. It is based upon the Incarnation and upon 
 Christianity ; and the Vicar of the incarnate Son of 
 God has been the head and leader of the civilisation 
 of Europe. Now the history of Christianity is the 
 history of the Christian Church. Will you go to Ori- 
 ental sects, to the Gnostics, for instance, or to some 
 of the almost nameless and forgotten forms of per- 
 verted Christianity, to ascertain what Christianity is ? 
 Will you even go to the Greek schism, the China of 
 Christendom for exclusiveness and stagnation? Will 
 you go to those nations of the West, which, by their 
 separation from the Church, have filled the whole 
 world with a tumult of conflicting societies, some of 
 them retaining hardly the faintest semblance to Chris- 
 
48 TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 tianity ? Can you find the Christianity of the world 
 anywhere except as identified j with that one great 
 world-wide organisation, the centre of which is Eome ? 
 Take Eome out of the world, and where is Christen- 
 dom ? Take away the one universal Eoman Church, 
 and I ask you, where is Christianity ? Then, if the 
 history of Christianity is the history of the Christian 
 Church, what is the history of the Christian Church 
 but the history of the Holy See ? Will the history of 
 the Church in England, or the history of the Church 
 in Gaul, or the history of the Church in Spain, suffice 
 to set before us the action of the Church of God in 
 the world, if you blot out the history of the Holy 
 See ? In writing the history of the Holy See, the 
 head, the light, the guide, the legislator, the prince of 
 the whole Church, you write the history of all its pro- 
 vinces, as in writing the history of Eome you write 
 the history of the heathen world. And further than 
 this, in writing the history of the Holy See, you write 
 the history of the Pontiffs. It is not the material seat, 
 whether of bronze or of stone, which may crumble 
 into dust, that constitutes the See of Peter. It is the 
 person, it is the man, it is the successor of Peter, it 
 is the Yicar of Jesus Christ, that constitutes the Holy 
 See ; and the history of the Holy See is the history 
 of a succession of men, two hundred and fifty and 
 more, who link us now with the day when " the Word 
 was made flesh " and was visible among mankind — 
 
Lect. II.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 49 
 
 that long line of living witnesses and of Supreme 
 Pontiffs who have ruled the world. The history then 
 of the Holy See is the history of the Church ; the 
 history of civilisation is the history of the Pontiffs. 
 Where, I would ask, are there princes, philosophers, 
 statesmen, or conquerors, who have contributed to 
 Christian Europe what St. Leo the Great, St. 
 Gregory the Great, St. Gregory VII., Gregory XL, 
 Innocent III., Alexander III., Sixtus V., and St. 
 Pius V. effected ? The worst that can be said is 
 this, that in that line of two hundred and fifty 
 Supreme Pontiffs, there have been a few who have 
 descended to the level of temporal sovereigns. But 
 except those few, they have been the legislators and 
 the rulers, the civilisers and the creators, of the civil 
 order of Europe, under the shelter of which we live. 
 My last remark, then, is this : we live in a day in 
 which a man who stands up to defend the temporal 
 power of the Pope, and the government of the Eoman 
 State, is ridiculed and scorned as -a lover of des- 
 potism, of darkness, of popular ignorance, and of 
 popular oppression. I am not indeed a politician ; for 
 when I became a servant of our divine Lord, un- 
 worthy as I am to bear the priesthood, I renounced 
 politics ; but I have my convictions about civil and 
 political rights, and the man who thinks me a lover of 
 despotism and darkness does not know me. Never- 
 theless I will dare to say this, that the Eoman state 
 
50 TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 is, in its very essence, the freest and most republican 
 and the most popular in Christian Europe. And this 
 paradox I will prove. It is the only elective mon- 
 archy under the sun. It is the only elective throne 
 that has ever endured. Poland for two hundred 
 years elected its kings, and perished in confusion. 
 The Eoman state for eighteen hundred years has 
 elected its own princes, and it endures. There sits 
 upon the throne of the Eoman state a man chosen 
 freely, chosen by election. And further, another prin- 
 ciple pervades that government which exists in no 
 other in the world — that the man who sits upon the 
 throne may be any one among the subjects of the 
 state. There is not a man born within the frontier of 
 the Eoman state who is not eligible for the office of 
 Supreme Pontiff. There was a time when our fore- 
 fathers were under the oppression of the Normans. 
 The poor Saxon was then ground down under the 
 heel of the conquering race ; when suddenly upon 
 the throne of the Supreme Pontifif there sat one 
 Nicholas Breakspear, a poor Saxon ; and the kings 
 and princes of Europe, even the Norman Conqueror, 
 kissed the feet of the poor Saxon, because he reigned 
 as Vicar of Jesus Christ. The whole Saxon popula- 
 tion of England was raised when a poor unknown 
 man, a son of a race trodden down under oppression 
 and contempt, was elevated to be, in his Divine Mas- 
 ter's name. King of kings and Lord of lords. In the 
 
Lect. II.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 5 1 
 
 Eoman state, at this moment, there is not a man, 
 though the son of a peasant, who may not be Pope. 
 In the history of the Popes there are many instances 
 of the sons of the poorest in the land who have risen 
 to be Supreme Pontiffs. History tells us of one who, 
 when his mother came to salute him on his elevation, 
 dressed in the attire of a lady, said to her, " Mother, I 
 do not know you ; I knew you only in your peasant's 
 garb ; go and put on that old dress I love so well : I 
 shall know my mother then." He sent her from his 
 presence; but when she came back in her peasant garb 
 embraced her. The Sovereign Pontiffs are elected 
 from the ecclesiastical order, and the ecclesiastical 
 order is open to every man in the state. There is not 
 a man that may not be a priest ; the only conditions 
 are these : he must renounce the world ; he must 
 not seek riches ; he must not live for himself ; he 
 must live years of study, and pass a life of no slight 
 mortification; he shall not seek to lay the foun- 
 dations of a family ; but he shall aim at a higher 
 standard of virtue ; and shall try to be, both intellec- 
 tually and morally, fitted for so great a dignity as to 
 consecrate the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ : and 
 out of men who are thus raised and trained, formed 
 and ripened, to be fitted to consecrate the precious 
 Body and Blood of our Lord upon the altar — out of 
 these the Supreme Pontiff is elected. 
 
 But this is the government of priests ; which is a 
 
5 2 TEMPORAL SOVEKEIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 detestable and degrading clog on the progress of civi- 
 lisation. And yet it was the government of priests 
 that created modern Europe, It is the government 
 of priests that now, for twelve hundred years, has 
 reigned over the fair fabric of Christendom. Com- 
 pare it with the government of laymen. Never was 
 there a Pontiff who made one offensive war. There 
 is not a square foot of his patrimony which he ob- 
 tained by bloodshed. Talk of the government of 
 laymen : look at the empires, look at the kingdoms, 
 of modern Europe ; look at the condition of the 
 people ; read their history ; if they are somewhat 
 better now, what were they but a little while ago ? 
 What was this country in the last century ? The 
 government of priests need fear no comparison with 
 that of laymen. But I have brought the subject as 
 far as I possibly can at this time. There are many 
 other things I would fain say, but I must conclude, 
 and I wlU conclude simply with these words. 
 You remember when, in the council of Jerusalem, a 
 prudent man stood up and gave this advice to the 
 Sanhedrim : " Eefrain from these men, and let 
 them alone : for if this design, or work, be of 
 men, it will fall to nothing." * Now I say to any 
 one who feels a desire to oppose the temporal power 
 of the Pope, Lay no hand on that man ; for if this 
 counsel or this work be of man, it will utterly come 
 * Acts V. 38. 
 
Lect. II.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 53 
 
 to naught, nay, it will break and be dissipated in the 
 air, in the dust and confusion of all human works. 
 But if it be not of man, if it be of God, — and the 
 world has been waiting for eighteen hundred years 
 for the fall of the spiritual sovereignty, and at least 
 twelve hundred for the fall of the civil sovereignty 
 of Eome, to see if the test of Gamaliel would have 
 effect, — take heed, " lest perhaps you be found even to 
 fight against God." * 
 
 * Acts V. 39. 
 
( 54 ) 
 
 LECTUEE III. 
 
 If what I have already said be true, what I have to 
 say in the present Lecture may perhaps seem almost 
 unnecessary. If it be true that the temporal power 
 of the Popes has been a providential instrument, 
 whereby God has created Christian Europe, then 
 certainly the destruction of that providential instru- 
 ment must bring with it the dissolution of the work, 
 which has not only been created, but supported and 
 sustained by it to this day. I might, therefore, be 
 content to rest upon the proofs already adduced ; for 
 if they be good, the converse hardly need be proved ; 
 if they be not good, that which I have now to say 
 would be irrelevant. But it is for those who object, 
 to show cause why they should not be admitted. In 
 truth I do not know how anybody, without denying 
 the Divine origin and mission of Christianity itself, 
 can deny these principles, for they are simple, broad, 
 and self-evident, partly by revelation, and partly by 
 history. As I have said, all that I assume is, belief 
 in the Incarnation and in a visible Church. 
 
 The subject upon which I have now to speak. 
 
Lect. III.] TEMPOEAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 55 
 
 namely, the dissolution of the temporal power of the 
 Popes, raises in my mind a previous question, whether 
 indeed this temporal power, until the second coming 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ, shall ever be dissolved ? 
 I do not say it ever will ; for when I look at history, 
 I find that the same events which are under our eyes 
 at this moment have been enacted and re-enacted, 
 produced and reproduced, over and over again, with 
 the change only in the names of those who have 
 invaded the patrimony of St. Peter, and of the Sove- 
 reign Pontiffs who have resisted the invasion. The 
 whole history of Christian Europe presents a succes- 
 sion of attacks and usurpations upon the patrimony 
 of the Church, followed again by the recognition, and 
 the restoration of the same temporal sovereignty. 
 Therefore I do hot mean to say that the day will ever 
 come when the menaces and the intrigues of those in 
 power shall succeed in displacing this providential 
 fact of God. Yet the event may come to pass, that 
 as our divine Lord, after His three years of public 
 ministry were ended, delivered Himself of His own 
 free will into the hands of men, and thereby permitted 
 them to do that which before was impossible, so, in 
 His inscrutable wisdom, He may deliver over His 
 Vicar upon earth, as He delivered Himself, and that 
 the providential support of the temporal power of the 
 Holy See may be withdrawn when its work is done. 
 What that work is, we know from Holy Scripture ; 
 
56 TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 it is the support and maintenance of the present Chris- 
 tian order of the world, during such time as the grace 
 of God is gathering out His people, until the whole 
 number of those whom He hath chosen to eternal life 
 be filled up. It may be that, when that is done, and 
 that when the times of Antichrist are come. He will 
 give over His Vicar upon earth, and His mystical 
 body at large, for three years and a half to the powers 
 of this world. Now it is not needful to determine or 
 to raise this question ; it is enough for me to show 
 that the acts which tend to the dissolution of the 
 temporal power of the Popes likewise tend to the dis- 
 solution of Christian Europe ; and that they who do 
 such acts with this intention resist the ordinance of 
 God, and purchase judgment for themselves. 
 
 I. First of all, therefore, I have to show that 
 the dissolution of this temporal power of the Pope 
 would lead to the dissolution of Christendom, that 
 is, of Christian Europe. Suppose the Vicar of Jesus 
 Christ on earth were to-morrow despoiled of his tem- 
 poral sovereignty and made subject to some temporal 
 prince; he would, as I have said, so far lose the 
 providential character, by virtue of which he is ful- 
 iilling the civil mission of the Church in the world. 
 He would cease to act upon kingdoms, upon mon- 
 archies, upon nations, upon people, upon legisla- 
 tures, upon congresses, and upon conventions. He 
 would cease to act upon the springs of national life. 
 
Lect. III.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 57 
 
 and upon the soiirces of imperial power. He would 
 cease wholly to deal with the nations, and with the 
 organised life of the world. He and the whole 
 Church would thenceforth, as in the heginning, in 
 the first three hundred years, be concerned solely 
 with individuals. Here and there the grace of God 
 would move them, and the Church would, as in the 
 first ages, be again made up of members voluntarily 
 uniting themselves together throughout the whole 
 world, having indeed a legal recognition here and 
 there, but isolated among the nations, without any 
 contact with the kingdoms of the world as such. 
 The state of the world before Constantine would be 
 reproduced; the Church would descend again, if I 
 may so say, into the Catacombs, and would be hid- 
 den from society ; it would cease to take its place 
 with the powers of the world, having an existence be- 
 side and above them. It would cease to be seen in the 
 councils of princes, in legislatures and parliaments, 
 to have a status in the world ; it would have no place 
 in diplomacy as a contracting power, or in the public 
 legislature except to be prohibited. Now it must be 
 evident at once that this deposition of the Vicar of 
 Jesus Christ and of the Church from their relation 
 to the civil powers of the world, would entirely dis- 
 solve the bonds and the order of Christian Europe. 
 So clearly is this seen at this moment, that there 
 comes a voice even from schismatical Eussia, which 
 
58 TEMPORAL SOVEKEIGXTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 has no part in the nnity of the Catholic Church, and 
 from the statesmen of schismatical England, who are 
 always in hostility to the Holy See, declaring that 
 such an event would destroy the constituted basis of 
 the civilised order of the Christian world. 
 
 II. A further effect would be, to put the civil and 
 spiritual powers in conflict throughout the whole 
 world. The moment the head and centre of Chris- 
 tendom shall have lost his sovereignty, from that 
 moment the Church throughout its whole extension 
 will virtually lose its independence. The moment the 
 Bishop of Eome is reduced to the condition of the 
 Archbishop of Paris or the Archbishop of Vienna, the 
 civil supremacy which presses upon them would be 
 redoubled in its weight. They would have no sup- 
 port upon which they could fall back. They would 
 be treated as the Archbishop of Canterbury or the 
 Patriarchs of Moscow ; the latter indeed having now 
 no person to represent the office, which is vested by 
 commission in what is called the cBcumenical synod, 
 chiefly composed of the imperial family of Eussia. 
 The moment the civil supremacy of the Church is 
 overturned, then the Church in all the kingdoms of 
 the earth, instead of standing as it does now in the 
 relation of independence to the civil powers of 
 Europe, would immediately be regarded as sul^ject. 
 
 The effect of this would be, first of all, an uneasy 
 relation of jealousy, undefined limits of jurisdiction. 
 
Lect. III.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OP THE POPES. 59 
 
 claims and counter claims, interference and clashing 
 of tribunals and judgments — between the spiritual 
 and civil powers : a condition of things which existed 
 for centuries before the Eeformation in England, 
 and which has continued in certain parts of the 
 Continent; as, for instance, in France, during the 
 contests of the Gallican liberties, as they are called, 
 or Gallican servitudes, as they might be more rightly 
 named ; in Portugal in the last century ; in Austria 
 under Joseph the Second, when the two powers were 
 in continual variance, always jealous, and always in 
 conflict. Then comes a crisis. "What, in fact, was 
 the Eeformation in England under Henry VIII. but 
 simply a crisis in this conflict ? And after the crisis, 
 there would in the end come a system of penal laws, 
 more unrelenting, more sanguinary, more merciless, 
 more refined than the world has ever seen ; for 
 naodern legislatures have acquired a subtilty, a keen- 
 ness of instinct, and a power of accomplishing what 
 that keen instinct dictates, which was unknown in the 
 ruder times of persecution. Witness the penal laws 
 of England, and still more the penal laws of Ireland, 
 for there is not in all the legislation of the world any- 
 thing more terrible than the Irish penal laws. I will 
 not now stay to narrate what they were ; any one 
 who desires to know them may read them in a very 
 common book — Brennan's History of the Church in 
 Ireland. Anything more hateful, or more godless. 
 
6o TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 than some of those penal statutes, the history of the 
 world cannot show. This, however, is the legitimate 
 result of a conflict between the spiritual and tem- 
 poral powers : it begins with an uneasy jealousy — it 
 may be a conflict in Vienna or in Paris, as in the 
 last century, which, carried to its legitimate conse- 
 quence, ends in a system of penal laws, by which 
 the spiritual power is again reduced to a state of 
 bondage; or in a persecution of 1793. 
 
 III. The third effect of the dissolution of the 
 temporal sovereignty of the Popes is one to which 
 I think the politicians of this world and the people 
 who love liberty will do well to look. The moment 
 the spiritual power is subjected to the temporal, 
 comes that worst form of human government, an 
 unlimited despotism. The only limitation and check 
 upon the abuse of temporal power is the indepen- 
 dence of the spiritual; the spiritual power, being 
 independent of the civil, stands by the throne of 
 princes, to restrain them from excesses of their 
 authority. If you wish to find despotism, look at 
 Sweden, Denmark, and England during the high 
 times of Protestant ascendency. If you wish for an 
 authority for this, read one least liable to suspicion. 
 Laing, in his Notes on Europe and on Sweden, which 
 are two distinct books, gives facts which satisfactorily 
 prove that it is in Protestant countries especially that 
 monarchies have become despotic ; and that where- 
 
Lect. III.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 6l 
 
 soever in Catholic countries the old traditionary 
 limitations of the civil power, by their relations to 
 the spiritual, have been preserved, there monarchy 
 has always been mitigated. It is a significant fact, 
 that the power which at the present moment is in 
 open conflict with the sovereignty of the Holy See is, 
 at this very time, exercising a repression on all popu- 
 lar movements, all intellect, all will, all thought, all 
 speech in its legislative assemblies, in the freedom of 
 its press, in the action of private persons, in the ex- 
 pression of their opinions, such as I know not to exist 
 in any other country in Europe. I believe that it is 
 a certain fact in history, that in proportion as the 
 spiritual power in any country is depressed, the 
 despotism of the temporal power rises ; and in pro- 
 portion as the sovereignty of the spiritual power is 
 elevated, the despotism of the temporal power is 
 held in check. 
 
 IV. The fourth effect would be to let loose an irre- 
 sistible spirit of revolution ; for violent repressions 
 of the popular will are surely followed by equally 
 strong reactions and counteractions. From the 
 despotism of the old French monarchy, the first 
 French Eevolution was the natural, inevitable re- 
 coil. And we may regard it as certain, that the 
 history of Europe will hereafter have to record that 
 which it has recorded before in a similar instance. 
 Of this point, however, I say no more. 
 
62 TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 Now it may be asked, is, then, all revolution 
 unlawful? To which I answer by asking, is all 
 homicide unlawful ? No man will say that homicide 
 is always lawful, and no man will say that homicide 
 is never lawful ; no man will ever say that warfare 
 is always lawful, and no man will say that warfare 
 is never lawful. It is certain that if a man seeks my 
 life, I may take his in self-defence. It is certain that 
 if a kingdom makes war upon another, the latter may 
 take up arms in self-defence. And such a homicide 
 and such a warfare would not only be lawful, but 
 would be j ust. There are cases, therefore, in which 
 homicide may be lawful, and in which war may be 
 lawful : but war and homicide are only lawful excep- 
 tionally, and unless justified by their occasion are 
 absolutely unlawful. Now what is this exception ? It 
 is lawful to use self-defence to protect life ; nature 
 has implanted it in man, nature has bestowed it on 
 society. What is warfare but the privilege and 
 principle of self-defence, used against an external 
 enemy ? Por which reason, all defensive wars are 
 lawful, but no offensive war is lawful No war of 
 mere aggression, of mere conquest, can be lawful; 
 but a war of self-defence is always lawful. A war of 
 self-defence may be of two kinds ; it may be either 
 the repulse of an attack, or it may be the anticipa- 
 tion of hostilities. If a man approaches me armed 
 with a deadly weapon, and I know with moral cer- 
 
Lect. Ill] TEMPORAL' SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 63 
 
 tainty that oue moment will forfeit my life, I am 
 justified in taking his, that is in anticipating the act 
 of aggression. So, if one kingdom or people knew 
 that another was hovering upon its frontier with an 
 armed force, M^hich would certainly descend upon it 
 like an inundation, that people would be justified in 
 arming its legions and going out to war. War, there- 
 fore, which is against a foreign enemy may be lawful. 
 What, then, is the rule with regard to internal war ? 
 Suppose a prince were to become the enemy of his 
 people, and were to levy war upon them ; if he were 
 to take their lives, and the lives of their children; 
 such a people would be justified in protecting them- 
 selves by the primary law of nature. There is no 
 doubt that if a prince were to put himself out of the 
 pale of civil and political life, by threatening his 
 people in such a way that they knew it to be a mere 
 question of time when he should commence a san- 
 guinary and fatal attack upon them, they would be 
 justified in preventing it. The Church has again 
 and again recognised the lawfulness and justice of 
 such a proceeding : for the judgment of a whole 
 people, the common sense of a Christian nation, is an 
 instinct so high, that in the ordinary course of his- 
 tory we hardly ever find it wrong ; and those princes 
 who have been hurled from their thrones by the 
 judgments of the Supreme Pontiffs, such as Philip I. 
 of France, Henry IV. of Germany, Frederick II. of 
 
64 TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 Germany, were tyrants already denounced by the 
 mass of tlieir people, on account of the wrongs they 
 had committed. I do not say, therefore, that there 
 never can come to pass a case in which a people in 
 self-defence may be justified in protecting themselves 
 from acts on the part of their rulers, of so grave and 
 injurious a nature as to involve in fact the life and 
 the moral and social well-being of the people ; but 
 this I say, that unless a revolution can be justified by 
 causes as grave as those which I have defined, where- 
 by it puts off the character of a revolution, and puts 
 on the character of a judicial process and of a solemn 
 and public legislative act, by the will of the people at 
 large, I know of no plea that can clear a revolution 
 of guilt in the sight of God. I believe that every 
 revolution which is made for a light cause, and 
 every revolution which is made for a superficial 
 cause, comes under the sentence of the Holy Ghost, 
 in the words of the Apostle with which I began, that 
 '' He that resisteth the power resisteth the ordi- 
 nance of God, and shall have purchased judgment 
 for himself." 
 
 Now let me apply this to the subject which is 
 before us. We are told, that a . large part of the 
 dominions of the Holy Father is in revolution : I ask, 
 then, is this a revolution which is justifiable ? or is 
 this a rebellion ? Let us inquire into the causes. 
 
 But before I speak of these in detail, I cannot 
 
Lect. III.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 65 
 
 refrain from saying one word upon the state of public 
 credulity in England. England, a most cultivated 
 and enlightened nation, a nation so literary that it 
 is every day deluged with newspapers, which it 
 reads as it would read a shower of gospels, is of all 
 the nations of Europe the most credulous. I hardly 
 know one that is so readily and so easily deceived as 
 England. And what makes it the more wonderful is 
 this, that other nations, which have not the same 
 profuse freedom of communication, are deceived with 
 their eyes either shut or but half-open ; while Eng- 
 land is deceived with its eyes open, with the whole 
 flood of the light of the newspaper press upon it ; and 
 it is deceived into believing things so profoundly 
 absurd, so far from fact or truth, that nothing but a 
 disposition of the will to believe that which it reads 
 can account for it. It reminds me of a picture which 
 I saw publicly exhibited last year. It made a great 
 impression upon me. It was a beautiful painting, 
 representing two boys, one with his hands clenched, 
 with contracted features, and with a storm of passion 
 lowering on his brow. Though he was represented as 
 being but twelve or thirteen years of age, or even 
 less, he appeared to have all the intensity, all the 
 earnestness of Italy, in her present depressed state, 
 working in his intellect and in his heart. He was a 
 picture of misery, of bitterness, of animosity, and of 
 resentment. By his side stood a fair boy, with all 
 
66 TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 the ease and flexibility of youth, broad and vigor- 
 ously built, with an open countenance, exhibiting 
 the aspect of an English boy, full of freedom, full of 
 sunshine, full of joy. This was the contrast of Italy 
 and England; no doubt those that saw it believed 
 that they had here an exact picture of the peasantry 
 in the Eoman States — poor, miserable, degraded, tor- 
 tured, embittered. I would that I could bring before 
 those that look upon such a picture what I have 
 myself continually seen ; a little Eoman peasant boy, 
 perhaps twelve years old, with the quiet self-posses- 
 sion, with the courage and fearlessness of a man, 
 with a long ox-goad driving -a bullock or buffalo 
 along the road, exhibiting the vigour, I may say, of 
 manhood — a traditional type of the race whose name 
 he bears. Or see these same children on the side of 
 some gentle knoll in the Campagna, playing together 
 with a spirit of joy such as is seldom found in poor 
 English village children ; or watch them, it may be, 
 kneeling by the way-side with head uncovered, say- 
 ing their rosary or their prayers before some shrine 
 of devotion ; and then compare them with the poor, 
 sallow, shrunken boys whom we see day by day in 
 the streets of London, in the hands of the police, 
 going first to the prison and then to the refoimatory, 
 for stealing, it may be, a broken bottle or a crust of 
 bread. Now I say that my picture is equally truth- 
 ful ; and if I were to paint this and have it exhibited. 
 
Lect. III.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 67 
 
 all the English world would rise up ia a flame of 
 indignation, and would denounce me as false. I say- 
 in like manner, the other picture was a falsehood. 
 Nevertheless, it is an exact illustration of the per- 
 petual caricatures made of the Eoman states in the 
 public newspapers of England. I can compare such 
 accounts to nothing but to a history published in Con- 
 stantinople in the time of Belisarius. In the midst 
 of the high refinement and education of the Byzantine 
 court, there was an historian who said that in Britain 
 (it was our turn then) there was a province within 
 which the land was uninhabitable, because covered 
 with serpents, and the atmosphere so poisonous that no 
 man could breathe it and live ; and that night by night 
 to this province of Britain the dead from the continent 
 of Europe were conveyed by a race of seamen who 
 were fishermen, and that the seamen felt their boats 
 depressed in the water by the weight of the souls they 
 carried. They heard the dead men speak, but never 
 saw their forms.* This was believed at that day 
 in Constantinople, as these representations of the 
 Eoman states are believed now in England. I will 
 venture to say there is not a subject upon which the 
 ■English people are more profoundly misinformed 
 than the actual internal condition of the Roman states. 
 If a revolutionist writes a book, as a certain Earini did, 
 one of our statesmen can be found to translate it into 
 Macaulay's History of England, Tol. i. p. 5. 
 
68 TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 English. In that book will be found a wholly one- 
 sided report of all which can be said against Eome in 
 regard to taxes, duties on salt, detention of prisoners, 
 and the like ; and then the English people, who are 
 immersed in details of this sort, imagine that this 
 constitutes a condition of misgovernment intolerable 
 to a Christian people. 
 
 Now I shall not be too bold if I say that the 
 causes of the present revolution in the States of the 
 Church are to be found not from within, but from 
 without. They do not arise from any springs of bit- 
 terness which are native to the soil. The cause of 
 the present state of that country I believe to be this. 
 First of all, by long tradition, an animosity and a 
 hostility has been cherished in, and by means of, the 
 secret societies which date from the Middle Ages. 
 We in England, in our insular unconsciousness of the 
 state of foreign countries, read of these secret societies 
 as a thing of the past. There they live, they are in full 
 activity, in full intelligence, in full communication at 
 this moment, as they were in ages past. Next, the 
 theory of political society, which is the consequence 
 of the Protestant Eeformation, and in particular the 
 right of popular insurrection, and the rejection of any 
 external arbitration or judgment between peoples and 
 their princes, has already affected the whole political 
 state of Europe. It has passed over Germany, over 
 France, over England, and over Spain, and has now 
 
Lsct. III.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. " 69 
 
 descended into Italy. Thirdly, the infidelity of Vol- 
 taire, and of the great French school founded by him 
 and his companions, penetrated largely into Italy 
 in the last century. Then the revolution of 1793 in 
 France set the revolutionary principle in motion, 
 which penetrated the whole length of the Italian 
 peninsula. Again, the invasion by the French under 
 the first ISTapoleon deluged Italy anew with the French 
 revolutionary spirit. All the municipal institutions of 
 the traditional Eoman government, all that which had 
 constituted the free government of the Eoman states 
 from the Middle Ages downwards, were suddenly 
 abolished, and the Code Napoleon imposed instead. 
 Again, there has been an active co-operation from the 
 beginning of the present century of the modern re- 
 volutionary societies, and they have made the Eoman 
 states the focus of their conspiracies. Once more, the 
 disaffected from every part, not of Italy alone, but of 
 France and Germany, and of England to her shame, 
 have congregated in Eome and in the Eoman states. 
 Further, the war in the beginning of the last year 
 has had its effects. We, in our simplicity, imagine 
 that Italy was as calm and tranquil when the whole 
 of its North was shaken by the concussion of a mighty 
 conflict as Yorkshire or as Scotland We are so 
 utterly unused to the effects of continental move- 
 ments, and so little imderstand how one continental 
 nation is affected by another, — for our four seas so 
 
70 TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 gird us round, — that we cannot conceive how the 
 influence of the war in Lombardy should have pene- 
 trated everywhere in the Eoman state. Then there 
 were armies hovering on its frontiers ; there were 
 distributions of arms among its people ; there were 
 inflammatory proclamations and incitements of every 
 kind scattered broadcast among its population ; there 
 were emissaries of foreign countries, intrigues the 
 most unscrupulous. Portions of the Eoman popula- 
 tion were organised, trained, and disciplined to arms 
 by officers of the kingdom of Sardinia. I ask, do you 
 reqiiire further reasons why a portion of the Holy 
 Father's states are in opposition to bim ? It is be- 
 cause the whole flood of external revolution has found 
 its' home there, and because of the flagrant amljition 
 of neighbouring states. 
 
 Now I ask you, is this a condition ia which revolu- 
 tion is justified by the principles I have laid down in 
 the beginning ? Has the Sovereign Pontiff levied war 
 upon his subjects ? Has he threatened the life of any 
 man ? Whose shoe-latchet, whose ox, or whose ass, 
 has he taken ? Can he not, in the words of the man 
 of God, the man Moses, the meekest of men upon 
 earth, put his people to the test, and ask whom he 
 has wronged ? Where, then, is the justification for a 
 movement such as this ? I ask further, if this sti- 
 mulus to revolution had been applied to Canada, — 
 if those who hovered about its frontiers some years 
 
Lect. III.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 7 I 
 
 ago had been aided by all these causes of revolution, 
 — would Canada be British now ? If the same 
 had been tried in 1798, or in 1848, upon a country 
 nearer to the shores of England, nay, I say upon an 
 English county, though it were the royal county of 
 Cornwall, they would not have resisted causes of re- 
 bellion like these, nor would they have retained their 
 loyalty and allegiance to the crown of England. I 
 say, then, it is hypocrisy, when the public events of 
 the world and the public history of Europe give the 
 reasons of this rebellion, to cast the blame of it upon 
 him who is blameless. Any man who knows the 
 character of Pius IX., any man who has read his 
 history, has watched his acts, knows that since his 
 pontificate not one man has died for political offences ; 
 while the lives even of many who have been taken 
 in homicide have been spared by him, and their 
 punishments commuted to imprisonment. If the pri- 
 sons are full, it is because offences which in England 
 are avenged with capital punishment are there treated 
 in a milder way. The very mildness of the Eoman 
 law multiplies its prisoners, and then Europe rises up 
 and cries out on the state of the Eoman prisons. I 
 might go on ; I might add many instances. But it is 
 enough for me to say that I challenge any man to 
 show a cause to justify the rebellion of any portion of 
 the Eoman state, which would not, at the same time, 
 not only justify the United States in the War of In- 
 
72 TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 dependence — which British statesmen then so loudly 
 and eloquently denounced — but would justify every 
 English colony in resisting the legislature of the 
 mother country. I would ask any man to show 
 any cause to justify the rising of any portion of the 
 Pope's dominions, which would not at the same time 
 set in motion the unlimited principle of revolution 
 in all nations. 
 
 V. The last point upon which I would speak is this, 
 the end of this conflict with the Catholic Church will 
 be to desecrate the civil powers of the world. So long 
 as they continue in a relation of amity with the Chris- 
 tian Church by which they were created, they them- 
 selves continue Christian and are consecrated ; the 
 moment they revolt from it they desecrate themselves. 
 By a desecrated power I mean a power which does 
 not acknowledge any form of faith as an obligation 
 upon its conscience. Now look at Protestant coun- 
 tries ; look, for instance, at our own. "What is the 
 form of faith which is held in England to be binding 
 upon the conscience of the English people ? Not the 
 Established Church ; for that is not infallible. At the 
 Eeformation it was declared that the Church of Eng- 
 land might err ; and therefore its religion cannot be 
 binding upon the conscience. It may be binding by 
 law, and most sanguinary laws were made to bind it 
 upon the consciences of Englishmen ; and what has 
 been their effect ? More than one half of the whole 
 
Lectin.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 73 
 
 English population is in dissent, following every form 
 of contradictory Christianity. And of the Established 
 Church itself, which of its many forms of Christian 
 opinion does the law of the land make obligatory on 
 its ministers or its people ? We see at this moment 
 that every form of contradiction prevails in it ; a 
 state of things producing doubt, scepticism, infidelity, 
 hatred of Christianity. There I see a civil power 
 desecrated. In'ow I will not dwell on other examples. 
 France, after the Eevolution of 1830, declared by its 
 first organic articles that there was no state religion ; 
 France, therefore, has desecrated itself. The mass of 
 the French people, being Catholic, remain in union 
 with the Holy See, and are still upholders of Christian 
 order. But the civil power of France is desecrated. 
 Next, in regard to morals. In the year 1793 the old 
 Christian and Catholic law of marriage was abolished 
 in France, and the law of divorce was admitted. 
 "Within three months of that one year, the divorces 
 were 570, and the whole number of marriages in Paris 
 during the whole twelve months of that year was 
 1700. That is, the divorces were more than one- 
 third compared with the marriages. What has been 
 the moral condition of that people, I leave history to 
 say. I should not quote this, if it were not to drive 
 home a fact which the last two years have recorded 
 in the statutes of England. Marriage up to that year 
 was indissoluble in England. Marriage in England 
 
74 TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 is indissoluble no longer, except for those who are in 
 union with the Holy See. The only witness for the 
 indissolubleness of marriage, which is the root of civil 
 society, the foundation of domestic life, the fountain 
 and source of all the sanctities and purities of the 
 world, — that which, I will say, next after the institu- 
 tion of the Church itself, is the cause and principle of 
 all that is holy upon earth, the sole and only witness 
 in the world that testifies to it, is the Church of 
 Eome. The schismatical Greek has given it up ; the 
 schismatical Protestant has given it up. It is a step 
 towards the license of that greater apostasy, the 
 apostasy of Mahomet. The sole and only guardian 
 of morals in the world is the one, holy. Catholic, and 
 Eoman Church, represented and impersonated in the 
 Supreme Pontiff; 
 
 When the civil powers of the world shall desecrate 
 themselves and lose their relation to Christianity, they 
 will inaugurate the beginning of the last times, when 
 Antichrist shall come. It was foretold by a holy 
 father, St. Hippolytus, that before the end of the 
 world, the Eoman empire would be broken up 
 into ten democracies, and that paganism would be 
 restored. How shall we interpret this strange pro- 
 phecy ? The facts of the modern world give us the 
 interpretation. Natural society, which when once 
 subjugated by the providence of God became Chris- 
 tian Europe, will again break forth. It wUl resume 
 
Lect. III.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 75 
 
 its powers of unregenerated and uncliastened will and 
 passion, and men will constitute a society which is 
 not of God. Christian Europe is God's society ; but 
 society without faith is the society of man, the an- 
 tagonist of God. " That which is born of the flesh, is 
 flesh ; that which is born of the Spirit, is spirit." * 
 There is an irreconcilable conflict between these two 
 principles. Do not you think that I am extravagant, 
 and going out of all bounds and measure in what I 
 say. What, I ask you, was the first French Eevo- 
 lution but paganism revived ? "What was the Gari- 
 baldian rising in 1848 but old heathenism, which 
 had been subdued in Italy and Eome, and held under 
 by the Christian order of Europe, striving once more 
 for the ascendency, with its impiety, its infidelity, its 
 blasphemy against God ? 
 
 This is the end to which the fair structure of 
 Christian Europe seems tending. I do not say it 
 will ever arrive at this end, for the providence of 
 God may indeed check its course. Of this I know 
 nothing. But of this I am sure, if I see two lines 
 drawn apparently parallel, and yet converging by no 
 more than a hair's- breadth, though they should reach 
 to a distance far beyond the horizon, I could predict 
 with the certainty of an inspired man that those con- 
 verging lines must meet. If I see certain great anti- 
 christian principles in motion throughout Europe, I 
 * St. John iii. 6. 
 
76 TEMPORAL SOVEKEIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 need no inspiration, no gift of prophecy, to say that, 
 give those priaciples and movements time to work out 
 their result, that result must be the destruction of the 
 Christian society of Europe, and the restoration of 
 the natural society of man without God in the world. 
 
 Now I have said all that I can at this time ; and 
 with one word I wiU conclude. They who lend a hand 
 to this work of destruction, they who speak a word 
 for it, they who sympathise with it, are all against 
 God, and will purchase to themselves judgment ac- 
 cording to their proportion. What their proportion 
 may be, I know not. 
 
 That judgment will be in this world and in the 
 next. Eead the history of Christian Europe, and 
 look along the line of its monarchs who have con- 
 tended with the Vicar of Christ, and find me one 
 who has ever contended against the temporal sove- 
 reignty of the Vicar of our divine Lord, and has not 
 been chastised. Find me one who has ever dared to 
 resist the divine ordinance of God, in whose history 
 there is not written — nay scored, in characters so 
 deep that the lapse of ages cannot efface them — the 
 judgment of God upon that rebellious head. I will 
 not go to old examples ; I will take only one fresh in 
 these days. There was one who rose to a zenith of 
 power in Europe which has never been surpassed. 
 The whole of France was under his feet ; his arms 
 had won the dominion of Spain ; Germany had been 
 
Lect. III.] TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. ^^ 
 
 beaten down again and again in a succession of 
 battles. He had been crowned King of Italy. There 
 was a king of Eome of his own making; Belgium 
 was his ; Sweden was reigned over by his creature ; 
 England alone remained, as it were, floating on the 
 waves, and was one last home of freedom defended by 
 its own waters. These were the only barriers to his 
 universal rule. But in the zenith of his power he saw 
 an old defenceless man in the Vatican, whom, most 
 unchivalrously, his armed men hurried away in the 
 dead of the night. Weak and sick as he was, they 
 hurried him along, with the blinds of his carriage 
 do^n, lest whosoever should see him should recog- 
 nise him to be the Vicar of Christ. That poor feeble 
 prey was in the grasp of the eagle ; he was impri- 
 soned at Savona and at Fontainebleau. This great 
 Emperor was king of the world ; and when this lonely 
 feeble man affixed to the doors of his church the sen- 
 tence of excommunication, the Emperor said, " Does 
 he think this will make the muskets fall from the 
 hands of my soldiers ? " — " Within three short years,'' 
 as an historian, and himself a soldier in that great 
 and terrible expedition, writes, " our men could not 
 hold their muskets." You know the history; that 
 which has been shall be. 
 
 I urge you, therefore, think with the Church; 
 live with the Church ; let your whole heart and soul, 
 every thought of your intellect, every affection of 
 
78 TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY OF THE POPES. 
 
 your heart, every emotion of your will, be with the 
 Church of God. The Church of God is the presence 
 of God, and the mind of the Church is the mind of 
 God, and the voice of the Church is the voice of God. 
 Next, love the person of the Yicar of Christ — not as 
 an abstract principle, not the Holy See, not an insti- 
 tution, but the living breathing man, who has upon 
 him the dignity and the unction of the Great High 
 Priest. Be filially devoted to him ; for the time is 
 come when, according to the prophecy, he is the sign 
 which shall be spoken against ; he is set for the fall 
 and for the rising again of nations. He is the test of 
 the world; Pius IX., that despised name to those 
 who are not of his family, is sifting the nations. 
 And there are voices coming up now as of old, 
 "Hail, King of the Jews!" and they would fain 
 blindfold him, and buffet him, and spit upon his 
 face. They mock him as a false king with a feeble 
 reed, as an impotent king with a crown of thorns. . 
 They offer the mock loyalty of a revolting people, 
 and they say, " Away with him ! we will not have 
 this man to reign over us ; we have no king but 
 Caesar." But he is Vicar of Him who will judge the 
 world. 
 
PART SECOND. 
 
 W^t perpetual ((Cantttct ai tfje Ftcar of 
 
LECTUEE I. 
 
 1 AM well aware that the truths and principles of 
 Eevelation have been, by the common consent of 
 public men, formally excluded from the sphere of 
 politics, and that to apply them as tests to the events 
 of the world is regarded, in these days, as a weakness 
 of mind. They who reject Eevelation altogether, are 
 consistent in such a judgment ; but with what con- 
 sistency they who profess to believe in a revelation 
 of the Divine government of the world, nevertheless 
 consent to exclude it from the field of contempora- 
 neous history, I cannot tell. I am therefore going, 
 prudens et videns, to run counter to the popular spirit 
 of these times, and it may be to expose myself to 
 the contempt or compassion of those who believe the 
 world to be governed by the action of the human will 
 alone. To this I resign myself very willingly, and 
 with no perturbation. My intention is, to examine 
 the present relation of the Church to the civil powers 
 of the world, by the light of a prophecy recorded by 
 St. Paul, and to draw out certain principles of a prac- 
 
82 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 tical kind for the direction of those ■who believe that 
 the Divine will is also present in the events now 
 taking place before our eyes. 
 
 I am not about to enter upon expositions of the 
 Apocalypse, or to calculate the year of the end of the 
 world. This I leave to those who may be called to it. 
 The points I propose to take are few and practical ; 
 and the result I desire to attain is a clearer dis- 
 cernment of what principles are Christian, and 
 what are Antichristian, and a surer appreciation of 
 the character of the events by which the Church 
 and the Holy See are at present tried. 
 
 St. Paul, writing to the Thessalonians, says : " Let 
 no man deceive you by any means : for unless there 
 come a revolt first, and the man of sin be revealed, 
 the son of perdition, who opposeth, and is lifted up 
 above all that is called God, or that is worshipped, so 
 that he sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself 
 as if he were God. Eemember you not, that when I 
 was yet with you, I told you these things ? And now 
 you know what withholdeth, that he may be revealed 
 in his time. For the mystery of iniquity already 
 worketh : only that he who now holdeth, do hold, 
 until he be taken out of the way, and then that wicked 
 one shall be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus shall kiU 
 with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with 
 the brightness of his coming : him, whose coming is 
 according to the working of Satan, in all power, and 
 
Leet. I.] THE VICAE OF JESTJS CHRIST. 83 
 
 signs, and lying wonders, and in all seduction of 
 iniquity to them that perish : because they received 
 not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. 
 Therefore God shall send them the operation of error, 
 to believe lying : that all may be judged who have 
 not believed the truth, but have consented to ini- 
 quity."* 
 
 We have here a prophecy of f oUr great facts : first, 
 of a revolt, which shall precede the second coming of 
 our Lord ; secondly, of the manifestation of one who 
 is called " the wicked one ; " thirdly, of a hindrance, 
 which restrains his manifestation ; and lastly, of the 
 period of power and persecution, of M'hich he will be 
 the author. 
 
 In treating of this subject, I shall not venture 
 upon any conjectures of my own, but shall deliver 
 simply what I find either in the Fathers of the 
 Church, or in such theologians as the Church has 
 recognised, namely, Bellarmine, Lessius, Malvenda, 
 Viegas, Suarez, Eibera, and others. 
 
 First, then, what is the revolt? In the original 
 it is called amoaTadia, " an apostasy ; " and in the 
 Vulgate, discessio, or " a departure." Now a revolt 
 implies a seditious separation from some authority, 
 and a consequent opposition to it. 
 
 If we can find the authority, we shall find perhaps 
 also the revolt. 
 
 * 2 T113SS. ii. 3-1 1. Cornell Catholic 
 
 Union Library. 
 
84 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 ISTow there are in the world but two ultimate 
 authorities, the civil and the spiritual, and this revolt 
 must be either a sedition or a schism. Moreover, it 
 must be something upon a wide field, and in propor- 
 tion to the terms and events of the prediction. 
 
 St. Jerome, with some others, interprets this re- 
 volt to be the rebellion of the nations or provinces 
 against the Eoman Empire. He says, " Nisi venerit 
 discessio . . . ut omnes gentes, quae Eomano Imperio 
 subjacent, recedant ab eo ; " * an interpretation we 
 need not examine, forasmuch as the events of Chris- 
 tian history refute it. They have revolted, and no 
 manifestation has appeared. It seems to need little 
 proof that this revolt or apostasy is a separation, not 
 from the civil, but from the spiritual order and 
 authority ; for the sacred writers, again and again, 
 speak of such a spiritual separation ; and in one place 
 St. Paul seems expressly to declare the meaning of 
 this word. He forewarns St. Timothy that in the 
 later days, rwe? airoaTriaovTai airo t?;? iriaTeax;, 
 " some shall depart or apostatise from the faith ; " and 
 it seems evident that the same spiritual falling away 
 is intended by the apostasy in this place. 
 
 The authority, then, from which the revolt is to 
 
 take place is that of the kingdom of God on earth, 
 
 prophesied by Daniel as the kingdom which the God 
 
 of heaven should set up, after the four kingdoms 
 
 * S. Hier. Ep. ad Algasiam. 
 
Leot. I.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 85 
 
 should be destroyed by the stone cut out without 
 hands, which became a great mountain and filled the 
 whole earth ; or, in other words, the one and universal 
 Church, founded by our Divine Lord, and spread by 
 His Apostles throughout the world. In this one only 
 supernatural kingdom was deposited the true and 
 pure theism, or knowledge of God, and the true and 
 only faith of God incarnate, with the doctrines and 
 laws of grace. This, then, is the authority from 
 which the revolt is to be made, be that revolt what 
 it may. 
 
 Such being the authority against which the revolt 
 is made, it cannot be difficult to ascertain its char- 
 acter. The inspired writers expressly describe its 
 notes. 
 
 The first is, schism, as given by St. John : " It is 
 the last hour : and as you have heard that Antichrist 
 Cometh : even now there are become many Anti- 
 christs : whereby we know that it is the last hour. 
 They went out from us ; but they were not of us. Por 
 if they had been of us, they wotild no doubt have 
 remained with us."* 
 
 The second note is, the rejection of the of&ce and 
 presence of the Holy Ghost. St. Jude says, " These 
 are they, who separate themselves, sensual men " {i.e. 
 'tp'Vxi'K'oi, animal or merely rational and natural men), 
 " having not the spirit."! This necessarily involves 
 ' I St. John ii. 18, 19. t St. Jude 19. 
 
86 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 the heretical principle of human opinion as opposed 
 to Divine faith ; of the private spirit as opposed to 
 the infalHble voice of the Holy Spirit, speaking 
 through the Church of God. 
 
 The third note is, the denial of the Incarnation. 
 St. John writes, " Every spirit which confesseth that 
 Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God : and 
 every spirit that dissolveth Jesus " (that is, by deny- 
 ing the mystery of the Incarnation, either the true 
 Godhead, or the true manhood, or the unity or 
 divinity of the person of the Incarnate Son) " is not 
 of God, and this is Antichrist, of whom you have 
 heard that he cometh, and he is now already in the 
 world."* — ^Again he says, " Many seducers are gone 
 out into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ 
 is come in the flesh : this is a seducer and an Anti- 
 christ." t 
 
 These, then, are the marks by which, as the 
 Church is to be known by her notes, the antichristian 
 revolt, or apostasy, may be distinguished. "We will 
 now see whether they can be verified in the history of 
 Christianity, or in the present position of the Church 
 in the world. 
 
 The first point to notice is, that both St. Paul and 
 St. Peter speak of this antichristian revolt as already 
 begun in their own day. 
 
 St. Paul says, "The mystery of iniquity already 
 * St. John iv. 2, 3. t 2 Epis. 7. 
 
Lect. I.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. S7 
 
 worketh : only that he who now holdeth do hold, 
 until he be taken out of the way."* And St. John 
 expressly, in the above-quoted places : " It is the 
 last hour : and as you have heard that Antichrist 
 Cometh, even now there are become many Anti- 
 christs : whereby we know that it is the last hour."f 
 Again, " This is Aatichrist, of whom you have heard 
 that he cometh, and he is now already in the world."| 
 
 We must look, then, for the beginnings of this 
 revolt in the times of the Apostles. The spirit of 
 Antichrist was at work as soon as Christ was mani- 
 fested to the world. In one word, therefore, it de- 
 scribes the continuous working of the spirit of heresy, 
 which from the beginning has run parallel to the 
 faith. 
 
 It is evident that St. Paul and St. John applied 
 these terms to the Nicolaitans, the Gnostics, and the 
 like. The three notes of Antichrist, schism, heresy, 
 and the denial of the Incarnation, were manifest in 
 them. It is also applicable to the Sabellian, Arian, 
 Semiarian, Monophysite, Monothelite, Eutychian, and 
 Macedonian heresies. The principles are identical ; 
 the development various, but only accidental. And 
 so, throughout these eighteen hundred years, every 
 successive heresy has generated schism, and every 
 schism has generated heresy ; and all alike deny the 
 
 * 2 Thess. ii. 7. t i St. Jolm ii. 18. 
 
 J I St. Jolm V. 3. 
 
85 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 Divine Voice of the Holy Ghost speaking continu- 
 ously through the Church ; and all alike substitute 
 human opinion for Divine faith ; and all alike work 
 out, by a sure process, some more rapidly, and some 
 more slowly, a denial of the Incarnation of the 
 Eternal Son. Some may start with it in the outset, 
 others resolve themselves into it by a long and un- 
 foreseen transmutation, as that of Protestantism into 
 Eationalism ; but all being identical in principle, are 
 identical also in their consequences. Every age has 
 its heresy, as every article of faith by denial receives 
 its definition ; and the course of heresy is measured 
 and periodical ; various materially, but formally one, 
 both in principle and in action ; so that all the heresies 
 from the beginning are no more than the continuous 
 development and expansion of " the mystery of ini- 
 quity," which was already at work. 
 
 Another phenomenon in the history of heresy is 
 its power of organising and perpetuating itself, at 
 least until it resolves itself into some more subtil 
 and aggressive form : for instance, Arianism, which 
 rivalled the Catholic Church in Constantinople, 
 Lombardy, and Spain; Donatism, which equalled the 
 Church in Africa ; Nestorianism, which outnumbered 
 the Church in Asia ; . Mahometanism, which punished 
 and absorbed most of its forerunners, and established, 
 in the East and South, the most terrible antichris- 
 tian military power the world has ever seen; and 
 
Lect. I.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 89 
 
 Protestantism, which has organised itself into a vast 
 political antagonist to the Holy See, not only in 
 the North, but, by its policy and diplomacy, even in 
 Catholic countries. 
 
 To this power of expansion must be added a cer- 
 tain morbid and noxious reproductionj Physiologists 
 tell us that there is a perfect ultimate unity even 
 in the countless diseases which devour the body; 
 nevertheless, each disease seems to throw out its pro- 
 geny by a corruption and reproduction. So in the 
 history and development of heresy. To name no 
 more than these, — Gnosticism, Arianism, and, above 
 all Protestantism, have generated each a multitude 
 of subordinate and affiliated heresies. But it is Pro- 
 testantism which, above all others, bears the three 
 notes of the inspired writers in the greatest breadth 
 and evidence. Other heresies have opposed parts 
 and details of the Christian faith and Church ; but 
 Protestantism, taken in its historical complex, as we 
 now are able, with the retrospect of three hundred 
 years, to measure it, reaching from the religion of 
 Luther, Calvin, and Cranmer at the one end, to the 
 Eationalism and Pantheism of England and Germany 
 at the other, is of all the most formal, detailed, and 
 commensurate antagonist of Christianity. I do not 
 mean that it has as yet attained its fall development, 
 for we shall see reasons to believe that it is still preg- 
 nant with a darker future ; but even as " the mystery 
 
90 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 of iniquity has already worked," no other antagonist 
 has as yet gone so deep in undermining the faith of 
 the Christian world. 
 
 I am not now pretending to write a treatise on 
 the reproductiveness of Protestantism. It is enough 
 to set down certain facts self-evident in the intellec- 
 tual history of the last three hundred years, namely, 
 that Socinianism, Eationalism, and Pantheism are the 
 legitimate offspring of the Lutheran and Calvanistic 
 heresies; and that Protestant England, the least 
 consecutive and consistent of Protestant countries, 
 affords at this moment a ready pabulum for the 
 reception and reproduction of these spirits of error. 
 
 All that I wish to point out is, to use a modem 
 phrase, that the movement of heresy is one and the 
 same from the beginning ; that the Gnostics were the 
 Protestants of their day, and the Protestants the 
 Gnostics of ours ; that the principle is identical, and 
 the bulk of the movement unfolded to greater propor- 
 tions ; and its successes accumulated, and its antagon- 
 ism to the Catholic Church changeless and essential. 
 There are two consequences or operations of this 
 movement so strange and so full of importance, as 
 bearing upon its relation to the Church, that I cannot 
 pass them by. 
 
 The first is, the development and worship of the 
 principle of nationality, which has always been found 
 in combination with heresy. 
 
Lect. I.] THE VICAE OF JESUS CHEIBT. 91 
 
 Now, the Incarnation abolished all national dis- 
 tinctions within the sphere of grace, and the Church 
 absorbed all nations into its supernatural unity. One 
 Fountain of spiritual jurisdiction, and one Divine 
 Voice, held together the wills and actions of a family 
 of nations. Sooner or later, every heresy has identi- 
 fied itself with the nation in which it arose. It has 
 lived by the support of civil powers, and they have 
 embodied the claim of national independence. 
 
 This movement, which is the key of the so-called 
 great Western schism, is the rationale also of the 
 Keformation ; and the last three hundred years have 
 given a development and intensity to the spirit of 
 separate nationalism, of which we as yet see no more 
 than the preludes. I need not point out how this 
 nationalism is essentially schismatical. This is to be 
 seen not only in the Anglican Eef ormation, but in the 
 GaUican liberties, and the contentions of Portugal in 
 Europe and in India, to name no more. 
 
 Now I have pointed out this result of heresy 
 because it verifies one of the three marks above-men- 
 tioned. If heresy in the individual dissolves the unity 
 of the Incarnation, heresy in a nation dissolves the 
 imity of the Church, which is built upon the Incar- 
 nation. And in this we see a truer and deeper 
 meaning of the words of St. Jerome than he foresaw 
 himself. It is not the revolt of nations from the 
 Eoman Empire, but the apostasy of nations from 
 
92 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 the kingdom of God, -whicli was set up on its ruins. 
 And this process of national defection, which began 
 openly with the Protestant Eeformation, is running its 
 course, as we shall see hereafter, even in nations still 
 nominally Catholic ; and the Church is putting off its 
 mediaeval character as the mother of nations, return- 
 ing again into its primitive condition as a society of 
 members scattered among the peoples and cities of 
 the world. 
 
 The other result I spoke of as the consequence of 
 the later workings of the heretical spirit is the deifi- 
 cation of humanity. This we have before us in two 
 distinct forms, namely, in the Pantheistic and in the 
 Positive philosophies ; or rather in the religion of 
 Positivism, the last aberration of Comte. 
 
 It would be impossible in this place to give an 
 adequate account of these two final developments of 
 unbelief ; to do so would need a treatise. It will be 
 enough to express, in a popular way, the outline of 
 these two forms of antichristian impiety. 
 
 I take the expression of the Pantheism of Ger- 
 many from two of its modern expositors, in whom it 
 may be said to culminate. We are told that, " Before 
 the time when creation began, we may imagine that 
 an infinite mind, an infinite essence, or an infinite 
 thought (for here all these are one), filled the universe 
 of space. This, then, as the self-existent One, must 
 be the only absolute reality ; all else can be but a 
 
Lect. I.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 93 
 
 developing of the one original and eternal being. . . . 
 This primary essence is not ... an infinite sub- 
 stance, having the two properties of extension and 
 thought, but an infinite, acting, producing, self-un- 
 folding mind — the living soul of the world." " If 
 we can view all things as the development of the 
 original and absolute principle of life, reason, or 
 being, then it is evident conversely that we may trace 
 the marks of the absolute in everything that exists, 
 and consequently may scan them in the operation of 
 our own minds, as one particular phase of its mani- 
 festation." 
 
 " In practical philosophy we have three move- 
 ments : the first is, that in which the active intelli- 
 gence shows itself operating within a limited circuit, 
 as in a single mind. This is the principle of indivi- 
 duality ; not as though the infinite intelligence were 
 something different from the finite, or as though 
 there were an infinite intelligence out of and apart 
 from the finite, but it is merely the absolute in one of 
 its particular moments ; just as an individual thought 
 is but a single moment of the whole mind. Each 
 finite reason, then, is but a thought of the infinite 
 and eternal reason." The absolute essence being 
 thus everything, all difference between God and the 
 universe is truly lost ; and Pantheism becomes com- 
 plete, " as the absolute is evolved from its lowest 
 form to the highest, in accordance with the necessary 
 
94 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 law or rhythm of its being, the whole world, mate- 
 rial and mental, becoming one enormous chain of 
 necessity, to which no idea of free creation can be 
 attached." * Again : " Deity is a process ever going 
 on, but nfever accomplished; nay, the Divine con- 
 sciousness is absolutely one with the advancing con- 
 sciousness of mankind. The hope of immortality 
 perishes ; for death is but the return of the individual 
 to the infinite, and man is anniUilated, though the 
 Deity will eternally live." f Once more : " Deity is 
 the eternal process of self-development as realised 
 in man ; the Divine and human consciousness falling 
 absolutely together." " The knowledge of God and 
 of his manifestations forms the subject of specula- 
 tive theology. ... Of these manifestations there are 
 three great spheres of observation — nature, mind, 
 and humanity. In nature we see the Divine idea 
 in its lowest expression ; in mind, with its powers, 
 faculties, moral feelings, freedom, &c., we see it in its 
 higher and more perfect form ; lastly, in humanity 
 we see God, not only as creator and sustainer, but 
 also as a father and a guide." " The soul is a perfect 
 mirror of the universe ; and we have only to gaze into 
 it with earnest attention to discover all truth which 
 
 * See account of the German school, SclieUing, Hegel, and 
 Hlllebrand, in Morell's History of Modern Philosophy, vol. u. pp. 
 126-147. 
 
 t Ibid. p. 196. 
 
Leot. I.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 95 
 
 is accessible to humanity. What we know of God, 
 therefore, can be only that which is originally revealed 
 to us of Him in our own minds." * I have given 
 these extracts to show the legitimate resolution of 
 the subjective system of private judgment into pure 
 rationalistic Pantheism. 
 
 With a few words on the Positivism of Comte, 
 I will conclude. Lest I should appear to distort or 
 colour this form of aberration, I will give it in the 
 author's own words. 
 
 First, then, he describes the Positive philosophy 
 as follows : 
 
 "From the study of the development of human 
 intelligence, in all directions and through all times, 
 the discovery arises of a great fundamental law, to 
 which it is necessarily subject, and which has a solid 
 foundation of proof, both in the facts of our orga- 
 nisation and in our historical experience. The law 
 is this : that each of our leading conceptions, each 
 branch of our knowledge, passes successively through 
 three different theoretical conditions — the Theological 
 or fictitious ; the Metaphysical or abstract ; and the 
 Scientific or positive. In other words, the human 
 mind by its nature employs in its progress three 
 methods of philosophising, the character of which is 
 essentially different and even radically opposed, viz. 
 the theological method, the metaphysical, and the 
 * Morell's History of Modem Philosophy, vol. ii. p. 225. 
 
96 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 positive. Hence arise three philosophies, or general 
 systems of conceptions, on the aggregate of pheno- 
 mena, each of which excludes the others. The first 
 is the necessary point of departure of the human 
 understanding, and the third is its fixed and definite 
 state. The second is merely a state of transition. 
 
 " In the theological state, the human mind, seek- 
 ing the essential nature of beiags, the first and final 
 causes (the origin and purpose) of all effects, — in 
 short, absolute knowledge, — supposes all phenomena 
 to be produced by the immediate action of super- 
 natural beings. 
 
 "In the metaphysical state, which is only a 
 modification of the first, the mind supposes, instead 
 of supernatural beings, abstract forces, veritable en- 
 tities (that is, personified abstractions), inherent in 
 all beings, and capable of producing all phenomena. 
 What is called the explanation of phenomena is, in 
 this stage, a mere reference of each to its proper 
 entity. 
 
 " In the final, the positive state, the mind has given 
 over the search after absolute notions, the origin 
 and destination of the universe, and the causes of 
 phenomena, and applies itself to the study of their 
 laws, that is, their invariable relations of succession 
 and resemblance. Eeasoning and observation, duly 
 combined, are the means of this knowledge. What 
 is now understood, when we speak of an explanation 
 
Lect. I.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 97 
 
 of facts, is simply the establishment of a connexion 
 between single phenomena and some general facts, 
 the number of which continually diminishes with the 
 progress of science." * 
 
 From this it will be observed that the belief in 
 God has passed into the first or fictitious period of 
 the human reason. 
 
 Nevertheless, after the completion of his Philo- 
 sffphy, Comte perceived the necessity of a religion. 
 Hence the Catechism of Positive Beligion, which thus 
 begins : " In the name of the Past and of the Future, 
 the servants of Humanity — both its philosophical and 
 practical servants — come forward to claim as their 
 due the general direction of this world. Their object 
 is, to constitute at length a real Providence in all 
 departments, moral, intellectual, and material. Con- 
 sequently they exclude, once for all, from political 
 supremacy all the different servants of God — Catholic, 
 Protestant, or Deist — as being at once behindhand and 
 a cause of disturbance." •}■ 
 
 But inasmuch as there can be no religion without 
 worship, and no worship without a God, and inas- 
 much as there is no God, Comte had need to find or 
 to create a Divinity. Now as there is no God, there 
 can be no being higher than man, and no object of 
 worship higher than mankind. " The imaginary 
 
 * Positive Philosophy, vol. i. c. i. 
 
 t Catechism of Positive Eeligion, Preface. 
 
 G 
 
98 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 beings whom religion provisionally introduced for its 
 purposes were able to inspire lively affections in man 
 — affections which were even most powerful under 
 the least elaborate of the fictitious systems. The 
 immense scientific preparation required as an intro- 
 duction to Positivism for a long time seemed to 
 deprive it of any such valuable aptitude. Whilst 
 the philosophical initiation only comprehended the 
 order of the material world, nay, even when it had 
 extended to the order of living beings, it could only 
 reveal laws which were indispensable for our action ; 
 it could not furnish us with any direct object for an 
 enduring and constant affection. This is no longer 
 the case since the completion of our gradual prepara- 
 tion by the introduction of the special study of the 
 order of man's existence, whether as an individual 
 or as a society. This is the last step in the process. 
 "We are now able to condense the whole of our 
 Positive conceptions in the one single idea of an 
 immense and eternal Being, Humanity, destined by 
 sociological laws to constant development under the 
 preponderating influence of biological and cosmolo- 
 gical necessities. This the real great Being, on whom 
 all, whether individuals or societies, depend as the 
 prime mover of their existence,-^ becomes the centre 
 of our affections. They rest on it by as spontaneous 
 an impulse as do our thoughts and our actions. This 
 Being, by its very idea, suggests at once the sacred 
 
Leot. I.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 99 
 
 formula of Positivism ; — Love as our principle, Order 
 as our hasis, and Progress as our end. Its compound 
 existence is ever founded on the free concurrence of 
 independent wills. All discord tends to dissolve that 
 existence, which, by its very notion, sanctions the 
 constant predominance of the heart over the intel- 
 lect, as the sole basis of our true unity. So the whole 
 order of things henceforth finds its expression in 
 the being who studies it, and who is ever perfecting 
 it. The struggle of Humanity against the combined 
 influences of the necessities it is obliged to obey, 
 growing as it does in energy and success, offers the 
 heart, no less than the intellect, a better object of 
 contemplation than the capricious omnipotence of its 
 theological precursor — capricious by the very force of 
 the word omnipotence. Such a Supreme Being is more 
 within the reach of our feelings as well as of our con- 
 ceptions, for it is identical in nature with its servants, 
 at the same time that it is superior to them." 
 
 " You must define Humanity as the whole of 
 human beings, past, present, and future. The word 
 whole points out clearly that you must not take in 
 all men, but those only who are really capable of 
 assimilation, in virtue of a real co-operation on their 
 part in furthering the common good. All are neces- 
 sarily born children of Humanity, but all do not 
 become her servants. Many remain in the parasitic 
 state, which, excusable during their education, becomes 
 
lOO THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 blamable when that education is complete. Times 
 of anarchy bring forth in swarms such creatures, nay, 
 even enable them to flourish, though they are, in sad 
 truth, but burdens on the true Great Being." * 
 
 It will be observed that both Pantheism and 
 Positivism alike end in the deification of man ; 
 they are a boundless egotism and an apotheosis of 
 human pride. I shall not dwell further on this 
 point ; and mention it only because I shall have 
 to refer to it hereafter. 
 
 I will now briefly sum up what I have said. 
 
 We see that it is foretold, that, before the mani- 
 festation of the last great antagonist of God and of 
 His incarnate Son, there must be a revolt and fall- 
 ing away; we have seen that the authority from 
 which the revolt is to be made is manifestly that 
 of the Church of God, and that it will be a revolt 
 bearing the three notes of schism, heresy, and denial 
 of the Incarnation ; we see also that this Antichris- 
 tian movement was at work even in the days of the 
 Apostles; that it has wrought ever since in mani- 
 fold forms and various times, and with most diverse, 
 and even contradictory, developments, but that never- 
 theless it is always one and the same, identical 
 in principle and in antagonism to the Incarnation 
 and to the Church. It is evident that this movement 
 has accumulated its results from age to age, and that 
 * CatecMsm of Positive Religion," pp. 63, 74. 
 
Lect. I.] THE VICAK OF JESUS CHRIST. lOI 
 
 at this time it is more mature and has a loftier stature 
 and a greater power and a more formal antagonism 
 to the Church and the faith than ever before. 
 
 It has attached itself to the pride of governments 
 by nationalism, and of individuals by philosophy, 
 and, under the forms of Protestantism, Civilisation, 
 Secularism, it has organised a vast Anticatholic 
 power in the east, north, and west of Europe. As a 
 matter of fact, Catholic and Anticatholic describe the 
 two arrays. I am afraid I must add, Christian and 
 Antichristian. And this is one of my purposes in 
 treating of the subject before us ; for I am convinced 
 that multitudes are carried away, not knowing whither 
 they go, by a movement essentially opposed to all their 
 best and deepest convictions, because thfey are unable 
 to discern its real ultimate principle and character. 
 
 In the present array of the popular opinion of 
 Europe against the Holy See and the Vicar of 
 Jesus Christ, may be discerned the Antichristian 
 instinct. The revolutions in Italy, backed by the 
 Anticatholic spirit of the Continent, a,nd by the 
 policy of England, are fulfilling the prophecies, and 
 confirmiug our faith. But this I shall hope to 
 show more fully hereafter. It seems inevitable that 
 the enmity of all nations which are separated from 
 the Catholic unity, and penetrated by the spirit of the 
 Eeformation, that is, by the spirit of private judg- 
 ment as opposed to the Divine Voice of the living 
 
102 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT, ETC. 
 
 Church, and by the unbelief which has banished 
 the Eucharistical presence of the Incarnate Word, 
 should be concentrated upon the person who is the 
 Vicar and Eepresentative of Jesus, and upon the 
 Body which witnesses alone for the Incarnation, 
 and for all its mysteries of truth and grace. Such 
 is the one Holy Catholic and Eoman Church, and 
 such is the Supreme Pontiff, its Visible Head. 
 Such, in the words of Holy Scripture, are the two 
 mysteries of godliness and of iniquity. All things 
 are throwing out into light and prominence the two 
 ultimate powers which divide the destinies of men. 
 The conflict is a simple antagonism of Christ and 
 Antichrist; and the two arrays are marshalling in 
 order, and men are choosing their principles; or 
 events are choosing for them, and they are drifting 
 unconsciously into currents, of which they are not 
 aware. The theory, that politics and religion have 
 different spheres, is an illusion and a snare. For 
 history can only be truly read in the light of faith ; 
 and the present can only be interpreted by the light 
 of revelation : for above the human wills which are 
 now in conflict, there is a Will, sovereign and divine, 
 which is leading all things to fulfil its own perfect 
 end. 
 
LECTURE 11. 
 
 Such, then, is the Revolt, which has been gathering 
 strength these 1 800 years, and ripening for the hour 
 when it shall receive its leader and head. 
 
 The interpretation universally received by Anti- 
 catholic controversialists, whereby, first. Antichrist 
 is held to be a spirit or system, and not a person, and 
 next, to be the Catholic or Eoman Church, or the 
 Vicar of the Incarnate Word, is the master-stroke of 
 deceit. It allays all fear, and inspires presumption 
 and confidence, and fixes the attention of men to 
 watch for the signs of his appearing anywhere except 
 where they are to be seen ; and draws it off from the 
 quarter where they are already visible. 
 
 ISTow, I do not hesitate to say, that, in all the 
 prophecies of Eevelation, there is not one among 
 them which relates to the coming of Christ more 
 explicit and express than those which relate to the 
 coming of Antichrist. 
 
 I. He is described with all the attributes of a 
 person. In this one passage St. Paul calls him " that 
 wicked one," 6 dvo/j.o<}, ilk iniquus ; the " man of sin," 
 avOprnTTOf Trj'i dft,apTia<;, homo peccati ; and " son of 
 
104 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 perdition," mo? t^? a-ir(o\ela<;. And St. John in four 
 places speaks of him as the Antichrist. To deny the 
 personality of Antichrist, is therefore to deny the 
 plain testimony of Holy Scripture : to explain a'way 
 these personal terms and titles as of a system or 
 spirit, is as rationalistic as the impiety of Strauss 
 in denying "the historical," that is, the personal 
 Christ. 
 
 It is a law of Holy Scripture, that when persons 
 are prophesied of, persons appear ; as, for instance, 
 the prophecies of St. John Baptist, or of the Blessed 
 Virgin, or of our Lord Himself 
 
 All the Fathers, both of the East and West, — 
 St. Irenseus, St. Cyprian, St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, 
 St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Gregory of Nazianzum, 
 St. John Chrysostom, Theophylact, Ecumenius, — all 
 interpret these passages of a literal and personal Anti- 
 christ. What I may call the corporate interpretation 
 is modern, heretical, controversial, and unreasonable. 
 This fanciful and contradictory system has been suffi- 
 ciently destroyed even by Protestant writers : as by 
 Todd in his work on Antichrist, a creditable and 
 learned book, though somewhat defaced by the re- 
 liquice of Protestant prejudice; by Greswell, in his 
 Exposition of the Parables; and by Maitland on 
 Daniel and St. John. In Germany, even among 
 Protestant interpreters, to maintain the Anticatholic 
 interpretation is looked on as a surrender of the cha- 
 
Lect. II.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 105 
 
 racter of a biblical scholar. The Protestants of Eng- 
 land are still, as they always were, the least cultivated 
 and reasonable. It is true, indeed, that the Antichrist 
 has had, and may still have, many forerunners 
 as had also Christ Himself : as Isaac, Moses, Josue, 
 David, Jeremias, were types of the one, so Antiochus, 
 Julian, Arius, Mahomet, and many more, are the 
 types of the other ; for persons typify persons. So, 
 again, as Christ is the Head and Eepresentative in 
 which the whole mystery of godliness (to t% eva-e 
 /Seta? nvaTripiov *) has been summed up and reca- 
 pitulated, so also the whole mystery of impiety (jo 
 fivar^piov T7}? avo/jiia<;'f) will find its expression and 
 its head in the person of Antichrist. He may indeed 
 embody a spirit and represent a system, but is not 
 less, therefore, a person. So also the theologians. 
 Bellarmine says, " All Catholics hold that Antichrist 
 will be one individual person." j Lessius says, " All 
 agree in teaching that the proper Antichrist will be 
 not many, but one only person." § Suarez goes so 
 far as to say that this doctrine of the personal Anti- 
 christ of faith is " certain defide." || 
 
 2. Next, the Fathers believed that Antichrist will 
 be of the Jewish race. Such was the opinion of St. 
 Irenseus, St. Jerome, of the author of the work De 
 
 * I Tim. iii. 16. +2 Thess. ii. 7. 
 
 t Bellarm. de Summo Pontif. lib. iii. c. 2. 
 § De Antichristo, Tertia Dem. 
 II In iii. p. D. Thomae, Disp. liv. s. i. 
 
Io6 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 Consummatione Mundi ascribed to St. Hippolytus, 
 of the writer of a commentary on the Epistle to 
 the Thessalonians attributed to St. Ambrose, and of 
 many others, who add that he wOl be of the tribe of 
 Dan ; as, for instance, St. Gregory the Great, Theo- 
 doret, Aretas of Csesarea, and many more.* Such 
 also is the opinion of Bellarmine, who calls it cer- 
 tain.-f- Lessius affirms that the Fathers, with unani- 
 mous consent, teach as undoubted that Antichrist 
 will be a Jew.f Eibera repeats the same opinion, and 
 adds that Aretas, St. Bede, Haymo, St. Anselm, 
 and Eupert affirm that for this reason the tribe of 
 Dan is not numbered among those who are sealed 
 in the Apocalypse.§ Viegas says the same, quoting 
 other authorities.il And this will appear probable, if 
 we consider that the Antichrist will come to deceive 
 the Jews, according to the prophecy of our Lord : " I 
 am come in My Father's name, and you receive Me 
 not : another wiU come in his own name, him you 
 will receive ; " which words are interpreted by the 
 Fathers with one consent of the false Messias, who 
 shall pass himself off upon the Jews as the true. And 
 this, again, is the unanimous interpretation of the 
 Fathers both of the East and of the West, as St. 
 Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Ephraim Syrus, St. Gregory 
 
 * Malvenda de Anticluisto, lib. ii. cc x. xi. 
 
 + Ibid. o. xii. J Ibid, in prsefatione. 
 
 § Ribera, in Apoc. c. vii. || Viegas, in Apoc. c. vii. 
 
Leot. II.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIRT. 107 
 
 Nazianzen, St. Gregory Nyssen, St. John Damascene, 
 and also of St. Irenseus, St. Cyprian, St. Jerome, St. 
 Ambrose, and St. Augustine. The probability of this 
 also will appear, if we consider, further, that a false 
 Christ would fail of the first condition of success if 
 he were not of the house of David ; that the Jews are 
 still looking out for his coming ; that they have pre- 
 pared themselves for delusion by crucifying the true 
 Messias ; and therefore it is that the Fathers interpret 
 of the true Messias and the false the words of St. Paul 
 to the Thessalonians : " Because they received not 
 the love of the truth (rfjv ajdirr]v tt;? aXiqQela'i) that 
 they might be saved ; therefore God shall send them 
 the operation of error (ivepryeiav TrXavrje;) to believe 
 lying." * 
 
 Now, I think no one cart consider the dispersion 
 and providential preservation of the Jews among all 
 nations of the world, the indestructible vitality of 
 their race, without believing that they are reserved 
 for some future action of His judgment and grace. 
 And this is foretold again and again in the ISTew Tes- 
 tament ; for instance, in the Epistles to the Eomans 
 and the Corinthians.f 
 
 3. Prom this we perceive a third character of 
 Antichrist, namely, that he will not be simply the 
 antagonist, but the substitute or supplanter of the true 
 
 * 2 Thess. ii. 10, 11. 
 
 t Rom. xi. 15-24 ; 2 Cor. iii. 16. 
 
Io8 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 Messias* And this is rendered still more probable 
 by the fact, that the Messias looked for by the Jews 
 has always been a temporal deliverer, the restorer of 
 their temporal power ; or, in other words, a political 
 and military prince. It is obvious also, that who- 
 soever may hereafter deceive them in the pretended 
 character of their Messias, must thereby deny the 
 Incarnation, whatsoever claim to a supernatural cha- 
 racter he may put forward for himself. In his own 
 person he will be a complete denial of the whole 
 Christian faith and Church; for if he be the true 
 Messias, the Christ of the Christians must be false. 
 
 Now, perhaps, we do not sufficiently realise how 
 commonplace and historical a person such a deceiver 
 may be. We are so possessed with the idea and vision 
 of the true Messias in the glory of His Godhead 
 and Manhood, of His Divine actions and Passion, 
 of His Eesurrection, Ascension, and royalties over 
 the world and the Church, that we cannot con- 
 ceive how any false Christ could be received as the 
 true. It is for this reason that our Lord has said of 
 these latter times : " There shall arise false Christs 
 and false prophets, insomuch as to deceive (if pos- 
 sible) even the elect ; " -f- that is, they shall not be 
 
 * Suarez, ut supra, Disp. liv. s. 4 ; Lessius, Dem. vii. 21 ; 
 Bellarm. ibid. c. xiv. s. 13. See also Gresswell on the Parables, 
 vol. i. 371, note n. 
 
 t St. Matt. xxiv. 24. 
 
Lect. II.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 1 09 
 
 deceived ; but those who have lost faith in the Incar- 
 nation, such as Humanitarians, Kationalists, and Pan- 
 theists, may well be deceived by any person of great 
 political power and success who should restore the 
 Jews to their own land, and people Jerusalem once 
 more with the sons of the patriarchs. And there is 
 nothing in the political aspect of the world which 
 renders such a combination impossible ; indeed, the 
 state of Syria, and the tide of European diplomacy 
 which is continually moving eastward, render such an 
 event within a reasonable probability. 
 
 4. But the prophecies assign to the person of 
 Antichrist a more preternatural character.* He is 
 described as a worker of false miracles. His coming 
 is said to be " according to the working of Satan, in 
 all power, and signs, and lying wonders, and ia all 
 seduction of iniquity to them that perish."-f- 
 
 And here I cannot but perceive a wonderful 
 change which has passed upon the world. Half a 
 century ago the men who rejected Christianity de- 
 rided a belief in witchcraft as superstition, and in 
 miracles as foolishness. But now the world has out- 
 stripped even the faith of Christians by its credulity. 
 Europe and America are deluged by Spiritualism. 
 I know not how many hundreds and thousands of 
 
 * Bellarm. ibid. t. xv. ; Lessius, ibid. x. 34 ; De Prsecursoribus 
 Antichiisti, x. 37. 
 f 2 Thess. ii 9, 10. 
 
110 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 mediums between us and the unseen world are in 
 existence. The very men who would not permit the 
 witch of Endor, or Elymas the sorcerer, to pass 
 without ridicule, believe in table-turning and table- 
 rapping, in clairvoyance, and the communications of 
 spirits evoked from the world unseen ; in spirit- 
 writing, and locomotion through the air, and in the 
 apparition of hands, and even of persons. Revelation 
 of the state of the dead, of secrets among the living, 
 prolonged and repeated colloc[uies with the departed, 
 are not only believed, but practised habitually, and 
 almost day by day. Now, it is not my object, at 
 least not now, to appreciate these phenomena. It is 
 enough for us to say, that to us who believe in an 
 unseen world, and in the presence and warfare of 
 spirits, good and evil, such things present no diffi- 
 culty. We are not disposed to deny their reality 
 because of the falsehood or delusion which is mixed 
 up with them. They are precisely what the Church 
 has always condemned and forbidden under the 
 name of witchcraft : in which there is a real preter- 
 natural agency surrounded by much imposture. I 
 dwell on this point because it is certain that we are 
 encompassed by a supernatural order, of which part 
 is divine, and part is diabolical. It is not wonder- 
 ful that they who reject the divine supernatural 
 order should become immoderately credulous of the 
 diabolicaL Now in this we have already a prepara- 
 
Lect. II.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 1 1 1 
 
 tion for the deception of which St. Paul writes. 
 The age is ripe for a delusion. It will not believe 
 the miracles of the saints, but it will copiously drink 
 down the phenomena of spiritualism. A successful 
 medium might well pass himself off by his preter- 
 natural endowments as the promised Messias, and 
 " signs and lying wonders " in abundance may be 
 wrought by the agencies which are already abroad 
 in the world. 
 
 5. The last characteristic of which I wiU speak is 
 more difficult, perhaps, to conceive. St. Paul says 
 of " the man of sin," " the son of perdition, wlio 
 opposeth and is lifted up above all that is called 
 God or that is worshipped ; so that he sitteth in the 
 temple of G-od, showing himself as if he were God." * 
 These words are interpreted by the Fathers to mean 
 that he will claim divine honours, and that in the 
 Temple of Jerusalem. St. Irenseus Says that " Anti- 
 christ being an apostate and a robber, will claim to 
 be adored as God," and " that he will endeavour to 
 show himself off as God. "-I* Lactantius, that "he 
 will call himself God." J The writer under the name 
 of St. Ambrose, says, " He will affirm himself to be 
 God." St. Jerome, " He will call himself God, and 
 claim to be worshipped by all."§ St. John Chryso- 
 
 * 2 Thess. ii. 4. t St. Iren. lib. v. 29= 
 
 J Lactantius, de divinis Institutionibus, lib. vii. 0. 1 7. 
 § St. Hieron. in Zach. c. xi. 
 
112 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 stom, "He will profess himself to be the God of all, 
 and call himself 'and show himself off as God."* So 
 also Theodoret, Theophylact, Ecumenius, St. Anselm, 
 and many others.f 
 
 Suarez, in explaining this passage, says, "It is 
 likely that Antichrist will in no way believe himself 
 what he will teach and compel others to believe. For 
 though in the beginning he may persuade the Jews 
 that he is the Messias and is sent from God, and may 
 pretend to believe that the law of Moses is true and 
 to be observed, yet he will do all this in dissimulation, 
 to deceive them and to obtain supreme power. For 
 afterwards he will reject the law of Moses, and will 
 deny the true God who gave it. For which reason 
 many believe that he wUl craftily destroy idolatry in 
 order to deceive the Jews." " How great his perfidy 
 will be, and what he will really believe concerning 
 God, we cannot conjecture. But it is likely that he 
 will be an atheist, and will deny both reward and 
 punishment in another life, and will venerate only 
 the preternatural being, from whom he has learned 
 the art of deceit and acquired his riches, by which 
 wealth he will obtain supreme power."{ 
 
 Now, it is easy to understand how he will oppose 
 God, being the antagoiust of Christ; and how he 
 
 * St. Joan. Chrys. in St. Joan. Horn. xl. 
 
 t Malvenda, lib. vii. c. 4. 
 
 J Suarez, in iii. p. St. Thomae, Disp. liv. s. 4. 
 
Leot. II.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 113 
 
 will exalt or lift himself above all that is called God 
 and worshipped ; because, in supplanting the true 
 Messias, he places himself in the stead of the In- 
 carnate God. Nor is it difficult to understand how 
 those who have lost the true and divine idea of the 
 Messias may accept a false ; and, being dazzled by 
 the greatness of political and military successes,* and 
 inflated with the Pantheistic and Socinian notions of 
 the dignity of man, may pay to the person of Anti- 
 christ the honour which Christians pay to the true 
 Messias. I have touched on this because St. Paul 
 places it prominently in the description of Antichrist, 
 and because the tendency of the credulous unbelief, 
 which increases in the world as faith decreases, is 
 visibly preparing men for delusion. 
 
 It is one of the most wonderful interpretations of 
 the Fathers, that in the end of the world paganism 
 shall be restored. -f- This at least we should have 
 thought impossible : if for no other reason, at least 
 from the development of modern infidelity ; and yet 
 infidelity was never more dominant than when in the 
 first French Eevolution Christianity was voted to be 
 false, and the worship of Eeason and Ceres set up 
 in its place. In truth, when the intellectual become 
 Pantheists, the simple will become Polytheists. They 
 need a more material conception than the refined 
 
 * St. Aug. in Psalm ix. torn. iv. 54. 
 t Cornelius k Lapide in Apocal. c. xvii. 
 
 H 
 
114 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 unbelievers, and tliey impersonate and embody, first 
 in thought and then in form, the object of their 
 worship. And what is this but paganism simple and 
 pure ? But into this I cannot enter. In the second 
 livraison of Gaume's work on the French Eevolution, 
 especially in the 12th, 13th, and 14th chapters, will 
 be found an ample and detailed account of the 
 paganism of fifty years ago ; and in the Catechism of 
 Positive Religion, under the head of " Public and 
 Private Worship," wiU be seen an elaborate profes- 
 sion of religious worship addressed to humanity — the 
 collective body of deified men, which is the natural 
 basis of the religion of ancient Greece and Eome. 
 
 Now, I do not say that there may not be far more 
 stupendous and preternatural phenomena about the 
 manifestation and person of Antichrist. All history 
 would lead us to expect it ; all the prophecies seem 
 to predict it ; the great periods of divine action in 
 the world foreshadow it. My object has not been 
 to divest the future of the supernatural, but to show 
 how the supernatural mingles itself in the ordinary 
 course of the world, and steals upon us, so to speak, 
 unawares. " The kingdom of God cometh not with 
 observation," but is in the midst of us, in full presence 
 and power, under aspects which seem to us common 
 and unmarked, in the currents of human action, in 
 national movements, in the policy of governments, 
 and the diplomacy of the world. As Christ at His 
 
Leot. II.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 115 
 
 coming was believed to be the Carpenter, so Anti- 
 christ may be visibly no more than a successful ad- 
 venturer. Even his preternatural character, true or 
 false, may pass either as scintillations of insanity, or 
 as the absurdities of his partisans, or the delusions of 
 his flatterers. So the world blinds its own eyes by 
 the fumes of its own intellectual pride. There is 
 nothing out of the context or proportion, or ^^09, as 
 we are wont to say of the nineteenth century, that 
 a person should arise of Jewish blood, naturalised in 
 some of the peoples of Europe, a protector of the 
 Jews, the purse-bearers, and journalists, and tele- 
 graphic wires, of the revolutions of Europe, hailed 
 by them as their saviour from the social and political 
 dominion of the Christians, surrounded by the pheno- 
 mena of antichristian and anticatholic spiritualism, 
 au arch-medium himself, and professing to be more 
 than either Moses or Mahomet, that is, more than of 
 human stature and proportions. 
 
 To those who have never discerned the ultimate 
 unity in principle and action of truth, on the one 
 side, and of falsehood, on the other, and likewise re- 
 spectively of good and evil, it may appear strange to 
 attach much importance to any event the sphere of 
 which seems to be the Jewish race. But to those 
 who believe that the world may be divided into 
 Christian and Antichristian, or Catholic and Anti- 
 catholic, — or, in other words, into the natural order, 
 
Il6 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT, ETC. 
 
 based upon the mere human will and action, and the 
 supernatural, based on the Divine will and the In- 
 carnation of God, — it will at once be seen to be the 
 question most vital and decisive of all. I shall hope 
 to show hereafter that the antagonism between two 
 persons is an antagonism also between two societies, 
 and that as our Divine Lord is the Head and Eepre- 
 sentative of all the truth and justice of the world 
 from the beginning, so Antichrist, be he who or what 
 he may, will be the head and representative of all the 
 falsehood and wrong, which has been accumulating 
 for these 1800 years, in the heresies, schisms, spiritual 
 seditions, intellectual infidelities, social disorders, and 
 political revolutions of the anticatholic movements of 
 the world. 
 
 Such is the great deep upon which the Christian 
 society of the world is resting. From time to time it 
 has lifted itself up with a preternatural power, and 
 has made the Christian order of Europe vibrate and 
 reel. Then again it has seemed to subside into a 
 calm. But no one with any discernment can fail to 
 see that it is deeper, mightier, and more widely spread 
 now than ever. That this antichristian power will 
 one day find its head, and for a time prevail in this 
 world, is certain from prophecy. But this cannot be 
 until " he who holdeth " shall be taken out of the way. 
 This, however, is the next subject in our order, and I 
 must not anticipate it here. 
 
LECTUEE III. 
 
 Before I enter on our third subject, let us call to 
 mind the two points, which, I hope, have been estab- 
 lished in what I have hitherto said. The first is, that 
 we see the revolt, or falling away, already verified 
 and manifested in the spiritual separations from the 
 Church, and in the opposition to its Divine authority 
 and its Divine voice, which we traced in history from 
 the day when the Apostle said, " The mystery of 
 iniquity doth already work," and St. John declared 
 that the Antichrists were already gone out into 
 the world. The other point we have seen is this, that 
 the man of sin, the son of perdition — the wicked 
 one — is a person, in all probability, of the Jewish 
 race ; that he is to be a supplanter of the true 
 Messias, and therefore an Antichrist in the sense 
 of substituting himself in the place of the true, — a 
 worker of false miracles, and claiming for himself 
 Divine worship. 
 
 Now the third point on which I have to speak is 
 the hindrance which retards his manifestation. The 
 Apostle says, " The mystery of iniquity doth already 
 work ; only that he who now holdeth " (that is, stands 
 
1 18 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 in the way of the revelation of the man of sin) " hold 
 until" (the time that) "he be taken out of the -way." 
 As there is a perpetual working of this mystery of 
 iniquity, so there is a perpetual hindrance or barrier 
 to its full manifestation, which will continue until it 
 be removed ; and there is a fixed time when it shall 
 be taken out of the way. St. Paul, in this passage, 
 uses two expressions. He says, the hindrance " which 
 holdeth," and " who holdeth." He speaks of it as of a 
 thing and as of a person : to Kari'xpv and 6 xare'^cov. 
 At first sight there appears to be a difficulty, whether 
 that which hinders the revelation of the man of sin be 
 a person or a system ; for in the one place it is spoken 
 of in the neuter as a system, in the other case it is 
 spoken of in the masculine as a person. I hope in 
 what I have hitherto said that I have already given a 
 solution to this apparent difficulty. You wiE remem- 
 ber that I drew out shortly the parallel of the two 
 mysteries of godliness and of iniquity, and of their 
 respective heads. This is, in fact, the argument of 
 St. Augustine, who has sketched the two mysteries of 
 godliness and of iniquity, from the beginning of the 
 world, under the character of the two cities — that is, 
 the Spirit of God and the spirit of Satan, working by 
 a manifold operation either in the elect servants of 
 God, or in the enemies of God and of His Kingdom. 
 And just as the mystery of godliness is summed up 
 in the person and Incarnation of the Son of God, so 
 
Lectin.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 119 
 
 the mystery of iniquity is summed up in the man of 
 sin, who shall be revealed in his time. In like man- 
 ner also, that which hinders, or he who hinders, will 
 be found to express both a system and a person, and 
 the person and the system to be identified after the 
 same manner as the examples which I have already 
 given. 
 
 First of all, let us consider more particularly what 
 is the character of " this wicked one," or Antichrist, 
 who shall come. The word used by St. Paul in this 
 place signifies "the lawless one," — the one who is 
 without law, who is not subject to the law of God or 
 of man, whose only law is his own will, to whom the 
 licence of his own will is the sole and only rule which 
 he knows or obeys. The Greek word is 6 dvofj,o^, 
 the lawless, or licentious one. N"ow, in the book of 
 the prophet Daniel, there is a prophecy, almost iden- 
 tical in terms, where he foretells that there shall arise 
 in the latter ages of the World a king " who shall do 
 according to his own will," * who shall exalt himself 
 above all that is called God, who " shall speak great 
 words against the High one." -f- This is almost word 
 for word the prophecy of St. Paul, which shows us 
 that St. Paul was literally quoting or paraphrasing 
 the prophecy of Daniel. Now, inasmuch as this 
 wicked one shall be a lawless person, who shall 
 introduce disorder, sedition, tumult, and revolution, 
 * Or "pleasure," Dan. xi. i6. t Dan. vii. 25. 
 
1 20 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 both in the temporal and spiritual order of the world, 
 so that which shall hinder his development, and shall 
 he his direct antagonist after his manifestation, must 
 necessarily be the principle of order, the law of sub- 
 mission, the authority of truth and of right. We 
 therefore have got what I may call an indication to 
 enable us to see where this person, or system which 
 opposes, hinders, or holds the revelation of the man of 
 sin until the season shall come, is to be found. 
 
 Let us, then, examine the interpretations of the 
 early Fathers on this point. 
 
 TertuUian * believed that it was the Eoman 
 Empire. The mighty power of Pagan Eome, spread 
 throughout the whole world, was the great principle 
 of order which maintained at that time the tran- 
 quillity of the earth. 
 
 Lactantius,-f- who wrote later, maintained exactly 
 the same opinion, and believed that the Eoman Em- 
 pire, which tranquillised and gave order and peace to 
 the nations of the world, thereby hindered the reve- 
 lation of this lawless one — this man of sin ; and both 
 TertuUian and Lactantius enjoined upon the Chris- 
 tians of their time the duty of praying for the pre- 
 servation of the heathen empire of Eome, because 
 they believed it to be the material barrier against the 
 breaking-in of the great flood of evil which should 
 
 * Tertull. de Eesur. Camis, c. 24. 
 t Diyin. Inst. vii. 25. 
 
Lect. III.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 121 
 
 come upon the world when Eome is destroyed. So 
 also teach St. John Chrysostom and others.* 
 
 Another interpretation, which is given by Theo- 
 doret, a Greek writer, is, that it is the grace of the 
 Holy Ghost, or the Divine power, which restrains the 
 manifestation or the revelation of the man of sin.-f- 
 
 Again, other writers say that it is the apostolic 
 power, or the presence of the Apostles ; for, as we 
 know from this epistle to the Thessalonians, the 
 Christians were expecting a speedy revelation of 
 the coming of our Lord to judgment, and therefore 
 a speedy manifestation of the man of sin ; and they 
 believed that the presence of the Apostles upon earth, 
 by their witness and by their miracles, hindered the 
 full manifestation of the principle of unbelief and 
 spiritual of rebellion. 
 
 Now these three interpretations are all of them 
 partially true, and all are in perfect harmony one 
 with the other ; and we shall find that, taken together, 
 they present us with a full and adequate explanation ; 
 but these writers, writing at different periods of the 
 Church, were not able fully to understand the pro- 
 phecy, because the events of the world are continually 
 and progressively interpreting and explaining, from 
 age to age, the meaning of these predictions. 
 
 I. First, then, the power of the heathen empire of 
 
 * Malvenda, lib. ii. c. 3. 
 
 t Theodor. in 2 Ep. ad Thess. c. ii. 6. 
 
12 2 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 Eome was undoubtedly the great barrier against the 
 outbreak of the spirit of lawless disorder ; for, as we 
 know, it was the principle of unity by which the 
 nations of the world were held together. It organised 
 and combined them under the authority of one legis- 
 lature, of one mighty executive, and of one great 
 sovereignty, with a jurisdiction springing from one 
 fountain, administered by tribunals all over the world. 
 The peace of nations was maintained by the presence 
 of standing armies ; the legions of Eome occupied 
 the circumference of the world. The military roads 
 which sprang from Rome traversed all the earth ; 
 the whole world was as it were held in peace and in 
 tranquillity by the universal presence of this mighty 
 heathen empire. It was " exceedingly terrible," * ac- 
 cording to the prophecies of Daniel ; it was as it were 
 of iron, beating down and subduing the nations, hold- 
 ing them in subjugation, and thereby, as with a rod 
 of iron, giving peace to the world. There is no doubt 
 that so long as the Eoman Empire continued in its 
 strength, it was impossible for the principle of revo- 
 lution and disorder to gain head, and therefore these 
 early Christian writers were perfectly correct in in- 
 terpreting the hindrance to this spirit of lawlessness 
 to be the spirit of order, of government, of authority, 
 and of an iron justice, which ruled the nations of the 
 world. 
 
 * Dan. viL 19. ; 
 
Leot. III.] THE VICAU OF JESUS CHRIST. 123 
 
 2. But, secondly, it was not the Eoman Empire, 
 or Eome alone, but the kingdom of God which de- 
 scended upon the whole earth, and from the day of 
 Pentecost spread throughout the circuit of the Eoman 
 Empire, with an authority higher than the authority 
 of Eome. St. Leo gives the basis of this interpreta- 
 tion.* He says, " That the effect of this ineffable 
 grace might be diffused throughout the world, He 
 (God) prepared the empire of Eome, the expansion of 
 which was extended to the limits which border upon 
 the whole family of all nations. For it was a fitting 
 preparation for the work divinely disposed that many 
 kingdoms should be confederated in one empire, so 
 that the universal preaching of the Gospel should 
 penetrate speedily through those nations whom the 
 government of one city held in unity." St. Thomas, 
 resting upon this passage, says that the Eoman Em- 
 pire has not ceased, but is changed from the temporal 
 into the spiritual, comrniutatum, de temporali in spiri- 
 tale.-f Dominicus Soto holds the same opinion.j It 
 was, then, the Apostolic Church which, spreading 
 throughout all the nations, already combined together 
 by the power of the heathen empire of Eome, quick- 
 ened them with a new life, penetrated them with a 
 new principle of order, with a new spirit of unity, 
 
 * St. Leo, Serm. Ixxxii. t. i. p. 322. 
 t In 2 Ep. ad Thess. in locum. 
 
124 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 consecrated and transfigured the unity of the material 
 forces by which they were held together, gave them 
 one mind, one intelligence, one law, one wiU, one 
 heart, by the faith which illuminated the intelligence 
 of aU nations to know God, by the charity which 
 bound them together in the unity of one family, by 
 the one fountain of jurisdiction which sprang from 
 our Divine Lord, and through His Apostles governed 
 the whole earth. There was the one spiritual legis- 
 lature of the Apostles and their successors. There 
 were tribunals which sat beside the tribunals of Eome. 
 By the side of the tribunals of iron force were erected 
 the tribunals of Divine mercy. This new principle 
 of order, of authority, of submission, and of peace, 
 entered into this world, possessed itself, as I may 
 say, of the material power of the old Eoman Empire, 
 and filled it with a new life from heaven. It was the 
 salt of the earth. It prolonged its existence until a 
 certain period, which was foreseen in the predestina- 
 tion of God. It is, therefore, perfectly true that this 
 hindrance signifies also the Holy Ghost ; for the 
 Church of God is the presence of the Holy Ghost, 
 incorporated and manifested to the world in the 
 visible body of those who are baptized into the unity 
 of the Church of Jesus Christ. 
 
 3. But then, thirdly, it means something still 
 more than this. For these two great powers, spiritual 
 and temporal — the temporal power in the old heathen 
 
Leot. III.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 1 25 
 
 empire of Eome, and the spiritual power in the new 
 supernatural kingdom of God — met together. They 
 were coincident as it were in their circumference 
 throughout the world ; but they met together in their 
 centre, which was in the city of Eome. There they 
 stood, at first face to face in conflict, then side by 
 side in peace. There these two mighty powers — the 
 one from earth, and the other from heaven, the one 
 from the will of man, and the other from the will of 
 God — met together as it were in the arena of con- 
 test, and for three hundred years the Empire of 
 Eome martyred the pontiffs of the Church of God. 
 For three hundred years the Eoman Empire strove 
 to extinguish this new and strange visitant, coming 
 with a superior jurisdiction and with a wider circuit. 
 It strove to destroy it, to quench it in its own blood ; 
 and for three hundred years it struggled in vain ; for 
 the more the Church was martyred, the more the 
 seed of the martyrs was multiplied. The Church 
 expanded and grew in vigour, in strength, and in 
 power, in proportion as the heathen Empire of Eome 
 strove to extinguish it and to destroy it. And this 
 mighty conflict between the two sovereignties at last 
 ended in the conversion of the Empire to Christianity, 
 and, therefore, in the enthronement of the Church of 
 God in a supremacy over the powers of the whole 
 world. Then right had power and supremacy over 
 might, and the Divine authority prevailed over the 
 
] 2 6 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 authority of man; then these two powers were 
 blended and fused together : they became one great 
 authority, the emperor ruling from his throne within 
 the sphere of his earthly jurisdiction, and the Supreme 
 Pontiff ruling likewise from a throne of higher 
 sovereignty over the nations of the world, until God 
 in His providence removed the empire from Eome, 
 and planted it upon the shores of the Bosphorus. It 
 departed into the East, and left Eome without a sove- 
 reign. Eome from that hour has never had, dwellino; 
 within its walls, a temporal sovereign in the presence 
 of the Supreme Pontiff; and that temporal sove- 
 reignty devolved by a providential law upon the 
 person of the Vicar of Jesus Christ. It is true, in- 
 deed, that in the three centimes between the conver- 
 sion of Constantine and the period of St. Gregory the 
 Great, in those three centuries of turbulence and dis- 
 order, invasion and warfare, by which Italy and Eome 
 was afflicted, the temporal power of the Supreme 
 Pontiff was only in its beginning ; but about the 
 seventh century it was firmly established, and that 
 which the Divine Providence had prepared from the 
 beginning received its full manifestation; and no 
 sooner was the material power which once reigned in 
 Eome consecrated and sanctified by the investiture of 
 the Vicar of Jesus Christ with temporal sovereignty 
 over the city where he dwelt, than he began to create 
 throughout Europe the order of Christian civilisation. 
 
Lectin.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 127 
 
 Christian empires, Christian monarchies, which, con- 
 federated together, have maintained the peace and 
 order of the ■world from that hour to this. What we 
 call Christendom, that is to say, the great family of 
 Christian nations, Christian races organised and knit 
 together with their princes and their legislatures, by 
 international law, mutual contracts, treaties, diplo- 
 macy, and the like, which bind them together in one 
 compact body, — what is this but the security of the 
 world against disorder, turbulence, and lawlessness ? 
 And now for these twelve hundred years the peace, 
 the perpetuity, and the fruitfulness of the Christian 
 civilisation of Europe, has been owing solely in its 
 principle to this consecration of the power and the 
 authority of the great Empire of Eome, taken up of 
 old, perpetuated, preserved, as I have said, by the salt 
 which had been sprinkled from heaven and continued 
 in the person of the Supreme Pontiff, and in that 
 order of Christian civilisation of which he has been 
 the creator. 
 
 We have now come nearly to a solution of that 
 which I stated in the beginning, namely, how it is 
 that the power which hinders the revelation of the 
 lawless one is not only a person but a system, and not 
 only a system but a person. In one word, it is Chris- 
 tendom and its head ; and, therefore, in the person of 
 the Vicar of Jesus Christ, and in that twofold autho- 
 rity with which, by Divine Providence, he has been 
 
128 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 invested, we see the direct antagonist to the principle 
 of disorder. The lawless one, who knows no law, 
 human or divine, nor obeys any but his own will, has 
 no antagonist on earth more direct than the Vicar of 
 Jesus Christ, who bears at one and the same time the 
 character of royalty and of priesthood, and represents 
 the two principles of order in the temporal and in the 
 spiritual state — the principle of monarchy, if you will, 
 or of government, and the principle of the apostolic 
 authority. "We find, therefore, the three interpreta- 
 tions which I drew out from the Holy Fathers literally 
 verified in this. In the slow course of time, as the 
 work of the Apostles matured and ripened, what we 
 call Christendom has arisen, fulfilling the predictions 
 to the letter, manifesting that which the Apostle fore- 
 told would hinder the development of this principle 
 of lawlessness, and the revelation of the person who 
 should be its chief. 
 
 What, then, is it that at this moment holds in 
 check the manifestation of this antichristian power, 
 and the person who shall wield it ? It is the remnant 
 of the Christian society which is stUl existing in the 
 world. There can be but two societies, the one natu- 
 ral, the other supernatural. The natural society is 
 the political order which comes from the will of man, 
 without relation to the revelation, or the Incarnation 
 of God. The supernatural society is the Church, 
 comprehending those nations which still, being pene- 
 
Lect. III.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 129 
 
 trated by the spirit of .faith and of the Catholic unity, 
 are true and faithful to the principles upon which 
 Christendom was first constituted. 
 
 Ever since the foundation of Christian Europe, 
 the political order of the world has rested upon 
 the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ ; for which 
 reason all the public acts of authority, and even the 
 calendar by which we date our days, is calculated 
 from the year of salvation, or from " the year of our 
 Lord." What is the meaning of this phrase, if it be 
 not this, that the state and order under which we live 
 is based upon the Incarnation ; that Christianity is 
 our foundation ; that we recognise the revealed laws 
 of God delivered to His incarnate Son, and by the 
 incarnate Son to the Apostles, and by the Apostles to 
 the world, as the first principles of all Christian legis- 
 lation and of all Christian society ?. Now this society 
 based upon the Incarnation is the state under which 
 we have hitherto lived. I believe that we are depart- 
 ing from it. We are departing from it throughout the 
 whole of the civilised world. In England, religion is 
 banished from politics. In many countries, such as 
 France, and now in Austria, it is declared by public 
 act that the State has no religion, that all sects are 
 equally participators in the political life and political 
 power of the nation. Now a large portion of every 
 nation,alargeportionespeciallyofFranceand of Austria, 
 
 is composed of that race who deny the coming of God 
 
 I 
 
130 THE PEEPETUAIi CONFLICT OF 
 
 in the flesh, that is, who deny the Incarnation. I am 
 not now arguing against their admission to political 
 privileges ; on the contrary, I would maintain, that, if 
 there be no other order than the order of nature, it 
 would be a political injustice to exclude any one 
 of the race of Israel from a participation of equal 
 privileges ; but I maintain equally, that in the day in 
 which you admit those who deny the Incarnation to 
 an equality of privileges, you remove the social life 
 and order in which you live from the Incarnation to 
 the basis of mere nature : and this is precisely what 
 was foretold of the antichristian period. We have 
 already seen that the third and special mark of Anti- 
 christ is the denial of the Incarnation; and if the 
 nations of the world have been constituted by faith, 
 upon the basis of the Incarnation, the national act 
 which admits those who deny it to a social and poli- 
 tical unity, is in fact a removal of the order of social 
 life from the supernatural to the natural order : and 
 this is what we see accomplishing. Once more I say, 
 I am not now arguing against this ; but I see in all 
 these facts the verification of prophecy. Greater 
 is the danger of a people which has so lost faith in 
 the Incarnation, that it is necessary to give up the 
 Christian order instituted by the providence of God. 
 But such is the state of the world, and to this end we 
 are rapidly advancing. We are told that Etna has 
 one hundred and sixty craters. Besides the two vast 
 
Lect. III.] THE VICAE OF JESUS CHRIST. 13 1 
 
 mouths whicli, joined together, form the immense 
 crater commonly so called, on all its sides it is per- 
 forated and honeycombed by channels and by mouths, 
 from which in centuries past the lava has, from time 
 to time, burst forth. I can find no better illustration 
 of the state of Christendom at this moment. The 
 Church of God rests upon the basis of natural society, 
 on the foundations of the old Eoman Empire, on the 
 civilisation of the heathen nations of the world, which 
 for atime has been consecrated, consolidated,preserved, 
 raised, sanctified, transformed, by the action of faith 
 and grace. The Church of God rests still upon that 
 basis ; but beneath the Church is working continu- 
 ally the mystery of iniquity which already wrought 
 in the Apostles' time, and is culminating at this 
 moment to its strength, and gaining the ascendency. 
 What, I ask, was the French Eevolution of 1789, with 
 all its bloodshed, blasphemy, impiety, and cruelty, 
 in all its masquerade of horror and of mockery, — 
 what was it but an outbreak of the antichristian spirit 
 — the lava from beneath the mountain ? And what 
 was the outbreak in 1830 and 1848 but precisely the 
 sameprinciple of Antichrist working beneath Christian 
 society, forcing its way upwards ? In the year 1 848 
 it opened simultaneously its many mouths in Berlin, 
 in Vienna, in Turin, in Florence, in Naples, and in 
 Eome itself. In London, it heaved and struggled ; 
 but its time was not yet. What is all this but the 
 
132 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 spirit of lawlessness lifting itself against God and 
 man, — the principle of schism, heresy, and infidelity 
 running fused into one mass, and pouring itself forth 
 ■wherever it can force its way, making craters for its 
 stream wherever the Christian society becomes weak? 
 And this, as it has gone on for centuries, so it will go 
 on until the time shall come when " that which holds 
 shall be taken out of the way." 
 
 We have already seen what it is that stands in the 
 way of the ascendency of this principle of disorder, 
 l^ow, visibly, this hindrance or barrier is weakening 
 every day. It is weakening intellectually. The in- 
 tellectual convictions of men are growing feebler ; the 
 Christian and Catholic civilisation is giving way be- 
 fore the natural material civilisation, which finds its 
 supreme perfection in mere material prosperity ; ad- 
 mitting within its sphere persons of every caste, or 
 colour of belief, upon the principle that politics have 
 nothing to do with the world to come, — that the 
 government of nations is simply for their temporal 
 wellbeing, for the protection of persons and of pro- 
 perty, for the development of industry, and for the 
 advancement of science ; that is to say, for the culti- 
 vation of the natural order alone. This is the theory 
 of civilisation which is becoming predominant every 
 day. Catholic piety also is becoming weaker and 
 weaker, and to such an extent, that there are nations 
 still called Catholic in which the proportion to the 
 
Lect. III.] THE VICAK OF JESUS CHRIST. 133 
 
 mass of those who frequent the Holy Sacraments is 
 hardly calculable : according as our Divine Lord has 
 said, " Because iniquity hath abounded, the charity 
 of many shall grow cold." * Again, the Christian 
 society is everywhere becoming weaker — that is, the 
 true Christian spirit and principle of society. The 
 late M. de Tocqueville, who, as far as I can perceive, 
 had no intention whatever to verify or establish what 
 I am saying, writing upon democracy in America, 
 points out the fact, that the tendency of every govern- 
 ment in the world, and of every nation in the world, 
 is to democracy ; that is to say, to the diminution and 
 exhaustion of the powers of government, and to the 
 development of the licence of the popular will, so as 
 to resolve all law into the will of the multitude. He 
 points out that in Prance, in every successive half- 
 century, a double revolution has carried society fur- 
 ther towards democracy ; that the same phenomena 
 are to be seen in the whole Christian world. " Every- 
 where," he says, " we have seen the events of the life 
 of nations turn to the advancement of democracy ; aU 
 men have helped it onward by their efforts : they who 
 designedly assisted its successes, and they who never 
 thought of serving it ; they who have fought for it, 
 and they who are its declared enemies : all have been 
 carried pell-mell in the same path, and all have la- 
 boured together ; the one sort in spite of themselves, 
 
 * St. Matt. xxiv. 12. 
 
134 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 the others without knowing it, as blind instruments 
 in the hand of God. . . . This whole book has been 
 written under the impression of a kind of religious 
 fear produced in the mind of the author by the sight 
 of this irresistible revolution, which for so many cen- 
 turies marched onward over all obstacles, and which 
 we see still at this day going forward through all the 
 ruins it has made." * It is curious to place side by 
 side with this the words of St. Hippolytus, written in 
 the third century, who says that in the end of the 
 world the Eoman Empire shall pass et? SrjfioKpaTiai;, 
 " into democracies." -f- 
 
 Again, another writer, a Spaniard of great intel- 
 ligence and also of great faith, who lately died am- 
 bassador to Paris, Donoso Cortez, describing the 
 state of society, said that Christian society is doomed, 
 that it has to run its course, and become extinct ; for 
 the principles which are now in the ascendent are 
 essentially antichristian. He drew out what is most 
 manifest in the history of nations at this moment, 
 namely, that there is a weakening of the principle of 
 the ecclesiastical order everywhere, and that where- 
 soever the power of the Church over a nation is 
 weakened, the temporal power is developed in a 
 greater degree ; so that nothing is more certain than 
 
 * De la Democratie en Am^rique, par Alexis de Tocqueville, 
 vol. i. Introduction, pp. 8, 9. 
 t De Anticlmsto, xxvii. 
 
Leot. III.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 135 
 
 that temporal despotism prevails especially in those 
 countries where the power of the Church is depressed, 
 and that the only security for liberty among the races 
 of mankind is to be found in the freedom of the Church, 
 and in its free action upon the government of the civil 
 power. He says, '' In giving up the empire of faith 
 as dead, and in proclaiming the independence of the 
 reason and of the will of man, society has rendered 
 absolute, universal, and necessary the evil which was 
 only relative, exceptional, and contingent. This period 
 of rapid retrogression commenced in Europe with the 
 restoration of paganism — philosophical, religious, and 
 political. At this day the world is on the eve of the 
 last of its restorations — the restoration of socialist 
 paganism." * 
 
 Again the same writer says : " European society 
 is dying. The extremities are cold : the heart will be 
 soon. And do you know why it is dying ? It is dying 
 because it has been poisoned ; because God made 
 it to be nourished with the substance of Catholic 
 truth, and the empirical doctors have given it for 
 food the substance of rationalism. It is dying be- 
 cause, like as man does not live by bread only, but 
 by every word which comes out of the mouth of God, 
 so societies do not perish by the sword only, but by 
 every word which comes out of the mouth of their 
 
 * Lettre k M. de Montalembert, 4 juin 1849,— CEuvres, vol. i. 
 P- 354- 
 
136 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 philosophers. It is dying because error is killing it, 
 and because society is now founded upon errors. 
 Know, then, that all you hold as incontrovertible is 
 false. 
 
 " The vital force of truth is so great, that if you 
 were possessed of one truth, — one alone, — that truth 
 might save you. But your fall is so profound, your 
 decline is so radical, your blindness so complete, your 
 nakedness so absolute, that even this one truth you 
 have not. For this reason the catastrophe which 
 must come will be in history the catastrophe above 
 all. Individuals may still save themselves, because 
 individuals may always be saved ; but society is lost, 
 not because it is yet in a radical impossibility of being 
 saved, but because it has no will to save itself. There 
 is no salvation for society, because we wUl not make 
 our sons to be Christians, and because we are not 
 true Christians ourselves. There is no salvation for 
 society, because the Catholic spirit, the only spirit of 
 life, does not quicken the whole ; it does not quicken 
 education, government, institutions, laws, and morals. 
 To change the course of things in the state in which 
 they are, I see too well would be the enterprise of 
 giants. There is no power upon earth which, by 
 itself, could reach this end, and hardly all the powers 
 acting together could attain its accomplishment. I 
 leave you to judge whether such co-operation is pos- 
 sible, and to what point, and to decide if, even ad- 
 
Lect. III.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 1 37 
 
 mitting this possibility, the salvation of society would 
 not be every way a true miracle." * 
 
 The last point, then, upon which I have to speak 
 is this, that the barrier, or hindrance, to lawlessness 
 will exist until it is taken out of the way. Now what 
 is the meaning of the words, until it " be taken out 
 of the way " ? Who is to take it out of the way ? 
 Shall it be taken out of the way by the will of man ? 
 Shall it be taken out of the way by the mere casualty 
 of events ? Surely this is not the meaning. If the 
 barrier which has hindered the development of the 
 principle of antichristian disorder has been the Divine 
 power of Jesus Christ our Lord, incorporated in the 
 Church and guided by his Vicar, then no hand is 
 mighty enough, and no will is sovereign enough, to 
 take it out of the way, but only the hand and the 
 will of the incarnate Son of God Himself. And there- 
 fore the interpretation of the Holy Fathers, with 
 which I began, is fully and literally exact. It is the 
 Divine power first in Providence, and then in His 
 Church, and then both fused together, and continuing 
 until the time shall come, the time foreseen and fore- 
 ordained, for removing the barrier, in order to let in a 
 new dispensation of His wisdom upon the earth, upon 
 which I shall have to speak hereafter. 
 
 Now we have an analogy to this. The history of 
 the Church, and the history of our Lord on earth, 
 
 * Polemique avec divers Joumaux de Madrid, vol. i. 574-576. 
 
138 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 run as it were in parallel. For three-and-thirty years 
 the Son of God incarnate was in the world, and no 
 man could lay hand upon him. No man could take 
 Him, because His " hour was not yet come." There 
 was an hour foreordained when the Son of God would 
 be delivered into the hands of sinners. He foreknew 
 it ; He foretold it. He held it in His own hand, for 
 He Surrounded His person with a circle of His own 
 Divine power. No man could break through that 
 circle of omnipotence until the hour came, when by 
 His own will He opened the way for the powers of 
 evU. For this reason He said in the garden, " This 
 is your hour, and the power of darkness."* For this 
 reason, before He gave Himself into the hands of 
 sinners. He exerted once more the majesty of His 
 power, and when they came to take Him, He rose 
 and said, " I am He," f and " they went backward, 
 and fell to the ground." Having vindicated His 
 Divine Majesty, He delivered Himself into the hands 
 of sinners. So too. He said, when He stood before 
 Pilate, " Thou shouldst not have any power against 
 Me, unless it were given thee from above." | It was 
 the will of God; it was by the concession of the Father 
 that Pilate had power over His incarnate Son. Again, 
 He said, " Thinkest thou that I cannot ask My Father, 
 and He will give me presently more than twelve 
 
 * St. Luke xxii. 53. f St. John xviii. $. 
 
 t St. Jolin xix. II. 
 
Lect. III.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 139 
 
 legions of angels ? how then shall the scripture be 
 fulfilled ? " * In like manner with His Church. Until 
 the hour is come when the barrier shall, by the Divine 
 will, be taken out of the way, no one has power to 
 lay a hand upon it. The gates of hell may war against 
 it ; they may strive and wrestle, as they struggle now, 
 with the Vicar of our Lord ; but no one has the power 
 to move Him one step, until the hour shall come 
 when the Son of God shall permit, for a time, the 
 powers of evil to prevail. That He will permit it for 
 a time stands in the book of prophecy. When the 
 hindrance is taken away, the man of sin will be 
 revealed. Then wUl come the persecution of three 
 years and a half, short, but terrible, during which the 
 Church of God will return into its state of suffering, 
 as in the beginning. But the imperishable Church 
 of God, by its inextinguishable life derived from the 
 pierced side of Jesus, which for three hundred years 
 lived on through martyrdom, will live on still through 
 the fires of the times of Antichrist. 
 
 These things are fulfilling fast, and it is good for 
 us to keep them before our eyes : for the forerunners 
 are already abroad — the weakness of the Holy Father; 
 the murder of his armies, the invasion of his States, 
 the betrayal of those who are nearest to him, the 
 tyranny of those who are his sons ; the joy, the exulta- 
 tion, the jubilee of Protestant countries and Pro- 
 * St. Matt. xxvi. 53, 54. 
 
140 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 testanfc governments; the scorn, the contempt, the 
 mockery, which is poured out upon his sacred and 
 anointed head day by day in England. And there 
 are Catholics who are scandalised at it ; there are 
 Catholics who talk against the temporal power of the 
 Pope, either because they have been stunned by the 
 clamours of a Protestant people, or because they are 
 white-hearted, and have not courage to stand in the 
 face of popular falsehood for an unpopiilar truth. The 
 spirit of Protestant England — its lawlessness, its pride, 
 its contempt, and its enmity to the Church of God — 
 has made Catholics too to be cold-hearted, even when 
 the Vicar of Jesus Christ is insulted. We have need, 
 then, to be upon our guard. It shall happen once more 
 with some, as it happened when the Son of God was 
 in His Passion — they saw Him betrayed, bound, car- 
 ried away, buffeted, blindfolded, and scourged ; they 
 saw Him carrying His Cross to Calvary, then nailed 
 upon it, and lifted up to the scorn of the world ; and 
 they said, " If He be the king of Israel, let Him now 
 come down from the cross, and we wiU. believe Him."* 
 So in like manner they say now, " See this Catholic 
 Church, this Church of God, feeble and weak, re- 
 jected even by the very nations called Catholic. There 
 is Catholic Prance, and Catholic Germany, and Ca- 
 tholic Italy, giving up this exploded figment of the 
 temporal power of the Vicar of Jesus Christ." And 
 * St. Matt, xxvii. 42. 
 
Lect. III.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHKIST. 141 
 
 SO, because the Church seems weak, and the Vicar of 
 the Son of God is renewing the Passion of his Master 
 upon earth, therefore we are scandalised, therefore we 
 turn our faces from him. Where, then, is our faith ? 
 But the Son of God foretold these things when He 
 said, "And now I have told you, before it come to 
 pass ; that when it shall come to pass, you may be- 
 lieve." * 
 
 * St. John xiv. 29. 
 
LECTUEE IV. 
 
 Before we enter upod the last subject whicli re- 
 mains, let us take up the point at which we broke 
 off in the last Lecture. It was this, that there are 
 upon earth two great antagonists — on the one side, 
 the spirit and the principle of evil ; and on the other, 
 the incarnate God manifested in His Church, but 
 eminently in His Vicar, who is His representative, 
 the depository of His prerogatives, and therefore His 
 special personal witness, speaking and ruling in His 
 Name. The office of the Vicar of Jesus Christ con- 
 tains, in fulness, the Divine prerogatives of the 
 Church : forasmuch as, being the special represen- 
 tative of the Divine Head, he bears all his commu- 
 nicable powers in the government of the Church on 
 earth, solely and alone. The other bishops and pas- 
 tors, who are united with him, and act in subordina- 
 tion to him, cannot act without him ; but he may act 
 alone, possessing a plenitude of power in himself. 
 And further, the endowments of the body are the 
 prerogatives of the head; and therefore the endow- 
 ments which descend from the Divine Head of the 
 Church upon the whole mystical body are centred in 
 
Lect. IV.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 143 
 
 the head of that body upon earth ; forasmuch as he 
 stands in the place of the Incarnate Word as the 
 minister and witness of the Kingdom of God among 
 men. Now, it is against that person eminently and 
 emphatically, as I said before, that the spirit of evil 
 and of falsehood directs its assault ; for if the head 
 of the body be smitten, the body itself must die. 
 " Smite the shepherd, and the sheep 'shall be scat- 
 tered," was the old guile of the evil one, who smote 
 the Son of God that he might scatter the flock. But 
 that craft has been once tried, and foiled for ever ; 
 for in the death which smote the Shepherd, the flock 
 was redeemed : and though the shepherd who is con- 
 stituted in the place of the Son be smitten, the flock 
 can be scattered no more. Three hundred years the 
 world strove to cut off the line of the Sovereign 
 Pontiffs ; but the flock was never scattered : and so 
 it shall be to the end. It is, nevertheless, against the 
 Church of God, and above all against its Head, that 
 all the spirits of evil in all ages, and, above all, in the 
 present, direct the shafts of their enmity. We see, 
 therefore, what it is that hinders the manifestation, 
 the supremacy, and the dominion of the spirit of evil 
 and of disorder upon earth — namely, the constituted 
 order of Christendom, the supernatural society of 
 which the Catholic Church has been the creator, the 
 bond of union, and the principle of conservation ; and 
 the head of that Church, who is eminently the prin- 
 
144 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 ciple of order — the centre of the Christian society 
 which binds the nations of the world in peace. Now 
 the subject which remains to us is far more difficult. 
 It reaches into the future, and deals with agencies so 
 transcendent and mysterious, that all I shall venture 
 to do will be to sketch in outline what the broad and 
 luminous prophecies of the sacred books set forth; 
 without attempting to enter into minute details, which 
 can only be interpreted by the event. 
 
 And further, as I said in the beginning, I shall 
 not attempt anything, except under the direct guid- 
 ance of the theologians of the Church, and of writers 
 whose works have its approbation. As I have ven- 
 tured hitherto nothing of my own, so until the end 
 I shall pursue the same course. 
 
 What I have, then, to speak of is, the persecution 
 of Antichrist, and finally his destruction. 
 
 First of all, let us begin with the twenty-fourth 
 chapter of the holy Gospel according to St. Matthew, 
 in which we read that our Divine Lord when He 
 beheld the building of the Temple, said " There shall 
 not be left here a stone upon a stone that shall not 
 be destroyed." And His disciples, when He was in 
 the Mount of Olives, came to Htm privately and 
 said, " TeU us what wiU be the sign of Thy com- 
 ing, and of the consummation of the world." They 
 understood that the destruction of the Temple in 
 Jerusalem and the end of the world should be part of 
 
Lect. IV.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 145 
 
 one and the same action, and should take place at one 
 and the same time. Now, as in nature we see moun- 
 tains foreshortened one against another, so that the 
 whole chain seems but one outline, so in the events of 
 prophecy. There are here two different events which 
 appear but one — the destruction of Jerusalem, and 
 the end of the world. Our Divine Lord went on to 
 tell them that there should come such a tribulation as 
 had never yet been ; and that unless those days were 
 shortened, there should no flesh be saved ; that for 
 the sake of the elect those days should be shortened ; 
 that kingdom should rise against kingdom, and nation 
 against nation, and there should be wars and pesti- 
 lences and famines in divers places; that brethren 
 should betray their brethren to death,* that His dis- 
 ciples should be persecuted for His name's sake, that 
 all men should hate them, that they should be put to 
 death, and that false Christs and false prophets should 
 arise and should seduce many ; that is, there should 
 come false teachers, pretended Messias ; and that in 
 the midst of all these persecutions He himself would 
 come to judgment — that, like as the lightning cometh 
 out of the east, and appeareth even unto the west, so 
 shall also the coming of the Son of Man be. 
 
 In this answer our Divine Lord spoke of two 
 events — one, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the 
 other, the end of the world. The one has been ful- 
 * St. Mark xiii. 
 
146 THE PEKPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 filled, and the other is yet to come. Now three chief 
 agents at this moment exist upon earth. First, there 
 is the Catholic Church; next, there is the ancient 
 people of God, the Jewish race, still preserved, as we 
 have already seen, by a mysterious providence, for 
 some future dispensation ; and thirdly, there is the 
 natural society of man without God, which took the 
 form of paganism of old, and is taking the form 
 of infidelity in the last days. These three are the 
 ultimate agents ia the history of the modern world : 
 first, the natural society of mankind ; next, the dis- 
 persion of the Jewish people ; and, thirdly, the uni- 
 versal Church. The two last are the only bodies 
 which interpenetrate into all nations, and have an 
 unity distinct and independent of them. They have 
 a greater power than any nation, and are direct and 
 changeless antagonists. Now the Church has had 
 to undergo already two persecutions, one from the 
 hand of the Jews, and one also from the hand of the 
 pagans. The writers of the early ages, the Fathers 
 both of the East and of the West, foretold that, in 
 the last age of the world, the Church will have to 
 undergo a third persecution from the hands of an 
 infidel world revolted from the Incarnate Word. And 
 therefore the prophecy of St. Alatthew reveals two 
 events, or two actions. There is the event which is 
 past, the type and the shadow of the event to come, 
 and there is the event which is stiU future, at the end 
 
Lect. IV.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 147 
 
 of the world ; and all the persecutions that have ever 
 been hitherto are no more than the forerunners and 
 the types of the last persecution which shall be. 
 
 With 'these preliminary observations, let us begin 
 the last part of our subject. What I have to speak of 
 is the persecution which Antichrist shall inflict upon 
 the Church of God. We have already seen reason to 
 believe that as our Divine Lord delivered Himself 
 into the hands of sinners when His time was come, 
 and no man could lay hand upon Him, until of His 
 own free will He delivered Himself over to their 
 power, so in like manner it shall be with that Church 
 of which He said, " Upon this rock will I build my 
 Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against 
 it." As the wicked did not prevail against Him even 
 when they bound Him with cords, dragged Him to 
 the judgment, blindfolded His eyes, mocked Him as 
 a false King, smote Him on the head as a false Pro- 
 phet, led Him away, crucified Him, and in the mastery 
 of their power seemed to have absolute dominion 
 over Him, so that He lay ground down and almost 
 annihilated under their feet ; and as, at that very time 
 when He was dead and buried out of their sight, He 
 was conqueror over all, and rose again the third day, 
 and ascended into heaven, and was crowned, glorified, 
 and invested with His royalty, and reigns supreme. 
 King of kings and Lord of lords, — even so shall it be 
 with His Church : though for a time persecuted, and 
 
148 THE PEKPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 to the eyes of man, overthrown and trampled on, de- 
 throned, despoiled, mocked, and crushed, yet in that 
 high time of triumph the gates of hell shall not 
 prevail. There is in store for the Church of God a 
 resurrection and an ascension, a royalty and a domi- 
 nion, a recompense of glory for all it has endured. 
 Like Jesus, it needs must suffer on the way to its 
 crown ; yet crowned it shall be with Him eternally. 
 Let no one, then, be scandalised if the prophecy speak 
 of sufferings to come. We are fond of imagining 
 triumphs and glories for the Church on earth, — that 
 the Gospel is to be preached to all nations, and the 
 world to be converted, and all enemies subdued, and 
 I know not what, — until some ears are impatient of 
 hearing that there is in store for the Church a time of 
 terrible trial : and so we do as the Jews of old, who 
 looked for a conqueror, a king, and for prosperity; 
 and when their Messias came in humility and in pas- 
 sion, they did not know Him. So, I am afraid, many 
 among us intoxicate their minds with the visions of 
 success and victory, and cannot endure the thought 
 that there is a time of persecution yet to come for the 
 Church of God. I will therefore point out as briefly 
 as I can what appears in the events now around as to 
 be leading on to this result. 
 
 I. The first sign or mark of this coming persecu- 
 tion is an indifference to truth. Just as there is a 
 dead calm before a whirlwind, and as the waters over 
 
Leot. IV.] THE VICAK OF JESUS CHRIST. 149 
 
 a great fall run like glass, so before an outbreak there 
 is a time of tranquillity. The first sign is indiffer- 
 ence. The sign that portends more surely than any- 
 other the outbreak of a future persecution is a sort of 
 scornful indifference to truth or falsehood. Ancient 
 Eome in its might and power adopted every false 
 religion from all its conquered nations, and gave to 
 each of them a temple within its walls. It was sove- 
 reignly and contemptuously indifferent to all the sup- 
 erstitions of the earth. It encouraged them ; for each 
 nation had its own proper superstition, and that proper 
 superstition was a mode of tranquillising, of governT 
 ing, and of maintaining in subjection the people who 
 were indulged by building a temple within its gates. 
 In like manner we see the nations of the Christian 
 world at this moment gradually adopting every form 
 of religious contradiction — that is, giving it full scope, 
 and, as it is called, perfect toleration ; not recognising 
 any distinctions of truth or falsehood between one 
 religion or another, but leaving all forms of religion 
 to work their own way. Miserable is the state of the 
 world in which ten thousand poisons grow round one 
 truth ; miserable is the state of any country where 
 truth is only tolerated. This is a state of great spi- 
 ritual and intellectual danger. 
 
 Let us see the result. First of all, the divine 
 voice of the Church of God is thereby entirely ig- 
 nored. They see no distinction between a doctrine 
 
150 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 of faith and a human opinion. Both are allowed to 
 have free way. There are mixed together doctrines 
 of faith with every form of heresy, until, as in Eng- 
 land, we have all conceivable forms of belief, from 
 the Council of Trent m all its rigour and in all its 
 perfection on the one hand, to the Catechism of Posi- 
 tive Beligion on the other. We have every form of 
 opinion started, and freely allowed, from the two 
 extremes ; the one of which is the worship of God in 
 Unity and Trinity, 'the Son incarnate for us ; and the 
 other, the denial of God, and the worship of humanity. 
 Next, denying and ignoring of course the divine voice 
 of the Church, the civil governor must ignore the 
 divine unity of the Church, and admit every form of 
 separation, or system, or division all mingled together ; 
 so that the people are crumbled into religious sects 
 and religious divisions, and the law of unity is alto- 
 gether lost. Then, again, all positive truth, as such, 
 is rejected ; and it is rejected, because who shall say 
 who is right and who is wrong, if there be no Divine 
 teacher ? If there be no Divine judge, who shall say 
 what is true and what is false between conflicting 
 religious dpinions ? A state that has separated itself 
 from the unity of the Church, and has thereby lost 
 the guidance of the Divine teacher, is unable to deter- 
 mine by any of its tribunals, civil or ecclesiastical, as 
 it may continue to call them, what is true and what 
 is false in a controverted question of religion ; and 
 
Lect. IV.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 15 1 
 
 then, as we know, there grows up an intense hatred 
 of what is called dogmatism, that is, of any positive 
 truth, anything definite, anything iinal, anything 
 which has precise limits, any form of belief which is 
 expressed in particular definitions — all this is utterly 
 distasteful to men who on principle encourage all 
 forms of religious opinion. In fact, we are coming 
 to the state of Festus, who, when he heard that the 
 Jews had an accusation against St. Paul, reported 
 that he could find " no question which seemed ill " to 
 him, because they were questions of superstition, and 
 " about one Jesus deceased, whom Paul affirmed to 
 be alive." * ISTow this is just the state of indifference 
 to which the civil governors of the world are gradu- 
 ally reducing themselves, and the governments they 
 administer, and the people they govern. 
 
 2. The next step which is also a fulfilment 
 of the prophecies is the persecution of the truth. 
 When Eome in ancient days legalised every idolatry 
 throughout the whole of the Eoman Empire, there 
 was one religion which was called a religio illicita, 
 an unlawful religion, and there was one society 
 which was called a societas illicita, or an unlawful 
 society. They might worship the twelve gods of 
 Egyp)t, or Jupiter Capitolinus, or Dea Eoma; but 
 they might not worship the God of heaven, they 
 might not worship God revealed in His Son. The 
 * Acts XX. 18, 19. 
 
IS2 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 Eomans did not believe in the Incarnation ; and that 
 one religion which was alone true was the only reli- 
 gion that was not tolerated. There were the priests 
 of Jupiter, of Cybele, of Fortune, and of Vesta ; 
 there were all manner of sacred confraternities, and 
 orders, and societies ; but there was one society 
 which was not permitted to exist, and that was the 
 Church of the living God. In the midst of this uni- 
 versal toleration, there was one exception made with 
 the most peremptory exactness, to exclude the truth 
 and the Church of God from the world. Now this 
 is what must again inevitably come to pass, because 
 the Church of God is inflexible in the mission com- 
 mitted to it. The Catholic Church will never compro- 
 mise a doctrine ; it will never allow two opposite doc- 
 trines to be taught within its pale ; it will never obey 
 the civil governor when he pronounces judgment in 
 things that are spiritual. The Catholic Church is 
 bound by the Divine law to suffer martyrdom rather 
 than compromise a doctrine, or obey the law of the civil 
 governorwhich violates the conscience; and more than 
 this, it is not only bound to offer a passive disobe- 
 dience, which may be done in a corner, and therefore 
 not detected, and because not detected not punished ; 
 but the Catholic Church cannot be silent ; it cannot 
 hold its peace ; it cannot cease to preach the doctrines 
 of Eevelation, not only of the Trinity and of the In- 
 carnation, but likewise of the Seven Sacraments, and 
 
Lect. IV.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CUEIST. 153 
 
 of the infallibility of the Church of God, and of the 
 necessity of unity, and of obedience to the Holy See 
 as to a sovereign principle of truth : and because it 
 •will not be silent, and cannot compromise, and will 
 not obey in matters that are of its own Divine pre- 
 rogative, therefore it stands alone in the world ; for 
 there is not another Church so called, nor any com- 
 munity professing to be a Church, which does not 
 submit, or obey, or hold its peace, when the civil 
 governors of the world command. It is not ten years 
 since we heard of a decision on the matter of bap- 
 tism, involving the doctrine of original sin on the one 
 hand, and the doctrine of preventing grace on the 
 other ; and because a civil judge pronounced that it 
 was lawful in the Established Church of England for 
 men without punishment to teach two contradictory 
 doctrines, bishops, priests, and people were content 
 that it should be so : or, at least, they said, " We can- 
 not do otherwise ; the civil power wUl allow men to 
 preach both : what can we do ? We are persecuted, 
 and therefore we hold our peace ; we go on minister- 
 ing under a civil law which compels us to endure that 
 the man who preaches before us in the morning, or 
 the man who shall preach after us in the afternoon, 
 may preach a doctrine in diametrical contradiction 
 to that which we know to be the revealed truth 
 of God ; and because the civil governors have deter- 
 mined it so, we are not responsible, and the Angli- 
 
154 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 can Church is not responsible, because it is per- 
 secuted." Now this is the characteristic difference 
 between a human system established by the civil law 
 and the Church of God. Would it be permitted in 
 the Church which is Catholic and Eoman, that I 
 should now deny that any child baptized receives 
 the infusion of regenerating grace ? What would 
 become of me by to-morrow morning ? You know 
 perfectly well that if I were to depart one jot or one 
 tittle from the Holy Catholic faith, delivered by the 
 Divine voice of the Church of God, I should be im- 
 mediately suspended, and no civil governor, or power 
 in the world, could restore me to the exercise of my 
 faculties ; no civil judge or potentate on earth could 
 re-instate me in the administration of the Sacraments, 
 until the spiritual authority of the Church permitted 
 me to do so. 
 
 This, then, is the characteristic difference, which 
 must one day bring down upon the Church, in all 
 countries where this spirit of indifference has esta- 
 blished itself, a persecution of the civil power. And 
 for a further reason, because the difference between 
 the Catholic Church and every other society is this : 
 other societies are of voluntary formation ; that is, 
 people unite themselves to a particular body, and, if 
 they do not like it on better knowledge, they go their 
 way : they become Baptists, or Anabaptists, or Epis- 
 copalians, or Unitarians, or Presbyterians, until they 
 
Lect. IV.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 155 
 
 find something which they do not like in these sys- 
 tems ; and then they go their way, and either unite 
 themselves to some other body or remain unattached ; 
 because these societies have no claim to govern the 
 will, — all that they profess to do is to teach. They 
 are like the ancient schools, and their teaching is a 
 kind of Christian philosophy. They put their doc- 
 trines before those who are willing to listen, and if 
 they listen, and, by good fortune, agree with them, 
 they remain with them : if not, they go their way. 
 But where is the government over the will? Can 
 they say, " In the name of God, and under pain of 
 mortal sin, you must believe that God was incarnate, 
 aud that our incarnate Lord offers Himself in sacri- 
 fice upon the altar, that the Sacraments instituted by 
 the Son of God are seven, and that they all convey 
 the grace of the Holy Ghost " ? Unless they have an 
 authority over the will as well as over the intelligence 
 they are only a school, and not a kingdom. Now 
 this is a character entirely wanting in every society 
 that cannot claim to govern in the name of our Divine 
 Lord, and to teach with a Divine voice ; and therefore 
 the Church of God differs from every other society in 
 this particular, that it is not only a communion of 
 people who voluntarily unite together, but that it is a 
 kingdom. It has a legislature ; the line of its councils 
 for eighteen hundred years have sat, deliberated, and de- 
 creed with all the solemnity and more than the majesty 
 
156 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 of an imperial parliament. It has an executive which 
 carries out and enforces the decrees of those councils 
 with all the calmness and more than the peremptory 
 decision of an imperial will. The Church of God, 
 therefore, is an empire within an empire; and the 
 governors and princes of this world are jealous of it for 
 that very reason. They say, " Nolumus hunc regnare 
 super nos " — " we will not have this man to reign over 
 us." It is precisely because the Son of God, when He 
 came, established a kingdom upon earth, that therefore, 
 in every land, in every nation, the Catholic Church 
 governs with the authority of the universal Church 
 of God. Therefore it is that ten years back the 
 atmosphere was rent and tormented by the uproar of 
 " Papal aggression." The natural instinct of the ci^il 
 rulers knew that it was not a mere Christian philo- 
 sophy wafted from foreign lands, but a spiritual power 
 and a spiritual sovereignty. For this reason also, the 
 extreme liberal school — those who claim toleration for 
 every form of opinion, and who teach that the office of 
 the civil governor is never to enter into controversies 
 of religion, but that all men should be left free in 
 their belief, and the conscience of all men be at liberty 
 before God — even they make one exception, and, in 
 the strangest contradiction to all their principles, or, 
 at least, their professions, maintain that as the Catho- 
 lic Church is not only a form of doctrine, but also a 
 power or government, it must be excepted from the 
 
Lect. IV.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 157 
 
 general toleration. And this is precisely the point of 
 future collision. It is the very reason why the Arch- 
 bishops of Cologne, Turin, Cagliari, and the like, went 
 the other day into exile ; why nineteen Sees are, at 
 this moment, vacant in Sardinia. Why, in Italy, 
 Bishops are, at this day, cast out from their Episco- 
 pal thrones ; it is for this reason that in this land the 
 Protestant religion is established instead of Catholic 
 truth, and that thrones once filled by the Bishops of 
 the universal Church are now occupied by those whom 
 the royalties of England, and not the authority of the 
 Vicar of Jesus Christ, have chosen and set up. It is 
 the same old contest, old as Christianity itself, which 
 has been from the beginning, first with pagan, and 
 then with heretic, and then with schismatic^ and 
 then with infidel, and will continue to the end. The 
 day is not far off, when the nations of the world, 
 now so calm and peaceful in the stillness of their 
 universal indifference, may easily be roused, and 
 penal laws once more may be found in their statute- 
 books. 
 
 3. This leads on plainly to the marks which the 
 prophet gives of the persecution of the last days. 
 Now there are three things which he has recorded. 
 The first, that the continual sacrifice shall be taken 
 away ; the next, that the sanctuary shall be occupied 
 by the abomination which maketh desolate; the third, 
 that, " the strength " and " the stars," as he described 
 
IS8 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 it, shall be cast down. And these are the only three 
 I will notice. 
 
 Now, first of all, what is this "taking away of 
 the continual sacrifice " ? 
 
 It was taken away in type at the destruction of 
 Jerusalem. The sacrifice of the Temple, that is, of 
 the lamb, morning and evening, in the Temple of 
 G-od, was entirely abolished with the destruction of 
 the Temple itself. But the Prophet Malachias says : * 
 " Prom the rising of the sun even to the going down, 
 my name is great among the Gentiles ; and in every 
 place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my 
 name a clean oblation." This passage of the prophet 
 has been interpreted by the Pathers of the Church, 
 beginning with St. Ireneeus, St. Justin Martjrr, and 
 I know not how many besides, to be the sacrifice of 
 the Holy Pucharist, the true Paschal Lamb, which 
 came in the place of the type — namely, the sacrifice 
 of Jesus Himself on Calvary, renewed perpetually 
 and continued for ever in the sacrifice on the altar. 
 Now has that continual sacrifice been taken away ? 
 That which was typical of it in old days has been 
 already taken away. But has the reality been taken 
 away ? The Holy Pathers who have written upon 
 the subject of Antichrist, and have interpreted these 
 prophecies of Daniel, say that towards the end of the 
 world, during the reign of Antichrist, the public oifer- 
 " Mai. i. II. 
 
Lect. IV.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 159 
 
 ing of the Holy Sacrifice for a time will cease.* Has 
 there as yet ever come to pass anything which may be 
 called an instalment or a forerunner of such an event 
 as this ? Look into the East. The Mahometan super- 
 stition, which arose in Arabia, and swept over Pales- 
 tine and Asia Minor, the region of the Seven Churches, 
 and Egypt, the north of Africa — the home of St. Au- 
 gustine, St. Cyprian, St. Optatus — and finally pene- 
 trated into Constantinople, where soon it became 
 dominant, has in every place prohibited and sup- 
 pressed the worship and sacrifice of Jesus Christ. 
 The Mahometan superstition at this moment holds 
 for its mosques a multitude of Christian churches, in 
 which the continual sacrifice is already taken away, 
 and the altar utterly destroyed. In Alexandria and in 
 Constantinople there stand churches built for Chris- 
 tian worship, into which the foot of no Christian 
 has ever entered since the continual sacrifice was 
 swept away. Surely in this we see, in part at least, 
 the fulfilment of this prophecy; so much so, that 
 many interpreters will have it that Mahomet is the 
 Antichrist, and that none other is to come. No doubt 
 he was one of the many forerunners and types of the 
 Antichrist' that shall be. Now let us look into the 
 Western world: has the continual sacrifice been taken 
 away in any other land ? — for instance, in all those 
 churches of Protestant Germany which were once 
 * Malrenda, lib. viii. c. 4, &c. 
 
l6o THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 Catholic, ■where the holy sacrifice of the Mass was 
 daily offered ? — throughout Norway, and Sweden, and 
 Denmark, and one half of Switzerland, where there 
 are a multitude of ancient Catholic churches — 
 throughout England, in the cathedrals and the parish 
 churches of this land, which were built simply as 
 shrines of Jesus present in the Holy Eucharist, as 
 sanctuaries raised for the offering of the Holy Sacri- 
 fice ? What is the characteristic mark of the Refor- 
 mation, hut the rejection of the Mass, and all that 
 belongs to it, as declared in the Thirty-nine Articles 
 of the Church of England to be blasphemous fables 
 and dangerous deceits ? The suppression of the con- 
 tinual sacrifice is, above all, the mark and charac- 
 teristic of the Protestant Eeformation. I need not 
 stay to speak of the new and vigorous life that has 
 sprung up in these very countries simultaneously with 
 the fulfilment of this prophecy, nor of how the Holy 
 Sacrifice, taken away from the old sanctuaries, ap- 
 pears anew on altars that are erected and multiplied 
 every day, to the joy of the faithful and the con- 
 fusion of the unbeliever. Nevertheless, this pro- 
 phecy of Daniel has already its fulfilment both in 
 the East and West, — in the two wings, as it were ; 
 while in the heart of Christendom the Holy Sacrifice 
 is offered stdl. What is the great flood of infidelity, 
 revolution, and anarchy, which is now sapping the 
 foundations of Christian society, not only in France, 
 
Lect. IV.] THE VICAK OF JESUS CHRIST. l6l 
 
 but ia Italy, and encompassing Eome, the centre and 
 sanctuary of the Catholic Church, but the abomination 
 which desolates the sanctuary, and takes away the 
 continual sacrifice ? The secret societies have long 
 ago undermined and honeycombed the Christian 
 society of Europe, and are at this moment struggling 
 onward towards Eome, the centre of all Christian 
 order in the world. 
 
 The Protestant spirit of England, and the schis- 
 matical spirit even of countries Catholic in name, 
 is at this moment urging on the great anticatholic 
 movement of Italy. Hostility to the Holy See is the 
 true and governing motive. And thus we come to 
 the third mark, the casting down of " the Prince of 
 Strength ;" that is, the Divine authority of the Church, 
 and especially of him in whose person it is embodied, 
 the Vicar of Jesus Christ. God has invested him 
 with sovereignty, and given to him a home and a 
 patrimony on earth. The world is in arms to depose 
 him, and to leave him no place to lay his head. Eome 
 and the Eoman States are the inheritance of the In- 
 carnation. The world is resolved to drive the Incar- 
 nation off the earth. It will not suffer it to possess 
 so much as to set the sole of its foot upon. This is 
 the true interpretation of the anticatholic movement 
 of Italy and England : " Tolle hunc de terra!' The 
 dethronement of the Vicar of Christ is the dethrone- 
 ment of the hierarchy of the universal Church, and 
 
 L 
 
1 62 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 the public rejection of the Presence and Eeign of 
 Jesus. 
 
 4. Now, if I am obliged to enter somewhat into 
 the future, I shall coniine myself to tracing out a 
 very general outline. The direct tendency of all the 
 events we see at this moment is clearly this, to over- 
 throw Catholic worship throughout the world. Al- 
 ready we see that every Government in Europe is 
 excluding religion from its public acts. The civil 
 powers are desecrating themselves : government is 
 without religion ; and if government be without re- 
 ligion, education must be without religion. We see 
 it already in America and in France. It has been 
 again and again attempted in England. The result 
 of this can be nothing but the reestablishment of 
 mere natural society ; that is to say, the governments 
 and the powers of the world, which for a time were 
 subdued by the Church of God to a belief in Chris- 
 tianity, to obedience to the laws of God, and to the 
 unity of the Church, having revolted from it and 
 desecrated themselves, have relapsed into their 
 natural state. 
 
 The prophet Daniel, in the twelfth chapter, says 
 that iu the time of the end many shall be chosen 
 and made white, and shall be tried as fire ; and the 
 wicked shall deal wickedly, and none of the wicked 
 shall understand, but the learned shall understand ; 
 that is, many who have known the faith shall abandon 
 
Eect. IV.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 163 
 
 it, by apostasy. " Some of the learned shall fall ; " * 
 that is, they shall fall from their fidelity to God. And 
 how shall this come to pass ? Partly by fear, partly 
 by deception, partly by cowardice ; partly because 
 they cannot stand for unpopular truth in the face 
 of popular falsehood ; partly because the overruling 
 contemptuous public opinion, as in such a country as 
 this, and in France, so subdues and frightens Catho- 
 lics, that they dare not avow their principles, and at 
 last, dare not hold them. They become admirers and 
 worshippers of the material prosperity of Protestant 
 countries. They see the commerce, the manufactures, 
 the agriculture, the capital, the practical science, the 
 irresistible armies, the fleets that cover the sea, and 
 they come flocking to adore, and say, "E"othing is 
 so great as this great country of Protestant England." 
 And so they give up their faith, and become mate- 
 rialists, seeking for the wealth and power of this 
 world, dazzled and overpowered by the greatness of a 
 country which has cast off its fidelity to the Church. 
 5. Now the last result of all this will be a perse- 
 cution, which I will not attempt to describe. It is 
 enough to remind you of the words of our Divine 
 Master : " Brother shall betray brother to death ; " it 
 shall be a persecution in which no man shall spare 
 his neighbour. But there is One Power which will 
 destroy all antagonists ; there is One Person who will 
 * Dan. xi. 35. 
 
1 64 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 break down and smite small as the dust of the sum- 
 mer threshing-floor all the enemies of the Church, 
 for it is He who will consume His enemies " with 
 the Spirit of His mouth," and destroy them " with 
 the brightness of His coming." It seems as if the 
 Son of God were jealous lest any one should vin- 
 dicate His authority. He has claimed the battle to 
 Himself ; He has taken up the gage which has been 
 cast down against Him ; and prophecy is plain and 
 explicit that the last overthrow of evil will be His ; 
 that it will be wrought by no man, but by the Son of 
 God ; that all the nations of the world may know that 
 He, and He alone, is King, and that He, and He alone, 
 is God. 
 
 Thus far I have wished to show, first, that the vaunt 
 and the boast and the triumph of the enemies of the 
 Holy See at the present weakness and isolation of the 
 Temporal State of Eome is without foundation or 
 sense. Let the present revolution prosper ten times 
 more than it ever has or will, we are prepared for any 
 result. Let the enemies of the Church usurp Eome ten 
 times, as they have already in ages past, the Holy See 
 and the Vicar of Jesus Christ are beyond their power. 
 Next, I desire to give courage and strength to some 
 to whom adversity is a temptation and failure a stone 
 of offence. And lastly, to meet in full front the sense- 
 less interpretations of prophecy by Protestants, who, 
 confounding all things, make Christ and Antichrist 
 
Lect. IV.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 165 
 
 to change places.* Prom which, too, it is evident 
 that the hostility of Protestantism and of the Eevolu- 
 tion against the Church in Eome is a prelude of Anti- 
 christ, and a sign of antagonism to the kingdom of 
 Jesus Christ on earth. Wevertheless the filial love 
 and devoted loyalty of the Eoman people 'to their 
 Father, Pastor, and Prince has never been more 
 heartfelt, though the violence and terror of evil may 
 restrain its accents. But no words of mine can ex- 
 press this as it ought; and I therefore recite the 
 words of one who, above all, knows the heart of his 
 people and of Eome. 
 
 " Here we know not," says the Sovereign Pon- 
 tiff, " how to pass in silence the constant evidence of 
 
 * In reducing the ten Lectiires which compose this volume to 
 the form originally intended, viz. that of a popular exposition of 
 the Temporal Power of the Holy See, I have excluded digressions 
 which were disproportioned to the main subject and foreign to 
 my purpose. They were applicable only to the time and place 
 where the discourses were given, and rendered fitting only by 
 the incessant controversies and absurd misinterpretations of Holy 
 Scripture used as weapons of controversy. If there should be 
 need, I will treat this subject in a separate form. In the mean- 
 time students may find these authorities sufiicient : 
 
 Malvenda, de Antichristo, lib. iv. u. 5. Romse, 1604. 
 
 Lessius, de Antichristo, dem. xii. 
 
 Bellarm. de Summo Pontifice, lib. iv. c. 4. 
 
 Viegas, de Apoc. c. xviii. 
 
 Cornel, k Lapide, in Apoc. c. xviii. 
 
 Herinx, Summa Theol. pars iv. qusest. 2, de Antichristo. 
 
 See especially Suarez, Defensio Fidei CatholioEe, lib. v. c. vii. 9, 
 c XV. 17, 0. xxi. 7. 
 
1 66 THE PERPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 real affection, of unalterable fidelity, whicli the Eo- 
 man people have lavished towards us. Desirous of 
 giving striking proof of the tenacity with which it 
 firmly holds itself attached to us, to this Apostolic 
 See, and to this temporal sovereignty which belongs 
 to us, it repels and condemns with the greatest energy 
 the culpable intrigues and endeavours of those who 
 seek to lay snares in its path and to spread trouble 
 in its bosom. Have not you yourselves. Venerable 
 Brethren, witnessed over and over again the sincere, 
 undisguised, and cordial manifestations by which this 
 Eoman people, which we so much love, has displayed 
 its sentiment of traditional faith — a faith which de- 
 servedly merits the greatest praise ? " * 
 
 ISTow I have not attempted to point out what shall 
 be the future events except in outline, and I have 
 never ventured to designate who shall be the person 
 that shall accomplish them. Of this I know nothing ; 
 but I am enabled with the most perfect certainty, 
 from the Word of God, and from the interpretations 
 of the Church, to point out the great principles which 
 are in conflict on either side. I began by showing 
 you that the Antichrist, and the antichristian move- 
 ment, has these marks : first, schism from the Church 
 of God ; secondly, denial of its Divine and infallible 
 voice ; and thirdly, denial of the Incarnation. It is, 
 therefore, the direct and mortal enemy of the One 
 * Allocution of tte Sovereign Pontiff Pius IX., Sept. 30, i86l. 
 
Lect. IV.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 1 67 
 
 Holy Catholic and Eoman Church — the unity from 
 ■which all schism is made; the sole organ of the Divine 
 voice of the Spirit of God ; the shrine and sanctuary 
 of the Incarnation and of the continual sacrifice. 
 
 I have spoken of the great subject so vital and 
 dear to all Catholics at this moment, the Temporal 
 Power of the Holy See. I have endeavoured to show 
 its divine institution and intention, its divine aim 
 and mission and ministration in creating the order of 
 Christian Europe, and the consequence of the present 
 conflict of the civil powers against it. 
 
 This naturally led me to consider the nature of 
 that conflict, and to trace it to its origin. The pro- 
 phecies of St. Paul, as we have seen, describe its 
 principle and operation; and the history of Chris- 
 tianity shows that it has a continuous activity, which, 
 under its many forms, has always assailed the Church 
 of God. The conflict of this age against the Holy 
 See is only another change of form : the principle is 
 identical. Now this has led me to the verge of a 
 question on which, as all the Theologians of the 
 Church who treat of this matter have spoken, it is 
 hardly possible to be silent. I mean the last perse- 
 cution of the Church, which is still to come. "With 
 this I am cohipelled to break off; and this abrupt 
 ending may seem to imply that there is no glorious 
 future, no reign of sovereign peace in store for the 
 Church on earth. I hope, therefore, to add other 
 
1 68 THE PEKPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 Lectures in order to bring out tlie imperishable life, 
 the indivisible unity, the perpetual visibleness, the 
 indissoluble sovereignty of the Church. All its suf- 
 ferings have passed over it as mists over the sun, in 
 the orb and glory of which there is neither " trans- 
 mutatio nee vicissitudinis obumbratio," * — neither 
 "change nor shadow of vicissitude." All its future 
 trials wiU in like manner pass over it as a transient 
 cloud, — dark, but soon gone, — revealing the divine 
 prerogatives and sovereignty of the Church in a more 
 luminous splendour. In the history of its reign on 
 earth these passing moments are as nothing. The 
 waves go over the ship, and they are not ; but the 
 ship, with unchanged course, bears on. So with the 
 "Kingdom of Jesus upon earth : it is " regnum im- 
 mobile ; " -f- ever expanding, pushing out its frontiers, 
 and unfolding its prerogatives upon the world. Such 
 as He founded it, such it shall be at His coming ; 
 but full with the glories and accumulated powers of 
 its long warfare upon earth. 
 
 Let no one say, then, that these Lectures have a 
 despondiag tone. Sorrowful, I admit ; but despond- 
 ing, it could not be. Sorrowful, I am aware they 
 are ; and who can be otherwise than sorrowful, when 
 he sees the havoc of infidelity and anarchy in the fair 
 provinces of Christian Europe, — when he reflects on 
 the loss of souls, the growing evils of the world, and 
 * St. James i. 17. t Heb. xii. 28. 
 
Lect. IV.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 1 69 
 
 the dishonours of the most Precious Blood ? It is 
 impossible, I think, to look upon the present crisis of 
 the Holy See without remembering the agony in the 
 Garden, and the Divine prevision of the Son of God, 
 to which all these things were present, when He said, 
 " My soul is sorrowful even unto death." * It seems 
 to me, also, that the tone of the Supreme Pontiffs has 
 always been a tone of supernatural sorrow over the 
 waywardness of men, and the sins of the Christian 
 world. I know nothing more pathetic than the writ- 
 ings of St. Gregory the Great, unless it be the majes- 
 tic and moving encyclical letters of Pius IX. Such 
 a sorrow every Catholic ought to breathe ; and if he 
 does not partake of it, he ought carefully to examine 
 himself, to find the reason of his exemption from a 
 sorrow which seems inseparable from a love of the 
 holy Catholic and Eoman Church. I acknowledge, 
 also, another cause of sorrow was present in my mind 
 even more powerfully than perhaps I was altogether 
 aware. I do not know how any one can treat the trials 
 of the Holy See as an abstraction. To me, at least, 
 they come incorporated in the person, and visible 
 in the image, of the most august and supernatural 
 presence I have ever known in life. The sufferings 
 of the Holy See are the sufferings of the Holy Father. 
 It is not the "cathedra Petri," but the person of 
 Pius IX., that comes before us when we turn our 
 * St. Matt. xxvi. 38. 
 
I70 THE PEliPETUAL CONFLICT OF 
 
 eyes and hearts upon this most unnatural warfare of 
 sons against their Father. The sovereign dignity and 
 the paternal sweetness of countenance, manner, and 
 voice ; the playfulness, simplicity, and tenderness of 
 the saintly countenance and tone of him who for ten 
 years has deigned to receive, direct, encourage, and 
 console me in the most trying season of my life, were 
 before me, even more vividly than at other times, 
 when I was contemplating the present and the 
 possible future of the Holy See. A sorrowful tone, 
 therefore, I readily acknowledge. If it is more so 
 than befits the subject and the time, I acknowledge 
 also the fault, and trust only that it may be venial. 
 But of desponding I cannot feel guUty. To despond 
 is contrary to faith. It is no manliness or courage to 
 be hopeful because of visible success, and no despond- 
 ency to be grave and forecasting in the presence of 
 adversity. I see neither courage nor prudence in 
 being afraid to measure our antagonists or to see their 
 power. True courage — manly and Christian — seems 
 to me to rest not upon numbers, or resources, or 
 events, or prosperous issues, still less on a delusive 
 hopefulness, but upon truths, and principles, and 
 laws of the supernatural order, and the promises of 
 God. When these are " for us, who is against us ? " * 
 What matters the rising of a thousand revolutions, or 
 the temporary successes of ten thousand apostates ? 
 * Rom. viii. 31. 
 
Leot. IV.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 171 
 
 The kingdom of God is divine, and its victory and 
 glory are sure as the presence of Jesus upon earth. 
 
 I should indeed be sorry to write a line in a tone 
 to discourage even one simple faithful soul; but I 
 would do even this for a moment, if in so doing I 
 could purify our confidence of the low, human, un- 
 reasoning, unilluminated, and almost boastful and 
 defiant tone too commonly heard. This seems to me 
 to be " ex sanguinibus, et ex voluntate carnis, et ex 
 voluntate viri," * — of man, and of flesh and blood, 
 not of faith or of the Spirit of God. "Justus autem 
 mens ex fide vivet." f "We know by the light of Faith 
 that all things are working out the greater glory of 
 Jesus, and of His Church on earth. The confidence 
 we have in the stability of nature, the revolutions of 
 the firmament, the laws of gravitation, the return of 
 seasons and of tides, is not more changeless than our 
 consciousness that the one Holy Catholic and Eoman 
 Church is even now achieving, through passion and 
 the cross, the victories of Jesus upon earth. And as 
 the glories of Jesus were more and more revealed as 
 He approached nearer to His Cross, and as the Cross 
 itself was but the prelude of the Eesurrection, and of 
 the fuller manifestation of His kingdom and of His 
 royalties, so is it with the Church, which in all things 
 is conformed to His life of passion and of sovereignty. 
 The prompting of our natural hearts, when we hear 
 * St. John i. 13. t Heb. x. 56. 
 
172 THE PERPETUAL CONrLICT OF 
 
 of the sufferings of those we love, is to speak with an 
 impatient sorrow ; as Peter, when Jesus took His dis- 
 ciples and told them that the Son of Man " must suf- 
 fer many things, and be rejected by the ancients, by 
 the high priests, and the Scribes, and be killed ; and 
 after three days rise again. And He spoke the word 
 openly ; and Peter, taking Him, began to rebuke 
 Him." * 
 
 We too are ready to say, " This be far from Thee, 
 Lord ; this shall not be unto Thee." f Yet Jesus did 
 not accept this manifestation of a too natural love. 
 His words of rebuke have a divine energy, intended 
 to teach us not to trust our human affections in judg- 
 ing of His supernatural dispensations. " Go behind 
 Me, Satan, because thou savourest not the things that 
 are of God, but that are of men." J 
 
 And now to make an end. Men have need to 
 look to their principles. They have to make a choice 
 between two things, between faith in a teacher speak- 
 ing with an infallible voice, governing the unity which 
 now, as in the beginning, knits together the nations 
 of the world, or the spirit of fragmentary Christianity, 
 which is the source of disorder, and ends in unbelief. 
 Here is the simple choice to which we are all brought ; 
 and between them we must make up our minds. 
 
 The events of every day are carrying men further 
 
 * St. Mark viii. 31. t St. Matt. xvi. 22. 
 
 J St Mark viii. 33. 
 
Leet. IV.] THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST. 1 73 
 
 and further in the career on which they have entered 
 Every day men are becoming more and more divided. 
 These are times of sifting. Our Divine Lord is stand- 
 ing in the Church : " His fan is in His hand, and He 
 will thoroughly cleanse His floor, and He will gather 
 the grain into His barn, and will burn up the chaff 
 with unquenchable fire." * It is a time of trial, when 
 " some of the learned shall fall," and those only shall 
 be saved who are steadfast to the end. The two great 
 antagonists are gathering their forces for the last con- 
 flict ; — it may not be in our day, it may not be in the 
 time of those who come after us ; but one thing is 
 certain, that we are as much put on our trial now 
 as they will be who live in the time when it shall 
 come to pass. For as surely as the Son of God reigns 
 on high, and wUl reign " until He has put all His 
 enemies under His feet," so surely every one that 
 lifts a heel or directs a weapon, a tongue, or a pen, 
 against His faith, His Church, or His Vicar upon 
 earth, wiU. share the judgment which is laid up for 
 the Antichrist whom he serves. 
 
 * St. Matt. iii. 12. 
 
PART THIRD. 
 
 Efje last ®l0ries of tije f^olg %%% greater 
 tfjan tfje first. 
 
( 177 ) 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 " Great shall be the glory of this last house more than of the 
 first." — Aggeus ii. lo. 
 
 The Church is Jesus Himself ; He is its Head, and 
 it is His body ; its fortunes are His fortunes, and its 
 sufferings His sufferings ; its teaching is His voice ; 
 its Sacraments are the touch of His hand ; its visible 
 Head is His Vicar ; and all that befalls the Church 
 on earth is shared by the Son of God. The Church 
 of God, then, ought to be dear to us for His sake ; for 
 all that befalls it affects the Sacred Heart ; and we 
 cannot better make reparation to the Sacred Heart of 
 our Divine Lord than by fidelity, even unto death, to 
 the Church of God. 
 
 I have at other times spoken without reserve, and 
 perhaps with somewhat too much of boldness, on the 
 sufferings of the Church. I do not say on its dan- 
 gers, for dangers there cannot be. Who ever heard 
 of the dangers of Jesus ? We h^ve heard of the Pas- 
 sion of Jesus ; and so we may speak of the suffering 
 of His Church. But in danger the Church cannot 
 be. The Church is the Church of God, and man is 
 under His feet. Man can have no dominion over it. 
 I have spoken, then, in this tone, first, because there 
 is a mischievous and subtil error creeping into the 
 
 M 
 
1 78 THE LAST GLORIES OF THE HOLY SEE 
 
 hearts of many, that prosperity in this world is the 
 test of God's favour, — which is Judaism, not Chris- 
 tianity. The Cross of our Lord has taught us that 
 suffering is the sign of His presence. To look upon 
 adversity in this world as a token of Divine displea- 
 sure, with Calvary before us, is a heresy. This lan- 
 guage, then, is necessary to awaken in our hearts 
 the perpetual consciousness that, if the Church of 
 God to-morrow were to be crucified, and the world 
 were to be supreme, it would yet be the mystical 
 Body of Jesus ; and if the world to-morrow were 
 triumphant, and were to boast its sovereignty for a 
 time, it would still be the kingdom of Antichrist. 
 
 But we have other things in store. And I would 
 now speak to you on another theme, more bright 
 and joyful indeed, but not more true, and hardly 
 more necessary ; and that is, upon the glories of the 
 Holy See in the latter days — glories greater than the 
 first. We read in Holy Writ that the elders and 
 people of Israel wept when they saw the second tem- 
 ple, which was built after the captivity of Babylon, 
 for they remembered the glories and the splendour 
 of the first house built by their fathers. Therefore 
 the prophet Aggeus said, " Great shall be the glory 
 of this last house more than of the first." So of 
 the Holy See in the latter days of its confiict on 
 earth : greater shall be its glories even than in its 
 earlier times, — greater even than in the days of its 
 
Leot. I.] GREATER THAN THE FIRST. 1 79 
 
 martyred Pontiffs, than in the days of its first super- 
 natural powers and miracles, than in the days when 
 first from the Holy See went forth a spiritual agency 
 to convert the world and to subdue the empire to it- 
 self, — greater even than these shall be the glories of 
 its latter days. For as the light of the daybreak is in 
 the splendour of noontide, so the glories of its morn- 
 ing shall be found full and resplendent in its latter 
 times. And as the power and flexibility of youth 
 is to be found in the maturity of manhood, so the 
 Pontiffs of the last ages shall be invested with the 
 majesty and glory of the first. 
 
 The subject, then, on which I would speak is this 
 the imperishable vitality, the invincible tenacity of en- 
 durance, — those two singular and Divine endowments 
 of the Holy See, which have been always as time runs 
 on, which are now, and shall ever be more and more, 
 luminously manifested to the world. The vitality and 
 endurance of the first three centuries of martyrdom 
 was but the prelude of that which has sustained the 
 Holy See in the last days of its conflict. 
 
 In order to bring this out more clearly, I would 
 bid you first to remember that what is called the 
 " temporal power " of the Pope contains in itself two 
 distinct elements. The first is, the sovereignty in- 
 herent in his own person ; * and the second is, the 
 
 * Suarez, in treating of the question, " Utnim Summus Pontifex 
 omni juie divino et humano ab omni jurisdictione seeularium prin- 
 
l8o THE LAST GLORIES OF THE HOLY SEE 
 
 local sovereignty over the State whicli lie holds. 
 
 These are two distinct things. His own personal 
 
 sovereignty consists in this : first, that as the Vicar 
 
 and representative of Jesus Christ, who is King of 
 
 kings and Lord of lords, to whose hands all power 
 
 in heaven and earth is given, he is liberated by 
 
 cipum exemptus sit," says: " Quamvis privilegium. exemptionis 
 commune sit Summo Pontifici cum reliquis clericis, cum ipse non 
 solum clericus sit sed etiam clericorum et totius eeclesise Princeps 
 et caput ; tamen quia in illo propter singularem emineutiam notior 
 est talis priTilegii origo, et quia iUius cognitio parare potest viam 
 ad investigandam originem immunitatis aliorum eeclesiasticorum, 
 ideo prius de Papa in particulari sermonem instituimus. De quo 
 etiam liaeretici non negant, nunc de facto exemptum esse ab omni 
 saeculari potestate, quia ipse cum Pontifieatu conjunctum tabet 
 temporale regnum, in quo superiorem non reeognoscit, quia Tero 
 regnum istud non a Deo immediate, sed hominum devotioue, vel 
 aljo simili humano titulo consecutus est, ideo talis exemptio non est 
 per se conjuncta cum Pontificia dignitate nee ex divino jure, sed 
 ex humano ducit originem vel certe supposito tali statu temporalis 
 Principis ex natura rei sequitur, sicut in aUis Regibus qui exempti 
 sunt ex vi sui status, quia non habent superiorem. Unde ad re- 
 spondendum qusestioni propositae, praescindenda est Regia dignitas 
 a persona Pontificis et solum ut Pontifex considerandus est, sicut 
 fuerunt Petrus et successores ejus ante Constantinum. Dicendum 
 ergo est Summum Pontifieem ex divino jure habere exemptionem 
 et immunitatem ab omni judicio ac juiisdictione secular! etiam 
 Imperatorum et Regum. Hanc assertionem tenent in primis onmes 
 Catliolici Doctores, qui generaliter affirmant exemptionem hanc in 
 toto Ecelesiastico statu esse de jure divino quos cap. 8 referemus. 
 Praeter eos vero, qui de inferioribus, vel id negant, vel dubii sunt, 
 de Summo Pontifice propter ejus singularem dignitatem id ingenue 
 fatetur Soto ; idem sentiunt Bannes, Cajetanus, Turrecremata, 
 Bellarminus, Molina, VaJentia, Henricus, Driedo." Suarez, Defen- 
 sio Kdei CathoUcse, &c., lib. iv. cap. 4, 1-3. 
 
Lect. I.] GREATER THAN THE FIRST. l8l 
 
 Divine right from all civil and temporal subjection to 
 any ruler or prince on earth.* Thus he is in himself 
 a personal sovereign, and can be subject to none; 
 and thus, also, he has, in virtue of his Pontificate, a 
 Divine authority over all other powers,-]- personal or 
 princely, that can be found among men ; forasmuch 
 as when our Divine Lord said to Peter, " Peed My 
 sheep," He gave the whole world into his hands ; 
 He committed to him, not only the direction of in- 
 dividuals one by one, but the direction of families, of 
 households, of all the collective forms of natural 
 society. The Church of God is the guide not only of 
 the individual conscience in relation to itself, but in 
 all its manifold orders and relations ; not only of the 
 child to the parent, but of the parent to the child. 
 The Church of God guides, therefore, the family and 
 the household ; and if the family and the household, 
 then nations and peoples. For what are the races 
 and nations of the earth, but the families of mankind 
 multiplied and expanded ? What are kingdoms and 
 empires, but the families of man aggregated together ? 
 And as the Church of God guides the father of a 
 household, so it guides the ruler of a kingdom. Our 
 Divine Lord committed to Peter and his successors 
 the direction and guidance of the civil order which 
 should arise in the world, of nations and their princes. 
 It is his Divine office to see, and his duty to enforce, 
 * Suarez, uhi supra. f Ibid. 
 
1 82 THE LAST GLORIES OF THE HOLY SEE 
 
 obedience to the faith and to the laws of God. It is 
 his official duty, therefore, to judge and to pronounce 
 on the acts of indiYiduals and peoples, of nations and 
 their princes. The sole tribunal on earth which can 
 guide and direct the consciences of men is the Church 
 of God, and this office centres in its Head. This, then, 
 is the personal sovereignty which is inherent in the 
 Pontificate of the Vicar of Jesus Christ. The local 
 sovereignty is over that state, territory, and people 
 which the providence of God has committed to him. 
 No one can read its history without perceiving that 
 it was given by the same Divine will and the same 
 Divine hand from which he received also his personal 
 sovereignty in the beginning, and his liberation from 
 all subjection. The conversion of the empire to Chris- 
 tianity, and then its removal, its banishment into the 
 far East, freed the Vicar of Jesus Christ from tem- 
 poral subjection ; and then, by the action of the same 
 Providence, he was clothed with the prerogatives of 
 a true and proper local sovereignty over that state 
 and territory and people so committed to his charge. 
 From that hour, which I might say was fifteen hun- 
 dred years ago, or, to speak within limit, I will say 
 was twelve hundred, the Supreme Pontiff has been 
 a true and proper sovereign, exercising the preroga- 
 tives of royalty committed to him by the will of God 
 over the people to whom he is father in all things both 
 spiritual and temporal. 
 
Lect. I.] GREATER THAN THE FIRST. 183 
 
 This order, divinely founded, divinely unfolded, 
 and divinely sustained, in my belief, can never be 
 dissolved. The ends of the world will come upon it, 
 and the light of the Second Advent will find it as it 
 is ; and that for this reason : no human hand founded 
 it, and no human hand can overthrow it. No human 
 hand piled the mountains, and no human hand can 
 unpile them ; so no hand of man established and in- 
 terwove the spiritual and temporal sovereignty of the 
 Vicar of Jesus Christ upon earth, and no hand but 
 that which established it can dissolve it. And I be- 
 lieve that hand will not dissolve it, for it was the hand 
 of God Himself ; and as the hand of God Himself 
 committed, by His direct providence, to His Vicar 
 upon earth this sovereign rule over the state he holds, 
 so no other hand can revoke His act, can rescind His 
 will, or can abolish His work. No power can con- 
 quer it, or acquire it, orpossess it. No one can ever 
 obtain a right to that which God has given to His 
 Vicar upon earth. There is an exclusive and expulsive 
 right in the person of His Vicar to that territory over 
 which he reigns ; and no human law, no human con- 
 quest, no human compact, no human revolution, can 
 create a right against God's right, or abolish the right 
 which God Himself made. 
 
 For we see that it is the law of the Church of 
 God never to recede in its path. As it was said of 
 the Eoman Empire, Roma nunquam recedit, " Eome 
 
1 84 THE LAST GLORIES OF THE HOLY SEE 
 
 never goes back," so the Church never recedes. Eome 
 never gathered in its frontiers, never contracted its 
 boundaries. Its legions marched straight onward ; its 
 military roads crossed plains, deserts, mountains, with- 
 out turning to the right hand or the left. If they 
 encountered a rock, they pierced it. If they reached 
 the foot of a mountain-range, they scaled it. The 
 irresistible persistence, the inflexible direction, the 
 governing will of that great empire, never wavered 
 or retired. It was in the natural order a faiut and 
 feeble symbol of the Church of God. The prophet 
 Isaias foretold that the kingdom which should be 
 given to the incarnate Son of God should be " for 
 ever." The prophet Daniel says, it " shall never be 
 destroyed." The Archangel Gabriel foretold that 
 He should " reign in the house of Jacob for ever." * 
 And the Church, in her creed, prophesies, '' of whose 
 kingdom there shall be no end." Such, in a higher 
 order, is the irresistible onward persistency of the 
 Church, unfolding, developing, multiplying its powers 
 and prerogatives, never contracting, never receding, 
 never withering away. Folium ejus non dejluit. Not 
 a leaf shall float to the ground. It is the tree of life, 
 always putting forth vitality, never contracting its 
 fruitfulness, its stature, or its expanse. 
 
 And therefore, as we believe that in the begin- 
 ning the Church, by its simple, spiritual power, 
 * St. Luke i. 32. 
 
Lect. I.] GREATER THAN THE FIRST. 1 85 
 
 subdued the world, and then by its twofold power, 
 spiritual and civil, created Christendom, and has 
 called into existence monarchies and kingdoms, and 
 empires and confederations of empires, and has 
 created even the law of nations by which the world is 
 civilised and held together ; so also we believe that 
 its great mission shall go onward to the end, and 
 that the Church will be as it has been, and now is, 
 the sole sustaining power of Christendom. They who 
 believe that Christendom was created by the Church 
 must believe that the Church of God shall not cease 
 to sustain it, unless they believe that Christendom 
 will cease to be. And those who believe that Chris- 
 tendom will come to an end have need to square their 
 theory with the words of the Son of God, " Thou art 
 Peter, and upon this rock will I build My Church, 
 and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." 
 
 Then still further we may see in history, that it 
 was the personal sovereignty of the Pontiffs which 
 held together and maintained the local sovereignty 
 committed to them. The earthly possession, which 
 was, as it were, the body to the soul, the earthen vessel 
 of the Divine gift, has been held together and main- 
 tained by the supernatural personal rights and pre- 
 rogatives committed to the Vicar of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Pirst of all, they purchased it by a line of martyr- 
 doms. It is the law of warfare that the army which 
 remains upon the field is victor. If the assailant 
 
1 86 THE LAST GLORIES OF THE HOLY SEE 
 
 cannot drive it from its entrenchments, or dislodge it 
 from the post which it holds, it remains the conqueror, 
 and it sets up the trophies of victory. Some thirty 
 Pontiifs fell upon the field. By their blood they 
 purchased the city of Eome, and held it as their own. 
 All the power of ten persecutions, and all the legions 
 of Eome, and all the emperors of the world, could not 
 drive out the Pontiffs from the city which they held 
 for the Son of God. It is theirs by conquest, and by 
 the laws of warfare. It belongs to them by right of 
 endurance, and of patience, and of inflexible courage, 
 to which the world has no equal. Memory fails alto- 
 gether in attempting to recount the long roll of the 
 contest, and the glories of the Vicars of Jesus Christ. 
 After three hundred years of conflict came no true 
 peace, but a mere change of weapons. 
 
 Pope Liberius was banished by an heretical emperor. 
 
 SQve'rius died in exile. 
 
 Vigilius was imprisoned and exiled. 
 
 St. Martin died in exile a martyr. 
 
 St. Leo III. was driven out to Spoleto. 
 
 Leo V. was dethroned and cast into prison. 
 
 John XII. had to fly from Eome. 
 
 Benedict V. was carried off into Germany. 
 
 John XIII. fled from a Eoman faction, and took 
 refuge in Capua. 
 
 Benedict VI. was imprisoned and murdered by a 
 Eoman faction. 
 
Leot. I.] GREATER THAN THE FIRST. 1 8? 
 
 John XIV. was cast into the prison of St. Angelo, 
 and died of hunger. 
 
 Gregory V. was compelled to fly from Eome by a 
 civil tumult. 
 
 Benedict VIII. was driven from Eome by a fac- 
 tion. 
 
 Benedict IX. was twice driven from Eome. 
 
 Leo IX. was dethroned by the Normans. 
 
 St. Gregory VII. went from land to land and from 
 kingdom to kingdom, and died in exile. 
 
 Victor III. could not so much as take possession 
 of his See, and died at Beneventum. 
 
 Urban II. was restored by the French crusaders. 
 
 Pascal II. was carried off by Henry V. and impri- 
 soned. 
 
 Gelasius II. was compelled to fly to Gaeta, which 
 has been again and again glorious as the refuge of the 
 Vicar of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Honorius II. was compelled to fly into France by 
 an anti-Pope who usurped his See. 
 
 Eugenius III. was driven out of Eome by Arnold 
 of Brescia. 
 
 Alexander III., on the very day of his consecra- 
 tion, was cast into prison. He was consecrated, not 
 in the holy city, but in a village church. He was 
 obliged to fly into the mountains for safety. He passed 
 •seven years wandering from Terracina to Anagni, 
 from Anagni to Tusculum. 
 
1 88 THE LAST GLORIES OF THE HOLY SEE 
 
 Urban III. and Gregory VIII. could not even 
 take possession of Eome. 
 
 Xucius III. fled to Verona. 
 
 Gregory IX. was compelled by an insurrection at 
 Eome to retire to Perugia. 
 
 Innocent IV. fled to Genoa. 
 
 Alexander IV. fled to Viterbo. 
 
 Martin IV. never entered Eome. 
 
 Boniface VIII. was a prisoner at Anagni. 
 
 Then came tbe great Western schism, which lasted 
 for seventy years, during which time seven Popes 
 reigned in Avignon. 
 
 Urban VI. fled to Genoa. 
 
 Innocent VII. fled from the factions of Eome to 
 Viterbo. 
 
 Gregory XI. fled to Gaeta. 
 
 John XXIII. fled from Eome. 
 
 Eugenius IV. was besieged in his own palace by 
 an anti-Pope, and was obliged to fly to Florence. 
 
 I might add many more, but it is enough to sum 
 them up : thirty were compelled to leave Eome ; four 
 were imprisoned; four were unable to set foot in 
 Eome ; seven reigned in exile in Avignon ; making 
 in all forty-five, or one-fifth in the line of the Sove- 
 reign Pontiffs.* 
 
 Now, from this I draw two evident conclusions : 
 
 * Theologia "Wiroembergensis, torn. i. pp. 385-395. Kenrick, 
 Theol. Dogm. vol. i. app. 2. La Voie Douloureuse des Papes, app. 2. 
 
Lect. I.] GREATER THAN THE FIRST. 1 89 
 
 first, that sufferings, anxieties, uncertainty, conflicts 
 within and without, have always been, and always 
 will be, the normal condition of the Vicar of Jesus 
 Christ. As a multitude of facts in the physical world 
 form the basis of a philosophical induction, so by these 
 facts in the history of the Pontiffs it is estabhshed as 
 a law, that, so to speak, the normal state and habitual 
 condition of the Yicar of Jesus Christ on earth is to 
 live as Jesus lived Himself, in suffering, contradic- 
 tion, and conflict. The very city and people com- 
 mitted to him have participated in his fortunes. There 
 has hardly been a century when the hand of usurpers 
 and invaders has not been upon the city of Eome. 
 "Whether by barbarian hordes, or Arian Lombards, or 
 emperors of Germany, or counts of the Marches or of 
 Tusculum, or factions of the Cenci or the Colonna, 
 Eome has been always coveted and assailed. ■ There 
 has hardly been a century in which the States of the 
 Church have not been occupied, dismembered, and 
 usurped.* Mne Pontiffs were driven out of Eome 
 by the Eoman factions. Seven times the city of 
 Eome has been sacked, ruined, desolated, or taken ; 
 twice it was all but levelled. Once it was wholly and 
 entirely destroyed : for forty days it was given up to 
 desolation ; no creature breathed within its waUs.f 
 
 * Mile/s History of the Eoman State, passim. 
 t "Post quam (scil. Totilffi) devastationem, xl. aut amplius dies 
 Roma fuit ita desolata, ut nemo ibi hominum nisi bestiae moraren- 
 
1 90 TEE LAST GLOKIES OF THE HOLY SEE 
 
 Nine times tlie city, in wliich is the throne of the 
 Vicar of Jesus Christ, has been ia the hands of 
 usurpers ; yet it has been held with such invincible 
 tenacity of endurance, and such perpetual power of re- 
 covery, as to establish as a moral certainty that God, 
 who chose it for the throne of the Yicar of His Son, 
 has done so by a definitive act of His power, which 
 He alone can rescind, and which He never wiU. 
 
 The other conclusion is this : in the history of 
 the Holy See, we observe likewise, that as the nor- 
 mal state and .condition of the Supreme Pontiff is to 
 live in. perpetual conflict, and as it is the law, so to 
 speak, of the temporal sovereignty committed to him 
 that it should be perpetually assailed, so there is an- 
 other law equally certain, founded on the same basis, 
 and established by the same induction, namely, that 
 it is also his normal condition to be always restored. 
 This law of restoration is founded upon and deduced 
 from the same series of facts, and from the same evi- 
 dence. As often as his sovereignty has been usurped, 
 so often has it been restored to him; and as it has 
 been, so it will be to the end. And what, above all, 
 is remarkable is this, 'that the hands used to restore 
 him have often been the most unlikely to do this 
 service. They have, indeed, been sometimes Catho- 
 lic kings, Kke Pepin and Charlemagne; but at 
 
 tur." MarceU. in Chron. ad annum a.d. 547. Biblioth. Max. Gal- 
 kndii, torn. x. p. 356. 
 
Lect. I.] GREATER THAN THE FIRST. 191 
 
 other times the same hands which drove him from 
 Eome have restored him to it. Again, sometimes the 
 very mob of Eome have come out in procession to 
 recall their pastors ; at other times, those who have 
 been interested in resisting his return, as the English 
 nation and the Eussian schismatics, have restored 
 him. Again and again those who, in the hands of 
 Almighty God, have sustained the temporal sove- 
 reignty have been those who, judging by what the 
 world calls reasonable and politic, for their own 
 interest would have most opposed it ; that all man- 
 kind may see .that God rules the world. 
 
 The conclusion, then, I wish to establish is this, 
 that the last glories of the Holy See will be greater 
 than the first ; for its imperishable vitality and 
 divine tenacity of endurance has been, and ever will 
 be, more and more luminously manifested in the 
 struggle through which it is passing. It will be 
 more clearly seen by all the world that the sole 
 principle of stability to be found among men is the 
 Church Catholic and Eoman; that all forms of 
 human institution are transitory, dissolving, and self- 
 destructive. The Eoman State has been changed 
 and fashioned again and again into counties and 
 duchies, into kingdoms and provinces of empires. 
 Where, I should like to know, at this moment is the 
 very name of those kingdoms and of their lords who 
 claimed to be its temporal goyernors ? Where now 
 
192 THE LAST GLORIES OF THE HOLY SEE 
 
 is Napoleon, " Eang of Eome " ? And where to-mor- 
 row will be Victor Emmanuel, " King of Italy " ? All 
 these occasional forms of rebellion, revolution, and 
 disorder, which spring from the will of man, have a 
 momentary success, and in a little while are not. 
 God, with a divine scorn and with a majestic in- 
 dignation, smites them as small as the dust of the 
 summer threshing-floor, and the winds of His deri- 
 sion sweep them from the face of the earth. 
 
 But the Church of God is divine, and the prin- 
 ciples of the Church of God are His revelation and 
 His providence — His revealed will and His Divine 
 action. The Church of God has no need to recast 
 and recreate itself. It never changes its character; 
 it never puts off its old form for new combinations. 
 It was never otherwise than it is ; and what it is, it 
 ever shall be. The Pontiff, who now reigns from the 
 Apostolic See over the Universal Church of God, 
 stands alone firm and changeless in the mutations 
 and instability of all around. He answers, as his 
 predecessors have answered before him, " No% volu- 
 mes, non possumus, non dehemios" — "We will not, 
 we cannot, we ought not." In those three words 
 Pius VII. refused to make cession of one jot or tittle 
 of the right which God had given to him. He held 
 them not for himself alone — he held them for God 
 and for the Church : not as owner and lord, but as 
 trustee and steward. What was not his own, he 
 
Leot. I.] GREATER THAN THE FIRST. 19 3 
 
 could not give away. That which God had entrusted 
 to him, God would require of him. Therefore he 
 would not, could not, ought not to yield, come what 
 might. He appealed to the Divine providence of 
 God, and the hand of God scattered his antagonists. 
 In a little while the Vicar of Jesus Christ was found 
 once more reigning upon his throne, tranquil and 
 sovereign as before. 
 
 In like manner in our day Pius IX. has refused, 
 with a constancy and a steadfastness which this proud 
 world calls obstinacy and stubbornness, to make 
 concession or compromise. In like manner he has 
 appealed to the providence of God, and his appeal 
 has gone up to heaven. "When the prophet Elias 
 appealed to the God of Israel, the priests of Baal cut 
 themselves with knives, and leaped upon the altar ; 
 so now the Priest and Prophet of the Christian law, 
 standing by the tomb of the Apostles, has appealed 
 to God, and his voice has gone up on high. As yet 
 there is silence in heaven. " There is no voice, and 
 none to answer." The world is fuU of triumphant 
 joy at its success, so near to come. But there is more 
 power in the aged man who stands upon the tomb of 
 the Apostles, and lifts the Holy Sacrifice to the four 
 quarters of the world which it has redeemed, than in 
 the pride of life, and the vigour of intellect, and the 
 strong tide of blood and will which direct the nations 
 against him. 
 
194 THE LAST GLORIES OF THE HOLY SEE 
 
 The other day it seemed an unequal contest ; he 
 in his lonely -n-eakness, right alone on his side, all 
 might against him. Cunning, and diplomacy, and 
 the confederate interests of kingdoms and states — 
 all against him in array. It was hut a week ago 
 when this manifold power was wielded hy a hand * 
 thought to be so unerring that the men of this world 
 for the last three days have been telling us that a 
 great light has gone out in the world. Whether 
 the voice has come in answer, I know not. The 
 Church of God does not pursue its antagonists be- 
 yond the grave. The sacred procession bearing the 
 last Sacraments goes to the dwelling of the rich man 
 as well as of the poor, of the disobedient as well as of 
 the faithfu]. It seeks out the dying penitent, whether 
 it be a poor daughter fallen as Maiy Magdalene, or a 
 proud son who lifted up his heel against the Church 
 of God. 
 
 Of the future we know nothing ; into the unseen 
 world we cannot enter. But of one thing I am sure. 
 For the last three days there is no man who believes 
 in the providence of God, no man who has read the 
 history of the last twelve years, but has felt with a 
 silent fear that there is a "Will above all human wills 
 directing this great conflict. The prophet Daniel 
 tells us that in the latter days the God of Heaven 
 shall set up a kingdom ; and he adds, Regnum ejus 
 * Count CayouT, 
 
Lect. I.] GREATER THAN THE FIRST. I95 
 
 alieri populo non tradetur, — " His kingdom shall not 
 be delivered over to another people."* No other 
 shall ever possess it ; no other shall ever conquer it ; 
 hut it will break to pieces, and it will destroy all 
 other kingdoms, — Sed ipsum stahit in ceternum, — 
 " but it shall stand for ever." 
 
 * Daniel ii. 44. 
 
( 196 ) 
 
 LECTUEE II. 
 
 " Ought not Clirist to have suffered these things, and so to enter 
 into His glory ? " — St. Ltjke xxiv. 26. 
 
 Even the loving and faithful hearts of the disciples 
 were so amazed and darkened by the Passion of Jesus, 
 that they knew not that His kingdom was accom- 
 plishing itself. When they looked for the splendour 
 and the majesty of His power, they met with His 
 humiliations and His Cross ; and therefore they did 
 not know Him when He manifested Himself to them. 
 They looked for Him in one form, and He showed 
 Himself in another. They said, " We hoped that it 
 was He that should have redeemed Israel," and now 
 hehold He is crucified, and even the place of His 
 burial is empty. And our Divine Lord answered 
 them, " foolish, and slow of heart to believe in all 
 things which the prophets have spoken. Ought not 
 Christ to have suffered these things ? " Was there 
 not a law of necessity ? Was it not predestinated ? 
 Was it not foretold ? Was there not intrinsic fitness 
 that Christ should suffer these things, " and so," — by 
 this way, and by no other, by the way of suffering, 
 and not by the way of glory, — should enter into His 
 kingdom ? 
 
Lect. II.] THE GLORIES OF THE HOLY SEE. 197 
 
 This, then, is the sum of what I have already said. 
 The Church of God, being united to its Head, partakes 
 of the same destinies in time and in eternity, on 
 earth and in heaven. The Church on earth shares in 
 the Passion of the Son of God. The Apostle says that 
 he was filling up " those things that are wanting of 
 the sufferings of Christ " * in the flesh for His Body, 
 which is the Church. And the sufferings which are 
 to be accomplished upon earth through the whole 
 mystical body of Christ fall eminently, I will not say 
 exclusively, but fall emphatically, upon its Head, upon 
 the line of the Sovereign Pontiffs. You will remember 
 that we have already seen how the whole history of 
 the Pontiffs upon earth has been a history of suffer- 
 ing, of anxiety, and of conflict ; how by perpetual 
 usurpation and perpetual oppression the people over 
 whom they reign have been divided and harassed, 
 the territory they possess occupied and ravaged ; and 
 how, by a series of perpetual restorations, the hand of 
 God has intervened to re-establish the order which He 
 Himself created. In His kingdom there is a perpe- 
 tuity, not only in its spiritual elements, but in all 
 those complex forms of power which He, by direct and 
 indirect operation, has woven together. The whole 
 sovereignty of the Church, spiritual and temporal, as 
 it is at this hour, is the work of God, and, being the 
 work of God, it cannot be destroyed. 
 * Col. i. 24. 
 
198 THE LAST GLORIES OF THE HOLY SEE 
 
 The point, then, which I now wish to bring before 
 you is this — how difl&cult it is for us to appreciate the 
 times in which we live. Our belief must be that, ac- 
 cording to the analogy of all God's dealings, the last 
 glories of His Church on earth will be greater than the 
 first. And yet perhaps we are perplexed to under- 
 stand how this can be verified. "We look at the pre- 
 sent state of the Church in the world, and aU seems 
 dark before us. The reason is this, that it is difficult 
 for us justly to estimate and to understand the days 
 in which we are. As we cannot measure the motion 
 by which we are carried along, as no man, perhaps, 
 knows his own countenance, or is conscious of his own 
 stature, so it is with the times that are upon us. The 
 evils fill the whole field of our vision. They seem so 
 vast and so overwhelming, and that which is good 
 so scarce and hardly to be found ; for the evils are 
 present 'in power, but the good is generally in germ 
 and for the future. It is necessary, therefore, that the 
 present should be known by retrospect. And the 
 greatest times and the most glorious are often those 
 which look darkest when they are near. The days, 
 therefore, which are upon us now, though heavy 
 shadows and dark clouds hang upon the horizon, will 
 doubtless hereafter be glorious to those who see them 
 afar off; and I may say without rashness that they will 
 be more glorious than any times we read of in the 
 history of the Church. 
 
Lect. II.] GREATER THAN THE EIRST. 1 99 
 
 In order to show this, I wish to examine, as shortly 
 as I can, certain other periods of history which we 
 look upon now as periods of especial glory, and to show 
 that they were moments which those who lived in them 
 looked upon as times of the greatest darkness, suffer- 
 ing, and tribulation, pregnant with evils known and 
 unknown for the present and the future. 
 
 I. First of all, look to the times of the first and 
 great St. Gregory, to whom the name of Great at- 
 taches, because in his own person he seemed to sum 
 up the glories of the Church on earth. First, he was 
 a saint, shining with the resplendent lustre of a sin- 
 gular sanctity, a sun in the firmament of the Church. 
 Next, he was a doctor, the last of the four great 
 lights, to whom the Church has added no more of a 
 like splendour. There are four Gospels, and there 
 are four doctors — four lights which stand at the four 
 corners of the Church. He was also the apostle of 
 nations ; England owes its Christianity to him ; and 
 all of the Anglo-Saxon race that remain faithful to 
 the Holy See at this day throughout the world are 
 the sons and daughters of St. Gregory the Great. 
 Lastly, he was a patriarch, reigning by an especial 
 parental sway, whereby he ruled the three-and-twenty 
 patrimonies of the Holy See with an authority so 
 benign and sweet, so full of evangelical prudence and 
 of the Spirit of God, that he moulded to his will the 
 hearts of men, and by love and the law of Jesus laid 
 
200 THE LAST GLOKIES OF THE HOLY SEE 
 
 the fomidations of the Christian order which over- 
 spreads the "world. We look back, then, on the times 
 of St. Gregory as times of especial glory. 
 
 But what were they in reality ? Eome was deso- 
 lated by pestilence ; for seven months the Holy See 
 was vacant ; * Pelagius, the last Pontiff, died of the 
 plague ; processions that went about the streets were 
 so ravaged by it, that, in the midst of the sacred 
 ceremonial, and in one alone, eighty men fell dead. 
 In such a moment it was, when Rome was plague- 
 stricken and desolate, that St. Gregory ascended the 
 throne of the Apostle. And when he looked around 
 him, what met his sight ? Was the Christian world 
 as we behold it at this time ? In the East, once 
 full of the light of faith, the great Oriental churches 
 of Asia were ravaged by two dominant heresies, the 
 Eutychian and the Nestorian. Their poison had 
 spread even into China. Already the spirit of schism 
 had possessed itself of Constantinople, and the em- 
 perors of the East had become forerunners of the 
 imperial Antichrists of the Middle Ages. The patri- 
 archs of Constantinople had begun to assume the 
 arrogant title which St. Gregory denounced as the 
 usurpation of Antichrist. Eussia did not exist. Nor- 
 way and Sweden were hardly known among the 
 nations. Heathenism covered them all. Spain was 
 
 * BoUand. Acta Sanctorum, 12 die Martii. Palma, Prselect. 
 Hist. Eccl. c. Ixvi. 
 
Lect. II.] GREATER THAN THE FIRST. 20r 
 
 Arian, and persecuted the Catholic Church. Eng- 
 land had relapsed into Paganism ; the light of 
 faith had gone out ; the heathenism of the Saxons 
 and the Danes reigned over it. Lombardy was Arian, 
 and the Lombards ravaged Italy up to the walls of 
 Home. 
 
 Such was the world over which St. Gregory 
 reigned and sorrowed. His life, like that of Jeremias 
 the prophet, was a ceaseless lamentation. Any one 
 who reads his letters, and his expositions of the Holy 
 Scriptures, will find perpetual strains of mourning 
 over the desolation of Eome and the death of the 
 world. He says : " Eome is ravaged ; its very struc- 
 ture is dissolved. Not its glory alone, but its life 
 is departed. We die daily. Sorrow and grief are 
 on every side. We are pursuing after the world, and 
 the world is departing from us. We cleave to it, and 
 it passes away." * He believed that the end of all 
 things had come. Such in his eyes were the times 
 of which, seen in the unclouded light of history, the 
 glory is to us so great and splendid. 
 
 2. Let us pass onward some two hundred years, and 
 then comes another period of Christian grandeur, the 
 age of St. Leo III. ; of whom we conceive that he 
 must have been majestic and mighty indeed, who 
 could create an emperor and an empire — an empire 
 pregnant with modern Europe. And what must have 
 * Horn, in Festo SS. Nerei et Achillei. 
 
202 THE LAST GLORIES OF THE HOLY SEE 
 
 been the tree which cast such a seed containing the 
 stateliness of a forest ? We cannot but imagine to 
 ourselves how vast must have been the power of such 
 a Pontiff, and how splendid, and out of all proportion 
 to these later times, must have been the age in which 
 he hved. But how was it in truth ? 
 
 St. Leo lived in an age when Mahometanism had 
 already possessed itself of the three great Eastern 
 Patriarchates: Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria 
 were in the hands of the false prophet. The Eastern 
 Churches had fallen under the darkness of the infidel. 
 Northern Africa was entirely swept by it. Eive hun- 
 dred episcopal sees, it is said, were wholly overthrown. 
 The Churches of St. Cyprian, and St. Augustine, and 
 St. Optatus were held by the Eastern Antichrist. 
 Mahometanism had penetrated into Spain; it had 
 come up by the south, and was encompassing Chris- 
 tendom. The Paganism of Germany had broken 
 over the Ehine, and entered into France.* Lombardy 
 was stm usurping the patrimony of the Church, and 
 civil factions were in Eome itself. St. Leo was as- 
 saulted in the midst of a sacred procession, when, on 
 St. George's day, he was going from St. Lorenzo in 
 Lucina to St. George in Velabro, by a band of assas- 
 sins, t They fell upon him, and stripped him of his 
 pontifical robes; they wounded him, and dragged 
 
 * Eanke, Hist, of the Popes, book i. c. i. s. 2. 
 t Bolland. Acta Sanctorum, 12 die Jvinii. 
 
Lect. 11.] GREATER THAN THE FIRST. 203 
 
 him violently to prison. Such were the times in 
 which he lived, and such was the cause in which he 
 invoked the aid of Charlemagne, on whose brow on 
 the day of the Nativity he set the diadem of empire. 
 We picture Charlemagne standing in St Peter's, 
 over the tomb of the Apostle, arrayed in imperial 
 robes, and St. Leo, a greater than he, standing by his 
 side, the Sovereign Pontiff and Vicar of Jesus Christ, 
 bestowing upon him the diadem of the world in the 
 midst of a court of splendour and majesty, such as we 
 have seen in these days of power and peace. It was 
 in the midst of no such Christmas solemnities, but of 
 humiliation and tumult and personal assault, that this 
 great act of the Christian world was done. The days 
 were darker far than ours, when the great Head of 
 the Paithfiil cast the seed of a new order, and the 
 foundations of our Christendom were laid. 
 
 3. Let ns, then, take another period — that of St. 
 Gregory VII. — some two or three hundred years 
 later. "We picture him to ourselves as historians — 
 especially those who are without the light of faith — 
 are always fond of drawing him, in the majesty and 
 elevation of his sovereign power, reposing in the 
 fortress of Canossa, while an Emperor of Germany 
 waited outside the gate, in the snows of the Apen- 
 nines, all the night long, till the Pontiff was pleased 
 to absolve him from the censures of the Church. We 
 imagine that St. Gregory was then at the pitch of 
 
204 THE LAST GLOEIES OF THE HOLY SEE 
 
 greatness and the plenitude of power, and wielded 
 unbounded sway over the Church of God and the 
 nations of the world. But those times were times of 
 conflict greater than any that had gone before. At 
 the very moment when he ascended the throne of the 
 Apostles, the Church was, in every part of Europe, 
 groaning under the oppression of the civil powers. 
 Two hundred years had passed since that Christmas- 
 day in which St. Leo had created the empire. Mon- 
 archies and states had arisen in "Western Europe. In 
 every one of them those who ruled in the civil order 
 had become the oppressors of the Church. In every 
 place they usurped ecclesiastical power, and contended 
 with the Holy See. The territories of the Ecclesias- 
 tical State were in such a condition, that I can only 
 describe it in St. Gregory's own words. In a letter 
 to the Abljot of Clugni, of which monastery he had 
 been a monk, he says : 
 
 " Gregory, Bishop, servant of the servants of God, to 
 Hugh, AUbot of Clugni, health and apostolic bene- 
 diction. 
 
 " If it can be, I desire that you should fully know 
 how great a sorrow presses upon me, and how great 
 a burden, renewed day by day, weighs me down; 
 that your brotherly compassion may incline towards 
 me, and that your heart and your tears may be poured 
 out before God in prayer, that Jesus, who was made 
 
Lect. II.] GREATER THAN THE FIRST. 205 
 
 poor for US, through whom all things were made, and 
 who rules all things, may stretch forth His hand, and 
 with His wonted kindness deliver me from my misery. 
 For I have often asked Him, as He enables me, either 
 to take me out of this present life, or to make me use- 
 ful to our common Mother : nevertheless He has not 
 set me free from this great anguish, neither has my 
 life profited the Church, in the bonds of which He 
 has bound me. For an overwhelming grief and an 
 universal sorrow surround me on every side. The 
 Eastern Church, by the instinct of the devil, has 
 revolted from the Catholic Faith, and in its members 
 the old enemy is everywhere putting Christians to 
 death. When I look to the West, or South, or North, 
 I can hardly see a Bishop, who by his entrance on the 
 Episcopate, or by his life, is such as the Canons 
 demand : ruling the Christian people for the love of 
 Christ, and not for worldly ambition ; and among all 
 the secular princes, not one who prefers the honour 
 of God to his own, or justice to gain, do I know. 
 As for the people among whom I live, — I mean the 
 Eomans, Lombards, and Normans, — as I am often 
 telling them, they are in a way worse than Jews and 
 Pagans." * 
 
 On his ascending the Apostolic Throne, he found 
 three great evils laying waste the Church. The first 
 was immorality and simony in the highest places; 
 * Epist. S. Greg. VII., lib. ii. ep. iv., ed. Migne. 
 
2o6 THE LAST GLORIES OF THE HOLY SEE 
 
 the next was the supremacy of the temporal power 
 over the spiritual; and the third — far more pene- 
 trating, and far more subtle — was the claim of the 
 civil powers to give investiture even to spiritual 
 offices by the ring and crosier; that is, in fact, to 
 claim to themselves to be the fountain of authority 
 over the Church of God. As soon as he set his foot 
 upon the throne, he issued his decrees of burning 
 indignation ; and in the moment those decrees were 
 issued, they were met on all sides by opposition. 
 Writing to our own Archbishop Lanfranc of Canter- 
 bury, he says, " To escape the judgments of God, I 
 must encounter a host of enemies, and bring them 
 down upon myself." * 
 
 His decrees of reformation were met in France 
 by such refusal that all the Bishops of the kingdom 
 except two failed in their fidelity. These two were 
 Eouen and Poictiers, on which an hereditary grace 
 seems still to rest. He wrote to the Bishops of France 
 in these words : 
 
 " If in this great and necessary duty we find you 
 to be lukewarm, we at once, having no more doubt 
 that .the king, supported by confidence in you, per- 
 sists incorrigibly, shall smite you, as the companions 
 and accomplices in his sin, with an equal punishment, 
 and shall strip you of the episcopal office." f 
 
 * Epist. S. Greg. VIL, pars ii. ep. i. 
 
 t Ibid, ad Episcopos Francorum, lib. ii. ep. v., ed. Migne. 
 
Lect. II.] GREATER THAN THE FIRST. 207 
 
 In England, in the Council of Winchester, the 
 Archbishop stood alone. In Germany, the Arch- 
 bishop of Metz temporised. In Spain, the papal 
 legate was insulted. In Eome, the simoniacal pre- 
 lates, being suspended, immediately joined the fac- 
 tions of the nobles. Then began the contest. The 
 whole life of Gregory was a life of warfare ; not a 
 pause or a truce till death. On the night of Christ- 
 mas he had just celebrated the first Mass of the 
 Nativity, and distributed the precious Body and 
 Blood of Jesus to those about him, when an armed 
 faction broke into the church, dragged him from the 
 altar, rent from him his pontifical vestments, even 
 the vestments of the Holy Sacrifice, wounded him 
 with a sword upon the head, and bore him away to 
 prison. Such were the first fruits of his fidelity to 
 his Divine Master. After this, in exile he wandered 
 to and fro, and ended at last a long life of super- 
 natural sorrow at Salerno, saying, "1 have loved 
 justice and hated iniquity, and therefore I die in 
 exile." * Such was the great St. Gregory VII., on 
 whom we look back as the most glorious of the 
 Pontiffs of the Middle Ages. His days were days of 
 darkness, and clouds and storms surrounded him. 
 Many men about him believed, or feared, at least, 
 that he was, if not on the losing side, at least doomed 
 to suffer almost in vain. We look back upon him 
 * Voigt, Hist, du Pape Gr^g. VII., liv. vi. vol. xii. 
 
208 THE LAST GLOEIES OF THE HOLY SEE 
 
 now as the great Pontiff who subdued the empire, 
 and cleansed the sanctuary of the Church. 
 
 4. Then, to come down a little later, let us take the 
 period of Alexander III., who is described to us in 
 history riding upon his palfry with a king of France 
 and a king of England on either side ; or as in con- 
 ference with the emperor at Venice, and receiving 
 by his full concession an acknowledgment of the 
 great prerogatives for which St. Gregory VII. had 
 contended and suffered. We invest Alexander III. 
 with an excess of majesty, with all the attributes 
 of pontifical splendour, and suppose him to have 
 been head of all the powers of the world, and his 
 days to be times of empire, not of conflict. 
 
 And yet, what is the truth ? 
 
 As soon as he was elected, an anti-Pope was 
 created by the emperor. The same power caused 
 him to be imprisoned on the very day of his election. 
 He could not be consecrated with the solemnities 
 usual to the Pontiffs, but he was consecrated iu a 
 parish church. He was compelled to leave the city 
 of Eome and take refuge at Terracina, and Anagni, 
 and Tusculum. Thenceforth, for seven years, he 
 wandered to and fro ; his life was spent in solitary 
 conflict with all the powers of the world arrayed 
 against him. At that time Mahometanism had long 
 swept all round the south, and reigned in Spain. 
 It seemed as if the power of Antichrist were on the 
 
Lect. II.] GREATER THAN THE FIRST. 209 
 
 point of destroying Christendom. The schism of the 
 East had long accomplislied itself. Constantinople 
 ■was finally separated from the Holy See ; the four 
 Eastern Patriarchates were under the dominion of 
 schism or of Mahometanism. Italy was ravaged by 
 the German emperor, who aimed at establishing the 
 old Eoman empire on the basis of its ancient imperial 
 laws. Eome was divided into two contending par- 
 ties — the nobles and the emperor striving to enslave 
 the Church, the Pontiff and the people vindicating 
 the freedom and sovereignty of Jesus Christ. It is 
 the old contest, the Pontifex Maximus of heathen 
 Eome against the Supreme Pontiff, Vicar of Jesus. 
 The civil society of Italy was full of factions per- 
 petually contending. There was the faction of the 
 seditious in Eome, stimulated by foreign influence, 
 and by the imperial partisans, aiming at the kingdom 
 of Italy. And there was but one obstacle in the way, 
 and that one obstacle was then in the 12th century 
 the same as in the 19th still. Eome alone stood in 
 his path ; * not because Eome is strong, for its walls 
 would crumble before the first stroke of war, but 
 because Eome is a Divine foundation, and is the 
 centre of Divine principles and the source of Divine 
 power. Because Eome is the head of the Church 
 of God, and because Eome controls the consciences, 
 the hearts, the wills of men and nations, therefore 
 
 * Kanke, Hist, of the Reformation, Introd. p. 57. 
 
 
 
2 lO THE LAST GLOKIES OF THE HOLY SEE 
 
 it is that Eome belongs not to the Eomans, but 
 to the Christians. Christendom will not receive a 
 pagan empire ; and the Pontiff of the Church of 
 God is strong, because he represents the sovereignty 
 of the Son of God and of the whole mystical body of 
 the Son of God, which refuses to be subject to the 
 world. The contest was the same then as. now, and 
 will be to the end. 
 
 5. The last period which I shall take is that of Cle- 
 ment VII. We come then nearer to our own times. 
 The splendour of the Pontificate for the last three 
 hundred years so fills our minds, that we conceive 
 perhaps, that in the time of the so-called Eeforma- 
 tion the power and the majesty of the Holy See 
 was not overcast, as it is in our days. But what is 
 the truth ? First of all, by that time Mahometanism 
 had not only possessed itself of Constantinople, 
 but penetrated almost to the walls of Vienna. The 
 Turks hung upon Christendom ; so that for eighty 
 years to come it seemed as if they were about to ex- 
 tinguish the light of Christianity. The shores of Italy 
 and the Patrimony of the Church M'ere harassed 
 by them. You all remember how the great St. Pius 
 V. afterwards accomplished by his prayers the last 
 overthrow of the Eastern Antichrist. Down to that 
 time, the perils, the hovering assaidts of Mahomet- 
 anism on Christianity, were perpetually drawing 
 nearer and nearer. The nations of Europe, grown 
 
Lect. II. ] GREATER THAN THE FIRST. 211 
 
 proud in their nationality by two hundred years 
 of schism, sometimes perfectly accomplished, and 
 always threatened, were jealous and full of disobe- 
 dience to the Holy See. In England, Henry VIII. 
 perpetrated the first act of separation in the time 
 of Clement VII. Luther had begun to spread his 
 heresy. It had penetrated throughout Germany into 
 Switzerland and England, and partially into France 
 asid Spain. The condition of Italy seemed hope- 
 less. The emperors of Germany sent an army 
 against the city of Eome to besiege the Father of 
 the Faithful; and at that moment the factions of 
 Eome, headed by the Oolonna, one of the chief 
 families, by force of arms drove the Pope into the 
 Castle of St. Angelo, and assumed the government 
 of the city. In this state the Pope was reduced to 
 the last condition of distress, at a time when we 
 think he was in the zenith of power. The army of 
 the emperor came onward, breathing threats and 
 slaughter against the disciples of Jesus Christ. I 
 use the words advisedly ; for we read that a Ger- 
 man noble, one of the leaders on the march, said, 
 " If I go to Eome, I will take the Pontiff's life," in 
 language which, for its vileness, I will not speak. 
 But God had marked him for his fate.* He never 
 set foot in Eome, for apoplexy struck him down by 
 the way. The Constable of Bourbon, on the scaling- 
 * Kanke, Hist, of the Popes, b. i. c. 3. 
 
212 THE LAST GLOKIES OF THE HOLY SEE 
 
 ladder which he had placed against the walls, was 
 likewise struck down. The city was for nine months 
 sacked and pillaged, and we are told by historians 
 of every kind. Catholic and un-Catholic, that Eome 
 never suffered, under Goths, Vandals, or Lombards, 
 humiliations , or horrors equalling those of that 
 siege. No state, no age, no condition, no sex 
 was spared in the horrors of that time. And this 
 befell in the time of the Eeformation, when Ma- 
 hometanism was at its greatest power, when the 
 heresy of Luther was already dominant in the 
 greater part of Northern Europe. Italy was almost 
 entirely in the hands of the secular power. Eome 
 itself was desolate. "What coidd be darker than 
 this ? And yet this was the time when the preludes 
 of the great Council of Trent were preparing; the 
 fitrst preparations were being made for that Great 
 Synod which has given to the Pontificate and to the 
 Church of God a splendour and a sway, not only 
 by authority and discipline, but by the persuasions 
 of love, of conviction, and of reason, which exceed 
 all that the world has ever seen before. 
 
 I can do no more than touch on these five 
 periods of darkness, which we look on as periods 
 of surpassing glory. And periods of glory they 
 were, glory greater than we can conceive; for we 
 do not know, and never shaU till we read history 
 with the interpretation and light of the future, how 
 
Lect. II.] GREATER THAN THE FIRST. 213 
 
 divine was the power of the Holy See in those great 
 contests. 
 
 From all this I draw certain plain truths. First 
 of all, that those times were dark beyond anything 
 we see now. They were times of old heresies and of 
 new. They were times when arose the greatest heresy 
 that has ever afliicted the Church of God — I mean 
 that which is now upon it ; for there has been none 
 so widespread, none so manifold, none so hostile, none 
 so universal in its denial of -the revelation of God. 
 They were ages in which there were also schisms both 
 old and new ; when the far East separated itself, and 
 the Eastern Patriarchates fell away. They were the 
 ages when Mahomet appeared, when the great Eastern 
 Antichrist arose and nearly possessed himself of the 
 world. They were ages when the secular power arose 
 against the Church of God, and intruded itself into the 
 whole life and action of the ecclesiastical order, with 
 an oppression which now is matter of history ; for we 
 find it nowhere except lingering in some Protestant 
 countries, and chiefly in England. It was the age, 
 too, when the States of the Holy See were again and 
 again in the possession of usurpers. During those 
 five periods they were perpetually ravaged and 
 harassed by Lombards, or Hungarians, or emperors 
 of Germany, or by factions of the- nobles of the 
 Marches or of Eome. 
 
 What could be darker than these epochs of the 
 
214 THE LAST GLORIES OF THE HOLY SEE 
 
 past ? Yet we look back upon them now as the most 
 bright and glorious times in the annals of the Church. 
 Let me draw but one conclusion more. If these 
 days are times of trial to the Church of God on earth ; 
 if the Holy See itself be circumvented and threatened 
 now ; and if the fidelity of Christian nations shows itself 
 to be unstable, — what is there in this that we have 
 not seen before, and seen even exceeded, I may say, a 
 thousand times ? Never, until now, was the power of 
 the Church of God so widely spread ; nor did it ever 
 so occupy the four q^uarters of the world, and penetrate 
 among all heathen races, and posses^ itself so nearly 
 of the circuit of mankind. Never was there a time 
 when the Pontificate of the successor of St. Peter was 
 more ample, more universally recognised and loved, 
 or more firmly upheld by the prayers and hearts of 
 the whole Christian world. Never was there a time 
 when the Pontificate was illustrated by such acts 
 of apostolic power, the creation of new hierarchies, 
 and the definition of the glory of our Immaculate 
 Mother. Never was there a time when the firmness 
 of the Holy See was more commanding, or the person 
 of the Holy Father, even in the eyes of the world, 
 more spotless. We have reason to be ashamed of 
 every man who has engaged in this contest against the 
 Church of God. Emperors and kings, princes and 
 statesmen, alike, every one who has moved either 
 tongue or hand against the Holy See, has soiled and 
 
Leot. II.] GREATER THAN THE FIRST. 215 
 
 shamed himself. But the Sovereign Pontiff stands 
 in light without a cloud. I might ask, what is there 
 in the Pontificate that is not great — that will not be 
 glorious hereafter ? But on this I will not dwell. I 
 will sum up all in one principle : that which appears 
 to be weak in the present, is charged with victory 
 hereafter. 
 
 The period of St. Gregory I. was an epoch of apos- 
 tolical power in the conversion of nations. 
 
 The period of St. Leo III. was an epoch of crea- 
 tion, and Christian Europe arose in it. 
 
 The period of St. Gregory VII. was an epoch of 
 purification, which reached the very inmost life of 
 the Church of God. 
 
 The period of Alexander III. was an epoch of 
 supremacy over the powers of the world, which had 
 usurped upon the powers of the Church. 
 
 The period of Clement VII. was an epoch when 
 the Pontificate of Jesus Christ, in the person of His 
 Vicar, was more than ever unfolded and made resplen- 
 dent before the eyes of men. It is a glory which stands 
 steadfast to this day, the light of which flows down 
 upon us even to this hour. 
 
 And therefore we may believe that the period in 
 which we live shall have a future. I see that those 
 periods have accumulated one upon another, so that 
 the glories of the first live in the second, the second 
 in the third, the third in the fourth, and so on. All 
 
2l6 THE LAST GLORIES OF THE HOLY SEE 
 
 the antecedent glories we find full upon it stiLL I see, 
 too, another law, — that these glories rise, increase, 
 and culminate. They are always growing ampler as 
 time goes on. Ajid in this we have a law laid down, 
 namely, that the future shall be more glorious than 
 the past, and that the last glories of the Holy See 
 shall he greater than the first. You know that the 
 revolution — that is, the rising of men without God, 
 united to dethrone the Vicar of Jesus Christ — is 
 increasing, multiplying, enlarging itself throughout 
 Europe. It is coming down from the north as Maho- 
 metanism came up by the south — spreading along the 
 whole line, and encompassingthe north of Christendom 
 as Mahometanism enclosed the south. But as IMaho- 
 metanism had its battle of Lepanto, so certainly will 
 the revolution directed against the Vicar of Jesus 
 Christ have its overthrow. When, in what way, 
 where, or by whom, I know not ; but so it will be. 
 And the Church of God will remain immovable among 
 the ruins. And this confidence is founded, not upon 
 human history, nor upon the opinions of men. The 
 power of God, which launched the planets in the im- 
 petuosity of their career, controls them also by another 
 law of wisdom, and guides them perpetually in their 
 unerring path. They would fall off into infinite space, 
 if they were not held in the sweet control of perpetual 
 order, which manifests the glory and the wisdom of 
 God. The impetuosity of man would ravage the earth. 
 
Lect. II.] GREATER THAN THE FIRST. 217 
 
 » 
 
 if there were not a higher will above to control its 
 action. Over the will of man is the will of God. 
 "The Gentiles raged, and the people devised vain 
 things. The kings of the earth stood up, and the 
 princes met together against the Lord and against 
 His Christ." * But there is a will above them all, 
 prescribing their path. They cannot swerve to the 
 right hand or to the left. God is above them all. His 
 predestinations are eternal, and the time will come 
 when He will accomplish them. This is our confid- 
 ence, — a confidence in truths and in principles which 
 are immutable by virtue of their own intrinsic cer- 
 tainty ; they must be when the time is come. They 
 cannot fail, for they are divine. " Heaven and 
 earth shall pass away, but My word shall not pass 
 away." -f- 
 
 * Ps. ii. I, 2. t St. Mark xiii. 31. 
 
( "8 ) 
 
 LECTUEE III. 
 
 " Therefore, reoeiTing an immovable kingdom, we have grace : by 
 which let us serve, pleasing God, with fear and reverence," — 
 Hebrews xii. 28. 
 
 One point still remains to complete the subject we 
 have in hand. 
 
 I have hitherto endeavoured to show that the 
 glories of the Holy See have continually waxed 
 greater and greater, and shall grow still more re- 
 splendent even to the end. 
 
 We have already traced this law of increase 
 through the great epochs of its history ; and I broke 
 off in speaking of the present times in which we live. 
 It was too large a subject to speak of by the way : it 
 demands a separate treatment. This I will endeavour 
 now to give. But, as I have said before, I am con- 
 scious how difificult it is to estimate the times in which 
 we are. All that I can do, therefore, will be to point 
 out some of the signs already visible, and some of the 
 truths and principles already in operation, which give 
 promise of the greater glory yet to come. 
 
 We have also seen, that the kingdom of God on 
 earth, being divinely founded, built up, compacted 
 together, and invested with supernatural prerogatives, 
 has a coherence and an indissoluble constitution which 
 
Lectin.] THE GLORIES OF THE HOLY SEE. 2 19 
 
 no powers of man shall ever destroy. God alone, who 
 created it, has control over its destinies. Wherefore • 
 that of which we have heard so much of late from the 
 proud or timid voices of men — the dissolution of the 
 temporal power of the Sovereign Pontiff — is to man 
 an impossibilitJ^ God has knit the two persons in a 
 sacred union ; and what God has joined together, no 
 man shall put asunder. 
 
 We have seen that it is a law of the very being 
 of the Church never to recede from its perfection, 
 hut always to press onward, amplifying, unfolding, 
 expanding, filling up, and perfecting that which was 
 before in germ. We have seen that the glories of 
 the Church of God accumulate one upon another. 
 As the splendours of the morning continually in- 
 crease until they reach their fulness in the noon- 
 day ; so are the glories of the Church. They do not 
 rise and pass away as the stars of night, but gather, 
 and stand still in multitude and brightness for ever. 
 
 And, lastly, we have seen that the glories, prero- 
 gatives, and powers of the Church have not only gone 
 on increasing from age to age, but that they have 
 risen by a continual ascent and culmination towards 
 some point not yet attained. What that zenith shall 
 be, God alone, who has predestinated the perfection 
 of the Church, can reveal. 
 
 Now what I wish further to point out is, how 
 this law of increase, accumulation, and ascent is 
 
220 THE LAST GLORIES OF THE HOLY SEE 
 
 to be verified in what is before our eyes at this 
 day. 
 
 First of all, there never was an age when the 
 Church was so widely spread over the whole face of 
 the earth. There never was a time when the holy 
 Catholic and Eoman Church had so nearly attained 
 the whole circumference of the families of mankind. 
 In the early ages it was an isolated body in the great 
 empire of Eome. Later, it seemed to be shut up 
 in Europe, for the East had fallen into schism and 
 heresy. Then again it pushed out its missions. 
 The sons of St. Dominie and St. Francis penetrated 
 into Palestine and Arabia, and laid the foundations 
 of new churches in the solitudes of the East. Later 
 again, the sons of St. Ignatius penetrated into the 
 West, when a Xew World was opened to the Old, 
 and there laid the foundations of the Christian order, 
 which endures to this day. But all this was par- 
 tial, compared with the extension of the Church at 
 this hour. The whole of the vast continent of Ame- 
 rica, from north to south, is now overspread by the 
 episcopate. The Church possesses the Xew World 
 for its inheritance, and both worlds for its possession. 
 It has returned again into the East. It is spreading 
 throughout India. It has now once more entered into 
 China ; a host of martyrdoms illustrate its advent.* 
 
 * See the Neu> Glories of the Catholic Church, publislied at Eome 
 by command of the Holy Father Pius IX. 
 
Lectin.] GREATER THAN THE FIRST. 221 
 
 So that at this moment, both in the East and in the 
 West, the Holy See is spreading forth its sway- 
 beyond all former expansion. Nay, more than this, 
 it has passed over into the Southern Archipelago. 
 In islands, of -which the very names -were unknown 
 to it in ages past, the Catholic Church has now its 
 episcopal sees. In one of them alone there is a region 
 as widespread as the whole of Europe. There was 
 a time when the Church in Europe was as infant 
 and narrow in its extent as the Church in Australia 
 now. "Who can foretell its future ? Who can fore- 
 see the order and majesty of the Christendom of the 
 Southern world, which may be now rising to renew 
 and to multiply the glories of the kingdom and the 
 Vicar of Jesus Christ ? There was never, therefore, 
 a time when the Church of God had amplified its 
 boundaries, stretched forth its prerogatives, and Lifted 
 up its staff of pontifical rule over the face of the earth 
 with so wide-spreading an empire as at this moment. 
 Nay, more; the great empire of Britain, which is 
 more like the ancient Eoman than any other, save 
 only that it greatly exceeds it in extent, is, as it 
 were, the beast of burden on which the Church of 
 God has traversed the world. Just as the empire of 
 Eome, in ancient times, fought against the Church, 
 and yet served it, strove to extinguish it, and yet gave 
 it facilities for conquering the world, — so the great 
 empire of Britain, with all its power and civil order 
 
222 THE LAST GLORIES OF THE HOLY SEE 
 
 and government and enterprise, is assisting, against 
 its own will, and even without its own knowledge, 
 the world-wide operations of the Holy See. This, 
 then, is the first glory of these latter days. 
 
 The second is this, that the internal order and 
 spiritual industry of the Church has continually multi- 
 plied its operations, distributing itself into new forms 
 and inventions of charity, to an extent never seen 
 before. The great orders of antiquity stand Kke the 
 stately trees of tropical climates, majestic and fruit- 
 ful, casting their seeds upon the soil below. Under 
 their shelter, the orders and congregations of active 
 charity in these latter days have sprung up, like the 
 grass which clothes the face of the soil, and over- 
 spreads the whole earth with its verdure. It would 
 be impossible to describe or to enumerate the multi- 
 tude of these new creations of the Holy Spirit. The 
 last three hundred years has teemed with them. 
 Every age has brought forth some new family of 
 charity. Every country has borne its fruit. But 
 chiefly Spain, Italy, and even poor Ireland. In 
 France alone, I believe I may say, there have been 
 founded in the last three centuiies no less than a 
 hundred congregations, having each of them a multi- 
 tude of separate houses spreading all over the land, 
 and numbering thousands and tens of thousands of 
 men and women consecrated to works of charity. 
 And this spreads also over the whole world, for they 
 
Lcct. III.] GREATER THAN THE FIRST. 223 
 
 have offshoots in every land, — in the colonies of Great 
 Britain, in the whole length and breadth of America, 
 among heathen people. There is no part of the world 
 where the tender, delicate, yet daring charity of the 
 daughters of the Church has not penetrated. Never 
 was there a time when the Church of God applied the 
 ministrations of its mercy to the wounds of man- 
 kind, spiritual and corporal, with the assiduity that 
 it 'does at this time. This, too, is a special feature 
 of these latter days. 
 
 Then, again, we see a singular industry in the 
 legislation of the Church. The great Council of 
 Trent, which closed three hundred years ago, I may 
 paradoxically say, is sitting to this hour; for its 
 doctrines and discipline rule supreme, and are exert- 
 ing themselves in every place. The faithful in all 
 lands cherish it as the reformation of the world. It 
 has inscribed itself even in the statute law of king- 
 doms. The legislation of that great synod, held 
 through times of trouble and suffering for twenty 
 long years, with manifold interruptions, is the living 
 charter of the Church, ruling at this day through- 
 out the world. It has also set in motion the coun- 
 cils and synods of provinces and dioceses in the 
 East and West; so that I may say that this cen- 
 tury also, like the century which followed immedi- 
 ately upon the Council of Trent, is a century 
 of ecclesiastical legislation — then, to carry out its 
 
224 THE LAST GLORIES OF THE HOLY SEE 
 
 decrees, now, to apply them to tlie new conditions 
 of society. 
 
 Next comes a third and singular phenomenon, 
 which is, that the principle of heresy seems to be 
 smitten with its death-blow. I do not say of error, 
 nor of ignorance, nor of indifference, nor of infidel- 
 ity ; for there is too much of all these, and no doubt 
 there always will be ; but the principle of heresy 
 properly so called, — the proud, contentious, privalte 
 spirit among those who profess themselves Chris- 
 tians, by which they erect themselves against the 
 authority of the Church of God. Perhaps this may 
 seem to be incredible with Protestantism before us. 
 But even Protestantism itself is now no more a reli- 
 gion. In the first forty years after it arose, it spread 
 itself, to and fro, among some of the northern coun- 
 tries of Europe ; after that it made no further pro- 
 gress. It never advanced anywhere. It was a 
 political religion, forced on the people by legislatures 
 and by princes. It did not spring up from the mul- 
 titude like the apostolic missions ; it came from the 
 civil power, embodied in statute laws, enforced by 
 penalties. And when the enforcement of penalties 
 ceased, the religion ceased to spread. The present 
 state of Protestant countries will show that it has 
 no propagation as a religion, no definiteness, con- 
 sistency, or permanence ; it has been contiuually 
 dividing and dissolving, until it has sunk down in 
 
Lectin.] GREATER THAN THE FIRST. 225 
 
 the countries which gave it birth into a simple un- 
 belief. 
 
 Eationalism, ignorance, indifference, and infidel- 
 ity, the four evils of which we have too plentiful 
 a harvest, are the direct result and consequence of 
 the principles of Protestantism. The offspring live 
 on, but the parent is death-struck. Where, then, is 
 heresy ? The old are long since gone. Who ever 
 hears now of Arianism, or Nestorianism, or Pela- 
 gianism ? And just as they are extinct already, so 
 will Protestantism, as a religion, be extinct here- 
 after ; I say as a religion, not as a political system, 
 not as a principle of political revolution. In this 
 form it lives, and will live on in the world. But as 
 a religion, as a form of doctrine, as a form of inter- 
 preting the Holy Scriptures, where is it already ? 
 It has dispersed, and has taken endless forms of 
 change. And where is there a heresy rising up to 
 replace it ? No one will call Mormonism a heresy ; 
 nor the eclectic imitation of the Catholic Church 
 which has shown itself among individuals in Scot- 
 land and in England. These are mere aberrations 
 of the human mind. There is nothing permanent, 
 or solid, or logical in them ; nothing that can give 
 an account of itself, bad or unfounded as that account 
 may be. For eighteen hundred years the contest has 
 been going on, and the world is weary of it. Men 
 say, ' if there be a Church on earth, it is the Catholic 
 
226 THE LAST GLORIES OF THE HOLY SEE 
 
 and Eoman; if there be dogma, it is the faith of 
 the Council of Trent. Fragmentary religions have 
 been tried, and found wanting. Human teachers are 
 blind guides, and human opinions have no certainty. 
 If there be a revelation, it must be divinely certain ; 
 and to be divinely certain, we need a Divine Witness 
 and a Divine Teacher. Everything has deceived and 
 betrayed us. New religions are self-condemned.' It 
 seems as if the winds and the waves had been rebuked, 
 and that a great calm has fallen upon the world. 
 It is the age of the Immaculate Conception ; and the 
 peace of the world is a fulfilment of that prophetic 
 antiphon of the Church, " Tu sola cunctas hsereses 
 interemisti in universe mundo." It pleased God not 
 only to reveal the singular privilege of His Imma- 
 culate Mother, but also to make the definition an 
 occasion of manifesting His infallibility in the 
 midst of a weary and contentious world. 
 
 The Faith is now standing out with a singular pre- 
 rogative. It is the sole and only immutable religion 
 known to men. What we call truths, the world calls 
 errors. But it admits that Eome never changes. 
 The world says that the Catholic doctrines rise from 
 the hearts of men. We know that they come from 
 the revelations of God. In this we differ; but 
 both are agreed in the immutability which sustains 
 the Church of God. Even the world can see that 
 Eome never changes ; that her doctrines are always 
 
Lect. III.] GREATER THAN THE FIRST. 227 
 
 the same. Even the world knows that errors are 
 always changing ; that truth alone is immutable. If 
 they will not admit the Catholic faith to be true, they 
 accuse it of immutability ; and honest men are draw- 
 ing the conclusion. If there be anything worn out 
 and cast aside, it is the heresy of private judgment. 
 Men have seen its legitimate consequences in modern 
 infidelity. It is the principle of heresy therefore that 
 stands convicted; and' men. confess the need, if not 
 the presence, of a Divine Teacher. 
 
 And further, there was' never a time when the 
 whole world was united with such a close bond of 
 filial charity and docile obedience to the See of Rome 
 as at this. There were periods in the Middle Ages, of 
 which I have spoken before, when the proud nation- 
 alities of Europe rose in contention against the Vicar 
 of Jesus Christ. There is such a spirit still, and yet 
 it is not as it was then. Then each Catholic nation 
 of Europe strove to erect itself into a spiritual inde- 
 pendence. But who now dreams of openly attempt- 
 ing such an enterprise ? There is contention enough 
 against the Holy See ; but men are obliged to mask 
 with plausible words their designs of evil. The age 
 of anti-Popes and subtraction of obedience is over. 
 The central and sole prerogative of sovereignty in 
 the Holy See reigns supreme. It is an age of pon- 
 tifical acts : for instance, when was there before an 
 act of the Supreme Pontiff so vast or so majestic as 
 
228 THE LAST GLOEIES OF THE HOLY SEE 
 
 that which took the Church of France out of the 
 hands of the first revolution, — recreated, purified, and 
 reconstituted it mth a new hierarchy and a new 
 order, — and implanted in it such a renewed prin- 
 ciple of vitality that for the last fifty years it has out- 
 grown and overspread the exuberance of all its former 
 history and the abundance of its earlier fruit-fulness ? 
 
 The same power of the Holy See has covered 
 America with new and prolific centres of life and 
 power. It is not fifty years ago when there was but 
 one Bishop in the United States ; ten years ago a 
 provincial synod was held in Baltimore of six Arch- 
 bishops and two-and-twenty suffragans. Again, iu 
 Holland, a single act of the Sovereign Pontiff has re- 
 called a hierarchy to life. To come nearer home : after 
 three hundred years' interruption, an episcopate which 
 replaces and continues the hierarchy of St. Gregory 
 the Great, has restored again to England its primi- 
 tive order, and engrafted us again into the apostolate 
 of the Universal Church. 
 
 All these acts were preludes for the manifes- 
 tation of Catholic unity which has signalised these 
 latter years. There never was a moment when the 
 races of the whole world have so stretched out their 
 hands to the Vicar of Jesus Christ as in the ten or 
 twelve years of the glorious but turbulent Pontificate 
 of Pius IX. The hearts and hands of the faithful 
 throughout the world have been lifted up towards 
 
Lect. III.] GREATER THAN THE FIRST. 229 
 
 him with an unexampled acclamation of fidelity. I 
 know no more majestic, more royal, more pontifical 
 sight, in the history of the Pontiffs or of the Church, 
 than the Holy Father on the rock of Gaeta issuing, 
 in the moment of his weakness and exile, his three 
 great appeals to the Christian world : — one, the 
 excommunication of the spoilers of the patrimony 
 of the Church ; another, a protest to all Christian 
 princes against the wrong that had been done; a 
 third, to all his sons, the episcopate throughout the 
 world. And those three decrees have all wrought 
 their work with power. Supernatural virtue went 
 out with them. The first wrought the downfall of 
 the spoilers who had invaded the Church of God. 
 The second called together the princes of Christen- 
 dom to do homage to the Vicar of Jesus Christ. The 
 third evoked such a response from the hearts of all 
 the Bishops of the Catholic unity, that in all the 
 annals of the Church there is not to be found 
 anything to compare with the acts of filial love and 
 devotion which the episcopate of the Catholic world 
 laid at his sacred feet.* 
 
 It was well said by one of the Bishops of the 
 Church in Ireland the other day, " It is an instinct 
 of nature, that when the head is struck, the hands 
 should lift themselves to guard it." It was but the 
 
 * See tlie collection of letters addressed to the Sovereign 
 Pontiff, entitled L'Orhe Cattolico, a Pio Nona. 
 
230 THE LAST GLORIES OF THE HOLY SEE 
 
 instinct of the mystical body, that, when its head 
 was aimed at, the whole episcopate should surround 
 him in defence. Now perhaps in no former age has 
 the universal consciousness of the body in the suf- 
 ferings of its head so manifested itself. The age of 
 Cisalpinism, and Gallicanism, and Josephism is past. 
 The unity of life by which the whole body lives in 
 its head, and the universality of the head, by which, 
 as by a real presence everywhere, the Holy See per- 
 vades all the provinces of the Catholic unity, has 
 grown to be an instinct and a sense, ^^.vid, power- 
 ful, and all-pervading, twice manifested in these last 
 years by acts without any example in the history of 
 the Church, — once in the unanimous voice of the 
 episcopate on the Immaculate Conception,* and again 
 on the temporal sovereignty of the Vicar of Jesus 
 Christ.f 
 
 Lastly, the only other point upon which I shall 
 speak is this. We have already seen how the powers 
 and glories of the Holy See have been progressively 
 unfolding; how the time of St. Gregory I. was a 
 period of apostolical missions, converting the nations 
 to the faith ; how the time of St. Leo III. was a period 
 
 * See the response of the Episcopate, in eleven volumes, under 
 the title, Pareri sulla Definizione dogmatica, &c. 
 
 t See the collection entitled Za Sovranita Temporale, of which 
 five volumes have already appeared, distributed according to the 
 languages. Nine hundred Bishops have laid their witness and their 
 homage at the feet of Kus IX. 
 
Lectin.] GREATER THAN THE FIRST. 23 1 
 
 of creating the Christian world ; how the time of St. 
 Gregory VII. was a period of purifying the sanc- 
 tuary of the Church ; and how the time of Alexander 
 III. was a period of royalty of government and of 
 ecclesiastical order, when the divine power of the 
 Church directed, by a firm and sacred authority, the 
 civil powers of the world within the sphere of the law 
 of God and of obedience to the faith. Now I observe 
 these powers of the Holy See have been always rising, 
 always culminating. The temporal power in the 
 hands of St. Gregory I. was a fatherly and patriarchal 
 rule over nations not as yet reduced to civil order. 
 In the hands of St. Leo III. it became a power of 
 creating empires. In the hands of St. Gregory VII. 
 it was a scourge to chasten them. In the hands of 
 Alexander III. it was a dynasty, ruling supremely, 
 in the name of God, over the powers of the world. 
 And now in these later times the temporal sovereignty 
 has become a law of the conscience, an axiom of the 
 reason. Through long contests and denials it has 
 passed into the conscience, intellect, and hearts of 
 men. Like the great dogmas of the Church, through 
 controversy it has reached its analysis and expres- 
 sion. It stands by the side of the Immaculate Con- 
 ception, as a theological certainty, if not a definition. 
 So that I may say there never was a time when the 
 temporal power of the Vicar of the Son of God, though 
 assailed as we see it, was more firmly rooted through- 
 
232 THE LAST GLORIES OF THE HOLY SEE 
 
 out the whole unity of the Catholic Church in the 
 hearts and convictions of its members ; and that by a 
 double process, not only by its own proper evidence, 
 not only by the light of God's dealing with the world, 
 but by contrast. For the nations of Europe have 
 already seen that the society of the world, without 
 the guidance and preservation of the Church of God, 
 resolves itself into confusion. They have seen every 
 form of political society, and the confederations of 
 kingdoms and nations, dissolve and pass away. While 
 all the floating societies of the world have drifted 
 down the stream, the centre of obedience has become 
 more visible. Men have learned from the history of 
 modern Europe that the law which is called the law of 
 nations — that is, the rule of justice which regulates 
 the relations of people with people — ^has become weak 
 and powerless. And why ? Because the nations have 
 broken the bonds which bound them to the centre 
 of obedience, and have shaken off the noble submis- 
 sion to a tribunal higher than man, from which came 
 forth, in other days, the judgments of equity and of 
 justice. It was a dignified obedience to bow to the 
 Vicar of the Son of God, and to remit the arbitration 
 of their griefs to one whom all wills consented to obey. 
 But more than this, in the last seventy years, as we 
 are told by a Catholic writer in France, there have 
 been no less than nine-and-thirty thrones overturned 
 by revolution; two-and-twenty royal families have 
 
Lect. III.] GREATER THAN THE FIRST. 233 
 
 been driven into exile ; five-and-twenty charters or 
 constitutions of civil order have been made, torn up, 
 and trampled upon.* And this because the civil 
 society of the world, which is God's creation, not 
 man's, has been desecrated by revolution. In these 
 latter times they have proudly refused to submit to 
 the guidance and arbitrement of the Church of God, 
 expressed through the Holy See. They have ap- 
 pealed to the revolution, and to the revolution they 
 must go. The civil order of the world is the creation 
 of God. He gives to society by immediate act the 
 sovereignty of power. Society, therefore, is divine. 
 The society of revolution is human, because it springs 
 from the will of man ; and that which is created by 
 the will of man may also be torn to pieces by the will 
 of man. What, then, are revolutions, but the will of 
 man tearing to pieces the work of his own hands ; or 
 worse, resisting the power " ordained of God " ? The 
 Church of God, being a society supernatural and 
 divine, by its constructive and conservative power 
 sustains the order of the world. For God Himself 
 is the Author of both the natural and supernatural 
 orders. He is the Founder of the Society which we 
 call the civil state, as well as of the Church ; for He 
 is the God of nature as well as the God of grace. 
 But in these days men claim the political world as 
 their own, and deny all Divine character or sanction to 
 * La Situation, par Mgr. Gaume, p. 164. 
 
234 THE LAST GLORIES OF THE HOLY SEE 
 
 the civil society of nations. They claim its supreme 
 legislation, independently of the Church and of the 
 Divine law, and even against both. And for their 
 external wars and internal conflicts they have no 
 remedy, and no appeal but to numbers and force and 
 military despotisms. They look back with contemp- 
 tuous compassion upon the ages when the Holy See 
 judged the causes of princes and their peoples, and 
 pronounced upon the contentions of hostile sove- 
 reigns. "When the Christian grace of justice was in 
 the heart of Europe, and the Christian sentiment of 
 peace and of submission had power over the nations, 
 there was in the Church an influence potent to cor- 
 rect the disquiets of the civil state, and to reduce 
 again to order its casual perturbations. There were 
 no revolutions, as we know them now, in a state sub- 
 ject to the unity and authority of the Church of God. 
 Then, popular discontents were tempered and elimi- 
 nated by the guidance of a higher principle. But 
 when natural society tears itself away from obedience 
 to the law of God and the unity of the Church, it falls 
 into revolution, and is dissolved by the will of man. 
 If we need proof, let us look into the Old World 
 and the Xew. If you desire to see instability in the 
 civil order, look at France, which for sixty years 
 has professed to rest itself upon the revolution of 
 1789. Look, again, into the Xew World — into Ame- 
 rica — where a civil state founded itself within the 
 
Lect. III.] GREATER THAN THE FIRST. 235 
 
 memory of living men, with all the promise of a great 
 maturity derived from an ancient mother-country. 
 The natural life of one man has outlived its duration. 
 He saw its foundation, and he sees its disruption. 
 The fatal principle of anarchy lay in the beginning ; 
 for what the human will creates, the human will may 
 at any time dissolve. The time will surely come, nay, 
 is almost come already, when men will see that the 
 only preservation of the civil order of the world from 
 dissolution is the law of God, and the only record in 
 which the law of God is to be found written is in the 
 Church of God ; for the Church of God is the de- 
 pository of that law, and the unity of the Church is 
 the bond of the unity of kingdoms. They will then 
 return to see that the only authority whereby the 
 Church of God can apply this law is the Holy See. 
 The supreme Pontiff, reigning over the whole Church, 
 legislates and applies the law of God ; and therefore, 
 strange as it may seem, the day will come when 
 prince and people, nations and their statesmen, will 
 recognise in the temporal power of the Holy See a 
 divine provision for the maintenance and order of the 
 Christian world, and will return to it as the only 
 solution of the conflicts by which the civil order of 
 the world is broken, the only preservation against the 
 rising flood of revolution. It is so the truth has ever 
 made its way. It has been affirmed and contested ; 
 and by contest it has been manifested with more 
 
236 THE LAST GLORIES OF THE HOLT SEE 
 
 luminous evidence. It has been for a while borne 
 down, and it has risen again, and its resurrection has 
 been with a greater majesty and power. The world 
 has warred upon the temporal power of the Vicar of 
 Jesus Christ. It has shaken the yoke and broken 
 the bonds. In its liberty, it has fallen prostrate ; and 
 by its fall its " sense is restored " * to it. From the 
 whole episcopate of the Church has come an univer- 
 sal acclamation of faith in the temporal sovereignty of 
 the Vicar of Jesus Christ as a providential institution 
 upon earth. The consent of the pastors and their 
 flocks witnesses to this deep Catholic instinct, and 
 the voice of the episcopate raises it to a judgment of 
 the Church,-f- and furnishes the material for a more 
 
 * Dan. iv. 33. 
 
 t BeUarmine quotes writers of all nations and dignities who 
 have maintained the temporal power of the Pope : twenty-one Ita- 
 lian, sixteen French, twenty Spanish, twelve German, seven Eng- 
 lish or Scotch. He adds also ten Councils, including two General 
 Councils, Lateran four, and Lyons two, in which the temporal 
 power was recognised ; and sums up in these words : "Si haec non 
 est Ecclesise Catholieae vox, ubi obsecro earn inveniemus ? " De 
 Polestate Papce, contra Barclaium, inter Opnscula, pp. 831-845. 
 
 The Theological Faculty of the University of CagUari has 
 given the following answers to the propositions of the Sardinian 
 Ministry : — 
 
 " Prop. I. That the temporal power of the Pope is a fact in its 
 very nature accidental and of human origin. 
 
 Answer : Although the temporal power of the Sovereign Pon- 
 tiff may not be immediately a Divine institution, nevertheless, it 
 is clearly a fact of a most special Providence. 
 
 Prop. 2. That the temporal power of the Pope may therefore 
 
Lect. III.] GREATER THAN THE FIRST. 237 
 
 solemn utterance. The very conflict which seemed to 
 threaten it has defined and published it with a greater 
 light. And the nations of Europe, returning to them- 
 selves from the excesses of instability, and wearied 
 with the terrors of revolution, are beginning to re- 
 cognise the fountain of their own former peace and 
 greatness. Paradox as it may seem, this may be said 
 to be the period of the temporal sovereignty, both of 
 its trials and of its manifestation. 
 
 Now in these many characters the present glories 
 of the Holy See surpass its former days, and give 
 promise of a hereafter into which I will not venture. 
 
 The mutation of races and kingdoms is the per- 
 
 te lessened, and even extingnished, witli no injury to Ms spiritual 
 power and religious liberty. 
 
 Answer : History clearly shows that the Sovereign Pontiff 
 was always either a temporal sovereign (in fact, or in right), or 
 else oppressed by persecution, and in an habitual state of martyr- 
 dom. 
 
 Prop. 3. That in the natural order of things the temporal 
 power of the Pope is destitute of every principle of perpetuity ; 
 and instead of being useful, is injurious both to the Church and 
 to the State. 
 
 Answer : The Sovereign Pontiff Pope Pius IX. has more than 
 once expressly declared that, in the present condition of society, the 
 'temporal power of the Holy See is both most useful, and even 
 necessary for the liberty of the Church, and the independence and 
 sovereignty of the acts of her visible Head. This pontifical de- 
 claration has been accepted with unparalleled unanimity by the 
 whole Catholic Episcopate, from which the Spirit of Truth, the 
 perpetual Ufe of the body of the Church, never departs. 
 
 Prop. 4. That it is moreover necessary for the Holy Father 
 
238 THE LAST GLORIES OF THE HOLY SEE 
 
 petual running contrast to the immutability of the 
 Holy See. It has renewed its relations again and 
 again with hordes and races, monarchies and repub- 
 lics, empires and confederations. It is no new thing 
 for the Vicar of Jesus Christ to create and to in- 
 augurate, to recognise and to renew, another form of 
 Christian society, or a new combination of ancient 
 Europe. What has been, may be. We have an un- 
 dying and an unbounded faith in the Church of God. 
 We have received " an immovable kingdom." The 
 changes around it pass like winds of the wilderness. 
 It outlives empires, as it outlives men. It is never 
 
 not to refuse to treat with the Italian Government, in order to 
 secure, by that means, greater facility and more independence in 
 the eiercise of his Catholic powers. 
 
 Answer : The answer to this proposition clearly flows from 
 the answers already given. " 
 
 Since the foregoing note was written, the address of the Epis- 
 copate assembled ia £ome in the C!onsistory of WMt-Monday last, 
 has added a splendid and final ennnciation of this subject matter ; 
 of which it is enough to quote the following passage : 
 
 "We recognise the temporal sovereignty of the Holy See as a 
 necessary thing, and manifestly instituted by the providence of 
 God. Nor do we hesitate to declare, in the present condition of 
 human things, that this temporal sovereignty is absolutely re- 
 quired for the good and free government of the Church and of 
 men's souls. It was clearly necessary that the Roman Pontiff, 
 the Head of the whole Church, should not be the subject of any 
 sovereign, nay, nor the guest of any ; but that, established in his 
 own dominions and kingdom, he should be his own master ; and in 
 noble, peaceful, and gentle Uberty, should defend and protect the 
 Catholic Faith, and rule and govern the whole Christian common- 
 wealth." 
 
Lect. III.] GREATER THAN THE FIRST. 239 
 
 old or young, but " yesterday, and to-day, and the 
 same for ever." * 
 
 Hitherto we have been tracing its path in the his- 
 torical order, and this history of the Church is like 
 the history of Jesus in the Gospels. It is full of 
 sorrow, suffering, and passion. But we see there the 
 life of the Son of God, accomplishing His work and 
 establishing His kingdom. We have seen, too, the 
 narrative of the Vicars of Jesus Christ written on 
 the page of the world's history, and, like that of their 
 Divine Master, it has been a history of suffering, of 
 passion, and of conflict ; but so they too have been 
 doing their work, and establishing His kingdom upon 
 earth. " We have an immovable kingdom." King- 
 doms which sprung from the will of man have been 
 and are not ; but the Church of God cannot be moved. 
 Eighteen hundred years of conflict have thrown out 
 into relief and light its divine stability, its imperish- 
 able life, its indivisible unity, its infallible voice, its 
 perpetual visibility, its temporal sovereignty, its two- 
 fold prerogatives, spiritual and temporal, whereby it 
 has ruled the destinies of the world, and will reign, 
 even through conflict, to the end. Come what may, 
 the Church of God, both centre and circumference, 
 is immovable. The persecutions of a heathen world 
 could not shake it; the persecutions of Antichrist 
 will be broken upon it. " Whosoever shall fall on 
 * Heb. xiii. 8. 
 
240 THE LAST GLORIES OF THE HOLY SEE 
 
 this stone shall be broken; but on -whomsoever it 
 shall fall, it shall grind him to powder." * The storm 
 which sweeps over the mountain clings to it for a 
 moment, and seems to overpower it, but in an instant 
 it is rent asunder and hurried away. The persecu- 
 tions of Antichrist wiU be but as the storm upon the 
 mountain. The Church has already once worshipped 
 and offered the unbloody sacrifice in Catacombs, in 
 deserts, and in hiding-places, and that for generations. 
 Tet all the world beheld the " city seated on a hiU, 
 which cannot be hid." Its very martyrdoms made it 
 visible. Its Pontiffs reigned in Eome, all pagan as it 
 was ; they have reigned over the City of the Seven 
 Hills in all the alternations of its destinies, — in its 
 splendour and its desolation, in its sieges and its de- 
 liverances, — Bishops of Eome, Successors of St. Peter, 
 and Vicars of Jesus Christ. And as it has been said, 
 so it shall be, in all and through all, unto the consum- 
 mation of the world.-f Even now, in the dimness of 
 
 * St. Matt, sxl 44. 
 
 + " Ob temporum calamitates cogimtur interdnm Pontifices 
 abesse, aut certe principmn potentia coacti : ut forte accidit quo tem- 
 pore Romana cmia erat in Gallia. Qnod dicitur de urbis vasta- 
 tione, credibile est Deum nunquam permissnrmn ut porta inferi con- 
 tra earn praevaleant ob sanctomm Petri et Pauli succession em, sedis 
 ApostolicEB dignitatem ac Ecclesiae totius utilitatem, et ita intelligi- 
 mus saape fuisse prseteritis temporibus diyinitus servatam ; prsecipne 
 tempore Leonis Papse, ut habet historia vulgata. ITnde Chryso- 
 stomus 2 ad Thessal. docet regnum Romanorum duraturum usque 
 ad Antichristum, eumque contra Bomauum Pontificem potentissime 
 
Lect. III.] GREATER THAN THE FIRST. 241 
 
 the present, we see the outlines and the preludes 
 of a higher and more glorious manifestation of the 
 kingdom of God on earth. They who will hereafter 
 look hack upon the age of Pius IX. will see in its 
 hreadth and maturity that which we see only in its 
 germ; and the faint lights which streak our sky, 
 and even the clouds which darken it, will he to them 
 more luminous and splendid than the ages of the 
 Leos and the Gregories are to us. To them it is re- 
 served to see the ingathering of the fields which even 
 now are whitening to the harvest in the virgin soil 
 of the East and West, and the second spring which 
 even now is rising in its sap and blade, under the 
 decay of the old Christian society of Europe. Ours 
 is but the seed-time of the charity and industry and 
 world-wide unity of the mystical Body in its love and 
 *loyalty to the twofold Sovereignty of the Vicar of 
 Christ. "Euntes ibant et ilebant mittentes semina 
 sua." It is ours to sow in tears; they who come 
 after shall reap in joy; and the retrospect of their 
 days will outshine the retrospect of ours. " The land 
 that was desolate and impassable shaU be glad, and 
 the wilderness shall rejoice, and shaU flourish like 
 the lily. It shall bud forth and blossom, and shall 
 rejoice with joy and praise; the glory of Libanus is 
 given to it: the beauty of Carmel and Saron; and 
 
 pugBaturum." Suarez, de Fide Disp. x., de Siimmo Pontifice, 
 
 sect. iii. 11. 
 
 Q 
 
242 THE LAST GLORIES OF THE HOLY SEE 
 
 they shall see the glory of the Lord, and the beauty 
 of our God." * " For Sion's sake I will not hold my 
 peace, and for the sake of Jerusalem I will not rest, 
 till her Just One come forth in brightness, and her 
 Saviour be lighted as a lamp. And the Gentiles 
 shall see thy Just One, and all the kings thy glori- 
 ous One ; and thou shalt be called by a new name, 
 which the mouth of the Lord shall name, and thou 
 shalt be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord ; 
 and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God." -f- 
 
 Then, as St. Paul says, " We hare grace ; " our 
 confidence is not in the help of man, but in the grace 
 of God. It is not only the facts of the past that 
 give us grounds and reasons of fearless trust ; our 
 confidence is in grace, that is, in supernatural power. 
 We confide not in the intervention of human agents, 
 but in the hand of God. And for this we have three- 
 sure pledges. First, the promises of God. The Son 
 of God has said, " The gates of hell shall not prevail 
 against the Church." He does not say they shall 
 not prevail against the spiritual power of the Church. 
 He makes no distinction or reserves. He says they 
 shall not prevail against the Church, that is, in all 
 the fulness of its complex majesty and the array of 
 its prerogatives of power. Again, the Holy Ghost 
 says, " We have an immovable kingdom." If none 
 can move it, certainly none can dissolve a particle of 
 * Isaias xxxv. i, 2. t Ibid. Mi. 1-3. 
 
Leot. III.] GREATER THAN THE FIRST. 243 
 
 its Divine order. Next, we have the love of God for 
 the society of men. In the ancient Greek liturgy, 
 God is called upon as the " Lover of men." He 
 loves them not only in the order of grace, but in the 
 order of nature. God loves households and families, 
 homes and nations, and races and peoples ; and the 
 civil society of mankind, even though it be not in 
 the order of grace, is an object of His compassion : 
 for it is the power which maintains the order, and 
 promotes the welfare and civilisation of mankind. 
 God does not will to abandon human society, though 
 men with evil principles and without God in the 
 world may labour to heave it from the foundations 
 in which He has built it in grace. Though the world 
 forsake God, He will not abandon the world till its 
 judgment is full. He loves to watch over it. His 
 ■providence is always benign. Not a sparrow falls 
 to the ground without our Father. How much less, 
 then, wUl He suffer the peace and order of the na- 
 tions of the world to be shattered, in which millions 
 of innocent would suffer with the guilty.* Thirdly, 
 and above all, God loves His Church, for it is the 
 mystical body of His Son. And the love He has for 
 His Son passes to His mystical body. He loves the 
 Church in His Son. As St. Paul says, " He hath 
 graced us in His beloved Son." f The Church, too, is 
 
 * " Sanabiles fecit nationes orbis terrarum, et non est in niis 
 medicamentum exterminii." Lib. Sap. i. 14. t Epb. i. 6. 
 
244 THE LAST GLORIES OF THE HOLY SEE 
 
 His Spouse ; and He loves the Churcli as the bride- 
 groom loves the bride. And the Church is the Mother 
 of the elect, the instrument of his predestination, and 
 themanif estation of Himself. Therefore God loves the 
 Vicar of His incarnate Son. He loves with an eminent 
 and special love him who is the representative of His 
 Son on earth, who bears the character and marks of 
 Jesus above all other men. With a singular and 
 personal love He loves him for his office as the Vicar 
 of His Son. But He loves him, too, because he is 
 most like Him, not only in office, but in suffering. 
 The Sovereign Pontiff bears the cross ; and bears the 
 cross for us. On him is laid the sorrows of the 
 whole Church on earth ; to him is given to suffer in 
 its behalf. His is a life of martyrdom, because he 
 is the witness and the image of the Son of God on 
 Calvary. And God loves him too for his own sake, 
 because he is the fulfilment of the promise, "He 
 that hath My words and keepeth them, he it is 
 that loveth Me ; and he that loveth Me shall be loved 
 of My Father, and I will love him." * Such is the 
 manifold love of God which encircles at this hour 
 the person of our beloved Pontiff and Father. For 
 in all the line of those who have reigned over the 
 Church, there is none in whom the faith and law 
 of Jesus, and the graces of justice and mercy, cle- 
 mency and generosity, long-suffering and patience, 
 
 • 
 * St. John xiy. 21. 
 
Leot. III.] GREATER THAN THE FIRST. 245 
 
 calmness and confidence in God, have shone more 
 bright and luminous. Through all these long years 
 of wrong there is one whose faith has never wavered, 
 whose hope has never been shaken, and whose cha- 
 rity has never been chilled. He has stood as the 
 pillar of light, when all around were dark. Against 
 him no man has spoken and has passed uncon- 
 demned. No weapon forged against him shall pros- 
 per, though for a time evil may seem to have its 
 full success. In a little while all the power of men 
 shall consume away, and the place thereof shall 
 know it no more. 
 
 As I said in the beginning, the human will is 
 striving, and the multitudinous wills 'of men, like 
 the tossing of a great sea, are lifting themselves 
 against him ; but the Lord sitteth above the water- 
 iloods. He wiU. encompass the Church on every side, 
 and His presence is as a wall of fire round the Vicar 
 of His Son. With such a sure unfailing trust, " let 
 us serve " " with fear," and fearing God, fear nothing 
 else. Nothing can harm the Church of God, nothing 
 can harm the Vicar of Jesus Christ. For through 
 His Church God is with us ; and in the person of 
 Pius IX., Jesus reigns on earth, and " He must reign 
 until He hath put all enemies under His feet."* 
 
 * I Cor. XV. 25. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Abolition of law of marriage, 73, 74. ", 
 
 Abomination of desolation, 158. 
 
 Acknowledgment ofa form of faith as binding on the conscience, 72. 
 
 " Adscripti glebs," Iviii. 
 
 Alexander III., picture of the times of, 208; epoch of period of 
 supremacy over the powers of the world, 20S. 
 
 Ambrose, St., xxv. 
 
 Antichrist, characteristics of, 103, 119 ; hindrance to manifestation 
 of, 117; the principle of the French Revolution, 131; principles 
 of in the ascendant, 134 ; Mahomet a type of, 159. 
 
 Apostles, twofold jurisdiction given to, 7. 
 
 Apotheosis of human pride, what, 100. 
 
 Aristotle, xlii. 
 
 Attacks on the patrimony of the Church, 55. 
 
 "Auctorem Fidei," the Bull, xxxix. 
 
 Authorities, two ultimate, 84. 
 
 Avignon, schism of, 91. 
 
 Avitus, St., xxv. 
 
 Barbakism, a consequence of the dissolution of the Temporal Power, 
 34. 56. 
 
 Belisarius, Britain in the time of, 67. 
 
 BeUarmine, xxxv. 
 
 Bishops, response of nine hundred, 230 note; consistory of on Whit- 
 Monday 1862, 238. 
 
 Bishops of Rome, for 1200 years temporal princes, 16 ; the first 
 seed of Christian Europe, i5. 
 
 Body, sacramental and natural, of our Lord, 7 ; mystical of our 
 Lord, 7. 
 
 Branches of the Temporal Sovereignty, two, 5. 
 
 Breakspear, Mcolas (Adrian IV.), 50. 
 
 Bull, "Auctorem Fidei," xxxix. 
 
248 INDEX. 
 
 Cagliabi, the opinion of its University on the Temporal Power, 236. 
 
 Catholic Chnrch, vide Church. 
 
 Catholic view of Holy Sacraments, viii. ; civilisation, 132; traditions 
 of limitation of civil power, 61. 
 
 Cardinal Ferretti, saying of, Ixviii. 
 
 Causes of the Revolution in the States of the Church, 68. 
 
 Cerularius, xxxiv. 
 
 Charlemagne, declared a Eoman patrician, 41 ; restitution of, 15. 
 
 Charles, St., charity of, 20. 
 
 China of Christendom, what, 47. 
 
 Christendom, created by the Church, 185 ; civil order of, 35 ; pro- 
 ductive cause and root of, 37 ; dissolution of, 76. 
 
 Christian Europe, a new creation, 39 ; society growing weaker, 133 ; 
 doomed, 134; centre of, 143; civilisation created by the Popes, 
 127 ; colonies, 21. 
 
 Christianity, formal antagonist of, 89 ; the only " societas illicita," 
 151 ; the one exception to toleration, 152. 
 
 Church, twofold mission of, 36 ; an unlawful society for 300 
 years, 9 ; possessed of highest rights, 18; necessary to liberty, 
 135 ; belief in a visible, 3 ; a supernatural society, 128 ; spiritual 
 and supernatural sovereignty vested in, 5 ; creator of Christen- 
 dom, 185 ; ftiture resurrection and ascension of, 148 ; Jesus 
 Himself, 177 ; cannot be endangered, 177 ; the sole sustaining 
 power of Christendom, 185 ; n, kingdom, 155 ; never recedes, 
 184 ; binding on the will, 155 ; guide of families and house- 
 holds, 181 ; guide of nations and peoples, 181 ; refusal of tolera- 
 tion to, 156 ; the sole tribunal of conscience, 182 ; four notes of, 
 xxiii. ; three properties of, xxiii. ; three endowments of, xxiii. ; an 
 object of sense, of reason, and of faith, YTiii. ; reduction of to a 
 school of religious philosophy, Ixv. ; reduction of to an associa- 
 tion for charitable works, Ixv. ; sole principle of stability, 191 ; 
 unchaugingness of, 192 ; indissoluble constitution of, 218 ; in- 
 dustry of legislation of, 223; patrimonies of, 20; civil mission 
 of, 27, 35, 127. 
 
 Civil law, property not created by, 19. 
 
 Civil mission of the Church, Temporal Power necessary to, 27, 35. 
 
 Civil powers, desecration o^ 162. 
 Civil and spiritual powers, conflict between, 186-188. 
 Civilisation, Christian, created by the Popes, 127 ; in revolt from 
 the Christian Church, Ivi ; Catholic conquered, by natural, 132; 
 of nineteenth century, boastful, Ixi. 
 
INDEX. 249 
 
 Clement VII., picture of times of, 2 10 ; epoch of a period of resplen- 
 dence, 215. 
 
 Comte, errors of, 95-100. 
 
 Confliction of civil and spiritual powers, 209. 
 
 Conscience, tribunal of, 182. 
 
 Constantino, donation of, 12. 
 
 Council, spiritual and civil powers in, 43 ; of Nice, xx. ; of Florence, 
 XX. ; of Orange, xx. ; Trent, xx. 
 
 Courage, Christian, characteristics of, 170. 
 
 Creator and maker of property, God, 19. 
 
 Date of independence of Italy and Rome, 14. 
 
 Deification of humanity, consequence of Protestantism, 92. 
 
 Democracy, tendency of government to, 133 ; exhaustion of powers 
 
 of government, 133 ; instability of, 235 ; foretold by St. Hippo- 
 
 lytus, 74. 
 Deposing power of the Pope, nature of, 46. 
 Desecrated power, what, 72. 
 Desecration of civil powers, 162. 
 Desideratum among Englishmen, what, 4. 
 Desiderius, King of the Lombards, xlviii. 
 Despotisms, where especially found, 60 ; effect of dissolution of the 
 
 Temporal Power, 60 ; prevalence of, 135. 
 De Maistre, Count, li. 
 De TocquevUle, 133. 
 
 Dissolution of the Temporal Power, effects of, 56-60. 
 Distinctions, national, abolished, 28 ; the true, between spiritual 
 
 and temporal, 5. 
 Dogma of faith, conditions of, xxxviii. 
 Dominion, civil, Rome, excluded from, 16. 
 Donation of Constantine, I2. 
 Donoso Cortez, 134. 
 
 Ecclesiastical polity, axioms of, abolished by Reformation, xx. 
 
 Elective monarchy, Roman State the only example of, 50. 
 
 Emancipation by the Church, 22 ; of slaves by St. Gregory, 22. 
 
 Emperor, the Roman, 9, 209 ; the heathen, motive of Christian 
 obedience to, 11. 
 
 England, by what organised, 43 ; sovereignty of received by the in- 
 direct providence of God, 24 ; no nation so easily deceived, 65 ; 
 
250 INDEX. 
 
 Protestant, the least intelleetnal of Protestant countries, 90 ; 
 
 material prosperity of, 163; errors of, material and rationalistic, 
 
 xxi. ; its traditional animosity against the Holy See, xx. 
 Error, progression in manifestation of, xx. 
 Eternal and temporal truly opposed, 5. 
 Europe, Christian, the first seed 0^ 16 ; a new creation, 39 ; special 
 
 and personal action of Pontiffs on, 44 ; principle of obedience 
 
 in, 45 ; created by priestly government, 52. 
 Eusebius, yttHji 
 
 Faith, conditions of dogma of, xxxvui. ; divine, substitution of 
 
 human opinion for, 85 ; light of, interpreter of history, 102. 
 Ferretti, Cardinal, saying of, Ixviii. 
 First principles, the lack of, among Englishmen, 3. 
 Free exercise of spiritual power, 135. 
 French Revolution, paganism unchained, 75. 
 Fulfilment of the civil mission of the Church, 3. 
 
 GaUican liberties, 91. 
 
 Germany, pantheism of, 92. 
 
 Ghost, Holy, denial of, 85. 
 
 Gnosticism of our days, vi., 90. 
 
 God, the knowledge of, springing from the Holy See, 45 ; the true 
 
 creator and maker of property, 19. 
 Government of priests created modem Europe, 52. 
 Greek schism, the China of Christendom, 47. 
 Greek schismatics, law of marriage abolished by, 74. 
 Gregory I. the Great, St., 22; picture of times of, 199, xxxvi. ; his 
 
 time, epoch of conversion of nations, 215. 
 Gregory II., xlii. 
 Gregory VII., St., i. ; letter of, 204. 
 
 Heresy existing in every age, 87 ; reappearance of, 88 ; smitten with 
 
 its death-blow, 224. 
 Hippolytus, St., prophecy of, 74 ; words of, 134, 
 History, knowledge of, a desideratum, 2 ; of Christian Europe, what, 
 
 55 ; only truly read in the light of feith, 102. 
 Holy Ghost, denial of, 85. 
 Holy See, limitations imposed by, 46. 
 Hostility against the Supreme Pontiff, 6. 
 Huss, xxxiv. 
 
INDEX. 251 
 
 Ignokance, consequence of Protestantism, 225. 
 
 Immaculate Conception, 226. 
 
 Immutability of the Holy See, 238. 
 
 Incarnation, belief in, a primary postulate, 3 ; denial of, 86, 161 ; 
 
 nationalism abolished by, 91 ; the foundation of the political 
 
 order of Europe hitherto, 129. 
 -Increase, law of, 218. 
 
 Independence of Italy and Eome, date of 14. 
 Indifference, consequence of Protestantism, 225. 
 Infidelity, consequence of Protestantism, 225. 
 Intellect, indistinctness of, 31. 
 Irenseus, St., xxxiii. 
 
 Jerome, St., interpretation of, 84. 
 
 Jews, people of, interpenetrating all nations, 146 ; deadly antagonists 
 to the Christian Church, 145. 
 
 Keystone of Christendom, 47. 
 
 Knowledge of God springing from the Holy See, 45 ; of history, a 
 desideratum, 2. 
 
 Laing's Notes on Europe, 60. 
 
 Latter days, first glory of, 220 ; second glory of, 222. 
 
 Law of marriage abolished, 73. 
 
 Legislation of Church, industry of, 223. 
 
 Leo the Isaurian, xlvii. 
 
 Leo. St., picture of times of, 201 ; epoch of creation of Christian 
 
 Europe, 215. 
 Letters of St. Gregory, 204 ; of Pope Stephen II., 41. 
 Liberals, illiberality of, 156. 
 Liberty, the Church necessary to, 135. 
 Lombardy, the war in, 70. 
 Luther, xxi., xxxiv. 
 
 Maoohiavelli, xxxvi. 
 
 Mahomet, type of Antichrist, 159. 
 
 Maistre, Count de, li. 
 
 Marriage, dissolved by Greek schism. Protestantism, and French 
 
 Revolution, 73. 
 Martin I., St., xlii. 
 
 Martyrs, thirty, among the Eoman Pontiffs, 185. 
 Matthew, St., prophecy of, 144. 
 
252 INDEX. 
 
 Monarchy, made a free institution by the Holy See, 45 ; elective, 
 Roman States example of, 50 ; mitigated by Catholic tradi- 
 tion, 61. 
 
 Morell, History of Modem Philosophy, 92-94, 
 
 Motives of Christian obedience, 1 1. 
 
 Mysteries of godliness and impiety, 105. 
 
 Napoleon I., saying of, 77. 
 
 Nationalism, in religion schism, in politics revolution, 28 ; conse- 
 quence of Protestantism, 90 ; seen in Reformation, 91 ; abo- 
 lished by the Incarnation, 91. 
 
 Obedience, Christian, motive of, 1 1 ; preserved Europe, 45 ; taught 
 by the Holy See, 46. 
 
 Paganism unchained, French Revolution, 75 ; restoration of, 113. 
 
 Pantheism, deification of humanity, 92 ; boundless egotism, 100. 
 
 Paschal controversy, xxxiii. 
 
 Passion, sign of our Lord's presence, 178; of Jesus Christ shared 
 by His Church, 197. 
 
 Patrician of Rome, xlviii. ; highest civil dignity, 41. 
 
 Patrimonies of the Holy See, twenty-three in number, 20, 199. 
 
 Pelagius and Pelagianism, xx., xxi. 
 
 Pepin, King, xlvii., 14. 
 
 Persecution, five signs of one approaching, 148, 163; of truth, 151 ; 
 present, in Italy, 157. 
 
 Pius IX., allocution of, 166; three appeals of, 229; character of 
 170 ; opposed by the world, iTiii. ; fortitude of, 193, Ixiii. 
 
 Politics, divorced from Revelation, 81. 
 
 Popes, sovereigns among sovereigns, Ixiii. ; guardians of Christian 
 faith, Ixiii. ; sprung &om humble life, 51; peaceful, 52; "Ponti- 
 fices almificos," liv. ; possess exclusive right to Rome, 183 ; pre- 
 rogatives of, 142 ; dethronement of, 161 ; subject to none, 181 ; 
 reigned for 1200 years, 16 ; centre of Christian society, 143 ; 
 first example of Christian monarchy, 16 ; creators of Christian 
 civilisation, 127 ; Vicars of Jesus Christ, 142 ; thirty martyred, 
 185 ; thirty banished, 188 ; four imprisoned, four unable to set 
 foot in Rome, seven reigned at Avignon, nine driven out of 
 Rome, 185-189. 
 
 Positivism of Comte, 92 ; sacred formula of, 99. 
 
INDEX. 253 
 
 Power, Temporal, of the Holy See, in what sense a Divine institu- 
 tion, XXX.; supernatural character of, xxvii.; not a material object 
 of a dogma of faith, xxxviii. ; not absolutely necessary to spiritual 
 power, 26 ; but for its free and peaceful exercise, 27 ; shelter of 
 the spiritual, 25 ; two branches of, 5 ; distinct elements of, 1 79 ; 
 united to the spiritual, xxviii., xxix., 219 ; difficulties in its treat- 
 ment, xix. ; cumulus of evidence in its regard, xxviii. ; recog- 
 nised by ten councils, two of which were general, xxxvi. ; 
 recognised by the " magisterium juge Ecclesise," xxxvii. ; by 
 the voice of the Episcopate, 230, 238 note ; writers and opinions 
 on, 236 note ; a theological certainty and law of conscience, 
 231 ; necessary to the civil mission of the Church, 27, 35 ; pro- 
 test against nationalism, 28 ; six different periods of, patience 
 and martyrdom, xl. ; liberation, xli. ; interregnum, xliv. ; pater- 
 nal dictatorship, xliv. ; popular election, xlvi. ; unbroken pos- 
 ssession for more than 1000 years, 1. ; opposition of the world to, 
 Ixiii. ; not to be dissolved by popular will, Itii. ; usurped, 55; 
 assailed, 190; restored, 190 ; effects of its dissolution, 34,56; 
 keystone of Christianity, 47 ; finally liberated, xix. 
 
 Power of the Church, depression of, 135. 
 
 Powers, sacerdotal and royal, two conservative principles, 46. 
 
 Principles, first, lack of, 3. 
 
 Property not the creation of civil law, 19. 
 
 Prosperity, temporal, not a test of God's favour, 178. 
 
 Protestantism, despotism of, 60 ; formal antagonist of Christianity, 
 
 89 ; revolt against the supernatural, xxi. ; against sacramental 
 grace, xxi. ; with Pelagianism, the two extremes of heresy, xx. ; 
 modern, xxi. ; dark future of, 89 ; reproductiveness of, 90 ; of 
 England, pabulum for every error, 90 ; Gnosticism of our day, 
 
 90 ; consequences of, 90, 225 ; its false interpretations of Holy 
 Scripture, 165 ; no longer a religion, but a political system, 225. 
 
 Pudentiana, St., 18. 
 Pulcheria, Empress, xlvi. 
 
 Rationalism, consequence of Protestantism, 225. 
 
 Reformation, Anglican, 91 ; impotence of, 155 ; abolished first 
 
 axioms of ecclesiastical polity, xx. 
 Regalia Petri, xxxvi. 
 
 Revelation, generally excluded from politics, 81, 129. 
 Revolt, definition of, 83 ; three characters of, 85. 
 
254 INDEX. 
 
 Eevolution, in the States of the Church, five causes of, 68 ; French, 
 75 ; outbreak of antichristian spirit, 131 ; of 1789, 1830, and 
 1848, identical in principle, 131 ; consequences of, 232, 233 ; in- 
 volves the gnUt of rebellion, Ix. 
 
 Eoccaberti, Bibliotheca Pontificia, xxm.. 
 
 Rome, ancient, type of the Church, "Roma nunquam recedit," 183. 
 
 Rome, City of, seven times sacked, once wholly destroyed, 189 ; 
 nine times in the hands of usurpers, 190 ; saved only by the 
 Roman Pontiffs, 14 ; excluded from civil dominion, 16 ; purga- 
 tion by fire and blood, 14, 165 ; patrician of, 41. 
 
 Rome, See of, centre of the Church, 37 ; leader, guide, and legis- 
 lator, 44 ; personal action of, 44 ; guardian of the knowledge of 
 God, 45 ; its immutability, 236 ; hindrance to the manifesta- 
 tion of Antichrist, 127; teaches obedience and clemency, 46 ; 
 its deposing power, 46 ; its imperishable vitality and invincible 
 endurance, 179 ; sovereignty of, 180 ; key and centre of all 
 supernatural action, xxv. 
 
 Sackipice, Christian, taking away of, 157. 
 
 Sacraments, not to be treated by natural calculus, xxiL 
 
 Sardinia, inchoate schism of, Ivii. 
 
 Schism, spirit of, in Piedmont and Portugal, IviL ; Greek, the China 
 of Christendom, 47. 
 
 Scripture, falsely interpreted by Protestant writers, 165. 
 
 Sects, cannot bind the wiU, 155. 
 
 Signs, five, of a coming persecution, 148. 
 
 Slavery, gradually abolished by the Church, 22. 
 
 Society, twofold, natural and supernatural, 128; natural, re-establish- 
 ment of, 162 ; civil, a divine institution, 233, 243. 
 
 Sovereignty, inherent in the person of the Supreme Pontiff, 179, 
 181 ; local and temporal, 179, 182 ; purchased by thirty mar- 
 tyrdoms, 185 ; its definition, 180 ; of the Church, work of God, 
 197. 
 
 Spain, civilisation of, owing to the Church, 43. 
 
 Stability, sole principle of, 191. 
 
 Stapleton, xxxv. 
 
 Stephen II., letter of, 41. 
 
 Suarez, xxxv., 180, 240. 
 
 Sufferings of the Popes, 186-188. 
 
 Supernatural element in the world, 1 14. 
 
INDEX. 255 
 
 "TEDIUM de Deo," shown in rebellion against tlie Supreme 
 Pontiff, Ivi. 
 
 Tertullian, 9, xxxiii. 
 
 Theology, its periods of conception, definition, and scientific mani- 
 festation, XXXT. 
 
 Times, present, difficult to appreciate, 198. 
 
 Tocqueville (De), quoted, 133. 
 
 Toledo, eighteen councils of, created the civilisation of Spain, 43. 
 
 Toleration, one exception to, 152; denied to the Church hy liberals, 
 156. 
 
 Truth, indifiFerence to, 148 ; contempt and persecution of, 150, 151 ; 
 testimony to, 1 73. 
 
 Wak, ofiensive, never waged by the Popes, 52. 
 
 Will, not bound by Protestant sects, 155. 
 
 World, modern, its agents, 146 ; its hostility to the Incarnation, 161. 
 
 THE BND. 
 
 PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 
union l^i^^a^y- 
 
 Cornett Cajfchofic 
 Union Library.